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Sun (Christchurch), Volume IV, Issue 1012, 10 May 1917, Page 6

I Warned beyond doubt by the fate \of Russia, -Autocracy in Rumania (repents of its sins—and lands. JParliamenl met on Monday at J assy, and though Parliament in Rumania means undiluted plutocracy, it voted itself straight out of power. Hitherto there has been no such thing as popular suffrage of any kind. The Senate has represented the propertied classes only, and the Chamber, although it has not been quite independent of the masses, has been altogether free of any serious control. Now there is to be universal suffrage by secret ballot, and fhe electors have been multiplied by seven. Apparently, too, a huge slice of land is to be expropriated from the bureaucrats, the King leading the way as prime disgorgcr. An autocracy yesterday as genuinely as Germany, Rumania to-day joins the | Allied democracy. For it is now at length worthy of note that in Britain, France, America, Russia" and Italy there is at least an approximation to absolute popular control. It; is true, manhood suffrage has not yet come to Japan, and is still further' off in China; but Japan is as near i to a democracy as the East has known, and the Chinese republic is five years old. Belgium and Serbia unfortunately do not at present exist; but both had manhood suffrage before the war, and will have it again when the Entente resurrects them. Of course we cannot pretend to know after what convulsions the Rumanian democracy has been born: except for an occasional distant rumble we have heard nothing from Jassy for months. It is not improbable that enormous pressure has been necessary to effect this change, and whether the autocrats have yielded easily or sullenly, they have yielded to save their own sjuns. The however, that autocracy is leaving the civilised earth, and that the Hohenzollerns and Habsburgs draw nearer their doom.