ROUMANIA AND ITS RUBICON 



197 



file, with the center of the boulevard re- 

 served for the royal turnouts. There is 

 no physical line of demarcation between 

 this "king's highway" and the other part 

 of the boulevard, but courtesy toward the 

 royal family draws and respects an imag- 

 inary one. 



PRIXCE CHARLES THE MIRACEE- WORKER 



But Roumania was not always thus. 

 Forty years ago it was, both as to country 

 and as to capital, one of the most back- 

 ward- nations of Europe; and then it 

 called Prince Charles of Prussia to its 

 throne. Although he had to travel to 

 Bucharest incognito in order to escape 

 the secret service of Austria, which was 

 determined to keep him out, he immedi- 

 ately set to work to bring the country up 

 to a higher standard, and the story of his 

 reign, which closed with his death soon 

 after the European war began, is largely 

 the same sort of story of development as 

 that of Germany during the reign of his 

 Hohenzollern kinsman. King Carol, as 

 he was called, had for his queen Eliza- 

 beth, a German princess, better known by 

 her pen name of Carmen Sylva. She, 

 too, was spared the sorrows of Rou- 

 mania's hour of decision, having died a 

 few months ago. They had one child, 

 but it died in infancy, and Carmen Sylva 

 turned her interest to the poor of the 

 country and to letters and music. It is 

 said that she was perhaps the most tal- 

 ented queen of her generation. She could 

 converse in six languages ; she wrote 

 some thirty books ; she composed an opera 

 that was staged and praised on the conti- 

 nent, and her symphonies and songs have 

 won a place in the world of music. Like- 

 wise she was no mean wielder of the 

 brush, and was an expert needlewoman. 

 Her pride was her work for the blind, 

 for whom she founded an institution in 

 Bucharest. 



The present king is a nephew of King 

 Carol. His wife is a granddaughter of 

 Queen Victoria, and therefore a first 

 cousin of most of the reigning heads of 

 Europe. 



Under the new era initiated and carried 

 down to the present by the Hohenzollern 

 dynasty, Roumania has gone far ahead of 

 her neighbors of the Balkan region, and 



the visitor to Bucharest early finds that 

 its people resent the idea of being classed, 

 with the Balkan States. They feel that 

 they are the superiors of the Serbs, the 

 Bulgars, the Montenegrins, and the mod- 

 ern Greeks, and that their country is su- 

 perior, just as the people of A, B, C 

 South America feel that their nations are 

 not to be confounded with the remainder 

 of Latin America. 



CUSTOMS PERPETUATE HISTORY OF ROME/s 

 GEORY 



Let us now turn to Roumanian history 

 and note some of the outstanding events 

 that have been the crossroads on her 

 highway from the past to the present. 

 The early inhabitants were Dacians. 

 Pliny and Herodotus agree that they were 

 the bravest and most honorable of all the 

 barbarian tribes that Rome encountered 

 in her days of expansion. Thucydides 

 praises them as wonderful fighters on 

 horseback. 



The Trajan Column in Rome bears the 

 author's story of the great emperor's con- 

 quest of this territory. Across the Dan- 

 ube are the ruined piers which once sup- 

 ported a bridge built by Trajan, and some 

 sections of the great military road he con- 

 structed still are in use as a part of the 

 national highway system. 



Also there are many customs which 

 still proclaim the ancient rule and in- 

 fluence of Rome that have persisted 

 through the centuries since the departure 

 of her glory. Eor instance, there is the 

 old Phyrric dance, the robes with bells 

 on sleeves and girdles. The Roumanians 

 still shout in unison to prevent Saturn 

 from hearing the voice of the infant 

 Jupiter ; and even their oxen proclaim 

 the "glory that was Rome" in their 

 names, for here you may see Cfesar and 

 Brutus as yoke-fellows, and there Cassius 

 and Augustus. 



But when Rome withdrew, what is now 

 Roumania became the Belgium of a series 

 of racial struggles between the East and 

 the West, first this horde and then that 

 overrunning the fertile valleys. Invasion 

 became the normal condition of Rouma- 

 nian territory, and the sturdy descendants 

 of the early Romans and Romanized Da- 

 cians learned how to survive even such 



