AUSTRIA AND RUMANIA 95 



Austria's timber merchants also exported their 

 timber by the Rumanian railways to Galatz and 

 thence by sea. After the peace the areas in which 

 Austria developed this forestry export trade will 

 be in new hands. The present condition of these 

 fine forests is doubtful. In any event, great damage 

 is certain to have been done to the export works, 

 and disorganization appears to be only too prob- 

 able for some time after the war before the threads 

 can be picked up. The export trade may also be 

 badly hit by the improbability of the new Rulers 

 obtaining either from Russia or Rumania the low 

 freights Austria enjoyed, and that would almost 

 certainly reduce the exports enormously. 



Rumania. Since the nineties of last century 

 Rumania had made great strides in opening out 

 her forests so as to make a bid for a larger share in 

 the Mediterranean markets, in which at the out- 

 break of the war she held second place. She had 

 devoted considerable sums of money to improving 

 her means of extracting the produce, and in its 

 subsequent transportation. She was also offering 

 forty-year timber leases with the object of attracting 

 capital. After the occupation of so much of her 

 country by Germany and Bulgaria, the state in 

 which the forests are likely to be left, or at any 

 rate all the accessible ones, is open to doubt,* or, 

 perhaps one may say, knowing the methods of 

 these barbarians, is not open to doubt. At the 

 least it is likely that they will have destroyed all 

 the timber extraction works, since their ally Austria 

 had been in competition with Rumania in the 



