CHANGE IN RUMANIA

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 53, Issue 3829, 4 November 1936, Page 7

CHANGE IN RUMANIA

GERMAN INFLUENCE FELT. The temporary elimination of M. Titulescu, who had come to be regarded as Rumania’s permanent Foreign Minister, comes as a climax to a long struggle by the reactionary forces of the country, influence, it is believed, by l~=z'. Germany, wrote the -Balkans correspondent of the Daily Telegraph on August 31. These have repeatedly tried to overthrow the man whose name was synonymous with the traditional alliance between Rumania and French democracy. Even before the Nazis came to power, M. Titulescu was a thorn in the side of German imperialism in the Balkans, on account of his refusal to deviate from the line that Rumania’s future depended upon maintaining the French connection and strengthening the bonds with the Little Entente. Many were the indirect efforts made to eliminate him from the Cabinet. Since the Nazis , came to power in Germany, a great impetus has been given to the various Fascist movements in Rumania. They have been abundantly supplied with funds and enabled to publish hundreds of newspapers, which have no advertisement revenue, whereas they formerly published only one. Obstacles to Germans. Many bear the German swastika badge. All preach the necessity for excluding M. Titulescu as the great obstacle to German influence in the country, as the friend of France and supporter of the policy of ending the old quarrel between Russia and Rumania. The Premier (M. Tatarescu) was not selected for office, in accordance with constitutional practice, by his own party, the Liberals. He was chosen by King Carol himself, as being a suitable instrument for an experiment in personal government. A reactionary, and a willing instrument in the King’s hands, he quarrelled with his own party, and with M. Titulescu. Faced with the prospect of a crushing defeat at the hands of the National Peasants Party next October, when they intend to press the King to hold elections, M. Tatarescu has been relying more and more on the extreme Fascist and proGerman group, to which King Carol himself recently showed several marks of favour. In thus dropping their pilot of many years through the troubled seas of Balkan politics, King Carol and MTatarescu are opening the way for

big changes both in Rumania and in the general European situation. German influence is now supreme in Hungary and Bulgaria, very strong in Austria—since the Austro-German pact—and in Yugoslavia and Greece. This encourages her, through the semi-Fascist German party, led by Herr Conrad Henlein in Czechoslovakia, to increase pressure on that country.