again, is an experience itself), and all about the politicians and the
men who are running things. Everything is in miniature, you see, in a
little nation like this, which, although only as large as one of our
smaller States, has a King and court, diplomats, and army, and foreign
policy. All in the family, so to speak, and the chanteuse will sing
amusing verses about the prime minister as if she really knew what he
was going to do, and, curiously enough--for things are sometimes very
much in the family, indeed, in these little capitals--maybe she does
know!

Of course the Calea Vittorei is not Rumania, though a good deal more so
than Fifth Avenue is America; nor are the officers posing there those
who would have much to do with directing the army if Rumania went to
war. Ten minutes away from the city limits and you might be riding
through the richest farming country in Wisconsin or Illinois: hour after
hour of corn and wheat, orchards, hops, and vineyards, cultivated by
peasants who, though most of them have no land and little education, at
least look care-free, and dress themselves in exceedingly pleasing
homespun linen, hand-embroidered clothes. Then higher land, and hills
as thick with the towers of oil-wells as western Pennsylvania, and, just
before you cross into Hungary, the cool pines of the Carpathians and the
villas of Sinaia, the summer home of the court, the diplomats, and the
people one does not see very often, perhaps, in the afternoon parade.

It is a pleasant and a rich little country. You can easily understand
why its ruling class should love it, and, set apart from their Slav and
Magyar neighbors by speech and temperament, want to gather all Rumanians
under one flag and push that, too, into its place in the sun.

And this, of course, is Rumania's time--the time of all these little