Photograph by Erdelyi 



TYPICAL ROUMANIAN COSTUMES OK THE CARPATHIAN AND EASTERN ALPS REGIONS 



The Wallachian peasant who has not adopted the homely clothes that come from the 

 ready-to-wear factories of western Europe is a picturesquely dressed man. His costume is 

 white. The trousers are something like twice the length of the leg and are made to fit with 

 numerous wrinkles; his shirt is made to hang tunic-like over his trousers and is gathered at 

 the waist with a red belt; his coat is a sort of military cape, usually of brown woolens or of 

 tanned sheepskin. 



LED BY HOPE, IMPELLED BY FEAR 



But if hope of a "reunited" Roumania 

 appealed greatly to the Roumanian, the 

 fear of strangulation, if not extinction, 

 turned the scales positively to the cause 

 of the Allies. 



To show what this fear was and how 

 it impressed the people of Roumania, I 

 can do no better than to quote from a 

 booklet issued from the Oxford Uni- 

 versity Press, whose author is D. Mi- 

 trany, a Roumanian advocating interven- 

 tion. He says : 



"But if the Allies win, the Austro- 

 Hungarian monarch}- will no doubt be 

 dismembered, and Roumania will find 

 herself in the not very enviable position 

 of being tenderly squashed between the 

 palm of the Slav and the fingers of the 

 Magyar. 



"But, further than this, one of the chief 

 aims of Russian policy has always been 

 the possession of the Dardanelles. Rus- 

 sia never was as near to its realization as 

 she is now, when the Turkish Empire is 

 a tiling of the past and when she has Eng- 

 land as an ally — England, who has always 

 barred her way to the Golden Horn. 



"Russia in Constantinople, however, 

 means the strangulation of Roumania. 

 Bulgaria has an outlet on the SEgean, 

 Serbia will no doubt have one to the 

 Adriatic, but Roumania depends entirely 

 upon the Dardanelles. Her splendid po- 

 sition at the mouth of the Danube, her 

 possessions on the Black Sea, will be of 

 little worth with the mighty Empire of 

 the Tsar dominating the Black Sea. the 

 Sea of Marmora, and the Straits. Xot 

 only is the cheap waterway an absolute 

 necessity for the bulky products — corn, 



i86 



