ROUMANIA, THE PIVOTAL STATE 



!65 



His successor was Prince Charles of 

 Hohenzollern — a selection that did not 

 meet with the approval of the allied pow- 

 ers that made possible this new king- 

 dom — but before they could formally and 

 unitedly protest the new prince regent 

 was safe within his new dominion. It is 

 a tradition that he made this hasty move 

 under the advice of Bismarck, who sug- 

 gested that even if he should be obliged 

 to lay down his newly acquired scepter, 

 it would be for him "an interesting ex- 

 perience and a pleasing souvenir." 



DEFEATED TURKS AT PLEVNA 



Prince Carol, the Roumanian equiva- 

 lent for Charles, gave new life to a peo- 

 ple who had known only the heel of the 

 oppressor, and instilled such a vigorous 

 spirit of nationalism into all classes that 

 when he, in answer to Russia's pleading, 

 defeated the Turks at Plevna, they ac- 

 claimed him King, and the sovereigns of 

 Europe, with varying degrees of reluc- 

 tance, recognized him as worthy to wear 

 a kingly crown, made in this instance 

 from a Turkish cannon. 



His nephew is now on the throne, and, 

 being one degree further removed from 

 foreign allegiance, he may be said to be 

 by that same amount more Roumanian. 

 Time alone can tell. 



Because of the kaleidoscopic changes 

 that take place in this part of Europe, it 

 is almost unsafe to give the metes and 

 bounds of any of the constituent States. 

 But the last word has it that Roumania 

 contains 53,489 square miles, an area 

 slightly greater than England and AYales 

 and only a little less than Massachusetts 

 and New York combined. Within this 

 territory there were, according to the last 

 census, 7,508,000 inhabitants, or 140 per- 

 sons to the square mile. This is a density 

 of population slightly greater than that 

 of Maryland. 



As a result of the shiftings of bound- 

 aries, there are at the present time prac- 

 tically half as many Roumanians living 

 under the Austro - Hungarian flag as 

 there are under their own. In Transyl- 

 vania 60 per cent of the population are 

 Roumanians, while Bukovina has nearly 

 one million, and more than that number 

 make their home in Bessarabia. 



ETHNICAL BOUNDARIES DISREGARDED 



Impersonal and inhuman diplomacy 

 has taken no account of language and 

 feeling as a basis for boundaries between 

 people that are one in spirit ; but while 

 it threw beyond the fictitious wall per- 

 sons ethnically allied to those within, the 

 State, by way of compensation, gained no 

 little security from the fact that beyond 

 the political frontiers the kingdom is 

 girdled round by Roumanian communi- 

 ties. 



The State that seemingly gained by the 

 inclusion of an alien race has had its ad- 

 ministrative difficulties greatly increased, 

 for a people so devoted to their own 

 land, its customs and government, cannot 

 easily be assimilated by another. 



This patriotism was shown during the 

 time of the national exposition at Bucha- 

 rest in 1906, when the authorities organ- 

 ized a number of "home comings," set- 

 ting aside a certain day for the visitation, 

 from each of the extra-Roumanian local- 

 ities. On these occasions the visitors,. 

 wearing the native costume or the dress, 

 of their province, were received by the 

 municipal authorities upon their arrival 

 at the station and escorted through the 

 decorated city to the exposition grounds, 

 where entertainments of many sorts 

 awaited them. 4 



The older people were encouraged to 

 come, and carriages were at the disposal 

 of those who could not walk in the pro- 

 cession, or who, attempting to walk, 

 found their strength insufficient. Xo one 

 could look on these festivities without a 

 feeling of conviction that patriotism such 

 as this is an asset of great value to the 

 native land if their possessor live within 

 it, but a liability of grave concern when 

 the home is on alien soil. 



PROSPERITY AND TROUBLE 



The fertile soil of Roumania has been 

 the source of its great prosperity, and at 

 the same time the cause of most of its 

 troubles. The Roman invader distrib- 

 uted large tracts to favorite veterans, and 

 many estates to this day, in their desig- 

 nation, bear testimony to the fact that 

 they at one time were the rewards of 

 service to the Roman soldiers. 



