This page needs to be proofread.
RUMANIA
303


petroleum refining, sugar manufacture, flour milling and saw milling. Bucharest, Braila and Galatz are the most important centres. In 1915 there were 1,149 industrial establishments employing 58,871 workmen and having invested capital of 805,472,618 lei. It has been estimated that water-power amounting to 150,000 H.P. is avail- able, but in 1912 less than 9,000 H.P. had been brought into use.

Imports and Exports. The total imports and exports for the years 1911-5 and 1919 are given in Table 2. TABLE 2.

Imports . Exports .

Imports and Exports (ooo's omitted).

1911

1912

1913

1914

1915

1919

22,790 27,669

25^684

23,601 26,828

19,970

17,897

13,186

22,581


Before the war exports were chiefly to Belgium and Holland, and cereals formed the most important articles. In 1919 more than half the value of exports was made up by petroleum. Of imports in 1911 29 % in quantity and 15 % in value came from the United Kingdom, 25% and 24% respectively from Austria and 19% and 32% from Germany. The chief imports in 1919 were cereals and cereal by- products (220,149 tons; value 362 million lei) and manufactured articles. Exports to the United Kingdom were valued at 2,742,000 in 1919 and 3,227,000 in 1920, imports from the United King- dom 5,585,085 in 1919 and 7,121,555 in 1920.

Communications. Rumania had in 1913 2,586 m. of national roads, 3,066 m. of departmental roads, 22,000 m. of communal and village roads and about 7,000 m. of unmetalled tracks. The main roads are well constructed and maintained, but the communal and village roads are not well adapted for traffic and are often impassable at certain seasons.

By the Treaty of Versailles the Commission of the Danube is composed of representatives of France, Great Britain, Italy and Rumania alone. The Pruth, the only important waterway in Ruma- nia besides the Danube, is navigable for ships of about 600 tons as far as Jassy. In 1919 Rumania had 158 merchant vessels aggregating 71,158 tons, including 17 steamers of 29,441 tons. The number of vessels entered at Rumanian ports in 1919 was 10,546, total tonnage 2,991,095 tons.

The railway system is inadequate. Four main lines of standard gauge radiate from Bucharest and a number of transverse lines cross the plains. The Carpathians are crossed at three points. There were 2,200 m. of line open in 1914 and 7,240 m. in 1920. The gauge of the Bessarabian railways differs from the others. Many new lines were in course of construction or were projected in 1921.

HISTORY, 1910-21

The Balkan War. The war which broke out in the Balkan peninsula in 1911 as a consequence of the Italo-Turkish conflict and the Albanian risings demanded the anxious attention of the Rumanian government, now headed by J. Bratianu in place of Sturdza, whom ill-health had compelled to withdraw finally from political life. Rumania's official attitude towards the conflict of 1911 was strictly neutral, public sympathy being manifestly on the side of attacked Turkey. Towards the end of the year the Liberal ministry was obliged to resign. Rather surrepti- tious methods had been employed to pass a measure providing the church with a new constitution, which established a Supreme Consistory of the Protestant type, representatives of the priest- hood sitting side by side with the bishops this being the result of recent episcopal scandals of a private nature. The new con- vention with Austria-Hungary had sacrificed the vital interests of the Rumanian herdsmen of Transylvania, accustomed to feed their flocks and herds on the Rumanian slopes of the Car- pathians and on the Wallachian plain. An endeavour had been made to regulate the internal distribution of petrol; and at the last moment the Minister of Finance, Costinescu, introduced a scheme for a progressive income tax, which was not adopted by the succeeding Liberal administration.

