ROUMANIA’S ATTITUDE.

Waipawa Mail, Volume XXXVI, Issue 7753, 25 July 1916, Page 4

ROUMANIA’S ATTITUDE.

«WHY SHE IS NEUTRAL. DREAD OF RUSSIAN DOMINATION. The “GiornaLe d’ltalia” publishes an instructive interview with M. Marghilomaun, the chief of the Germanophile party in Roumania. M. Marghilomaun began by declaring that he was less Germanophile than he was a Russophobe. ”1 am anti-Russian,” he said, “because I am convinced thfct Russia is our worst enemy. I love France, but France is 2000 kilometers distant, whereas we are next-door neighbors to the Russians. “When M. Sazanoff said in the Duma last year, ‘ To-day the time has arrived for the realisation of the dream of Peter the Great,’ I said to myself, ‘That means the end for us. With the Russians at Constantinople Roumanians will be in the greatest danger. ’ “Russia is covetous of complete dominion over the Black Sea and the Bosphorus. Russia sells cereals and petrol as we do, and therefore our interests are antagonistic. If she succeeded in closing the mouth of the Danube, Austria would be at her mercy, and so should we, because we have practically no railways, all our commerce being on the Danube and on the sea. To-day I feel satisfied that Russia will never get Constantinople, and that it will remain in the hands of the Turks. “The policy of M. Bratiano reminds me of a little dog, which barks at a locomotive in the belief that it can stop it—we are the little dog, the locomotive is Germany. It is true that M. Bratinno is now on excellent terms with the Russians, and impatiently awaits the opportunity to do something. But when will that opportunity present itself? “I repeat what I affirmed eight months ago, that Roumania will remain neutral. Certainly, M. Bratiano would take action if the signal were to he given, hut I believe that that ‘signal’ will never he given because the war will finish suddenly with a general collapse before long, and we shall never be afforded the opportunity to intervene. “I am dissatisfied with the policy of M. Bratiano. It has disgusted everybody. Yesterday, Russia, when she was in the Carpathians, offered 1 us vast concessions if we would join her. We lost the opportunity by insisting upon the Banat, where there are more Servians than there are Roumanians. “Does anybody seriously think that Germany, victorious, will say to us, ‘Come with us, and enjoy the fruits of. victory; you, who have failed to maintain your treaty of alliance with us, and have shown yourselves ready to unite with our enemies’? Does anyone think that the Quadruple Entente, victorious, will give us Transylvania, we who have plainly shown that we would side against them in case of their defeat? “We have revealed our play to the whole world, with the result that nobody trusts us any more, and intervention therefore would he useless lo us. How can the world have faith in us after the words of a brother of M. Bratiano to the Minister of one of the Central Empires: ‘lf you conquer, we will he witli you?’ ”