The Carving of Rumania
The opportunist neutrality of King Carol has landed Rumania in a lamentable position. For nine months of the war she sat on the fence—guaranteed by the democracies (with the concurrence of Turkey) and buying off the Axis with large supplies of oil and wheat. The King took the high line of territorial integrity, declaring that invasion would be resisted, no matter on what front. Then came the collapse of France and Russia's ultimatum about Bessarabia, to which no resistance was offered. The King renounced the British guarantee, and threw himself too per cent. into Hitler's arms, with the result that Hitler got the country under his thumb without fighting for it, and has now proceeded to carve a large slice off it for the benefit of Hungary. Feeling in Rumania is naturally intense, but the people can do nothing, though the resistance organised by Dr. Maniu, and the suppression of the constitution in favour of a dictatorship under General Antonescu, shows how serious the situation is. In cutting up Transylvania the Germans have been careful so to shape the division that neither Rumania nor Hungary will in future be strategically defensible —the new Rumania being shaped something like pre-war Poland, and the new Hungary like pre-Munich Czechoslovakia. Carol's renunciation of the British guarantee absolves a victorious Britain from any obligation to undo what has been done, and will leave her a free hand to modify it or not as she cares. There was a case for some cession to Hungary, but not for this cession. Russia's attitude remains enigmatic.
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