There were two candidates for the succession: on the one hand M. Take Jonescu, who, having left the Conservative party in consequence of a long-standing feud with the leader of its younger members, the rich landowner Nicolas Filipescu, had then formed a Conservative-Democratic party, which the longing of all classes for a new era had rendered remarkably successful at by- elections; on the other P. P. Carp, whom the death of G. Canta- cuzene had placed at the head of the Conservative party. Prom- ising a long programme of reforms, including an administrative transformation (the districts to be merged in " regions " of greater size administered by captains), it was the latter who

obtained the King's call to office. Among his colleagues were T. Maiorescu, N. Filipescu, and one of the country's foremost writers and orators, the lawyer B. St. Delavorancea.

The new Government far from satisfied the hopes of the pub- lic. The Minister of the Interior, Alexander Marghiloman, long regarded by Carp as his future successor, was chiefly preoccu- pied with assuring his party, despite its unpopularity, of a major- ity at the polls. To this end no pains were spared. Directly Parliament met, a virulent campaign was opened against the Liberals, beginning with an attack on their new economic policy (inspired chiefly by Vintila Bratianu, brother of the leader of the party), which aimed at combining the interests of private cap- ital with those of communal and state capital in such great transport concerns as the electric tramways of Bucharest. The Liberal opposition, numerically small, left the Chamber, and combined with Take Jonescu in a furious campaign for the over- throw of the Government. At the same time J. J. Bratianu, influenced by the Socialists, and by a Bessarabian " Poporanist " (peasant party) who had gained a high position in the party, raised the long-abandoned question of universal suffrage, and definitely pledged himself to the considerably milder policy of a single electoral college, with, moreover, only literate electors the intention seeming rather to be that of weakening the spirit of independence of the first and second electoral colleges, whose sympathies were tending towards new formations like the Na- tional Democrats. Efforts were made at the same time to retain the votes of the rural school-teachers.

The Carp Government did something to ameliorate conditions of life for the peasantry; and N. Filipescu strove to improve the army, which had received scant attention of late years. In the matter of the Rumanian ecclesiastical schism a quarrel between the Bishop of Roman and the Metropolitan Primate Athanasius both protagonists were persuaded to resign and quit the field.

It was at this moment that the Balkan Confederation went to war with Turkey, whose European possessions they intended to share among themselves. Not only had no support been sought from Rumania, but certain clauses provided for the event of war with both that country and Austria-Hungary. At the outset, in Nov. the Rumanian Government professed complete unconcern with what was happening beyond the Danube. The rapid successes of the allies, however, and above all the Bulga- rian victories of Kirk Kilisse and Lule Burgas, opened the eyes of neutral spectators to the danger of a new imperialism in the Balkans: From Austria-Hungary came formal proposals of military collaboration, in order to prevent the victors from realizing the expected profits of their astounding success, and General Conrad von Hoetzendorff arrived at Bucharest, charged with this express mission.

But already the minds of a new generation, educated in the consciousness of a Rumanian moral unity which should necessa- rily produce practical results at the first great European upheaval, were totally opposed to the continuance of the policy inaugurated in 1884. After a visit from Francis Joseph himself to Bucharest in 1909, the Crown Prince Francis Ferdinand made his appear- ance at Sinaia, hoping to strengthen ties that were daily grow- ing looser. The Hungarian Government, of which the Crown Prince pretended to disapprove, none the less pursued its dena- tionalizing policy, imposing, with the full rigour of the Apponyi law, which monopolized nearly the whole of primary education with the study of Magyar, an examination in that official state language even on pupils belonging to Oriental religions or to the Greek church. The Emperor-King rejected the representations of the church of Sibiu on this subject. Political prosecutions, even of women, roused public feeling among the Rumanians of Transylvania. Efforts were made, under cover of seemingly democratic intentions, to turn against the Rumanians a project of Hungarian electoral reform then in preparation; and the electoral contests of June 1910 were of unusual brutality (cf. the present writer's pamphlets: Les Hongrois et la nationality roumaine en 1909 and Les demises elections en Hongrie et les Roumains, Valenii-de-Munte, 1909-10). The idea of Ru- manians marching shoulder to shoulder with the soldiers of