RUMANIA'S PLIGHT M. STURMER'S TREACHERY.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 16979, 16 April 1917, Page 5

RUMANIA'S PLIGHT M. STURMER'S TREACHERY.

GERMAN TRICKERY REVEALED. Australian and N.Z. Cable Association: . PARIS, April 14. (Received April 15, at 5.5 p.m.) General Ili'escu, 'Chief of the Jtumanian Staff, has revealed the fact that M. Sturmer's Government, in Russia, deliberately pushed Rumania into the war to abandon her, hoping to finish the war when Rumania had been invaded to the Sereth. By proclaiming the triumph of the Central Empires, Rumania would be forced to a separate peace, and it was hoped that peace would be due to a defeat which was not a Russian defeat, and which would not .shake his power or that of the Czar. Having thrust Rumania into tho arena, M. Sturmer held back four army corps, and even stopped British and French consignments of munitions. Trains loaded with guns and aeroplanes were afterwards discovered on sidings at station's between Jassy and Potrograd, and railway employees everywhere explained that trains had been held up by Government orders. Rumania's intervention was particularly desired by Germany, as the Hungarians and tho Bulgars were weary of the war, and the Rumanian peril was created in order to destroy their tendency towards independence. Berlin, chose August for the Rumanian intervention, M. Sturmer being the mouthpiece of the German will.