Balkan nations, which have been bullied and flattered in turn by the
powers that need them now, and cut up and traded about like so much
small change.

Rumania wants the province of Bessarabia on her eastern border, a strip
of which Russia once took away; she wants the Austrian province of
Bukowina and the Hungarian banat of Temesvar on the west, but most of
all the pine forests and the people of Transylvania, just over the
divide--you cross it coming from Budapest--largely Rumanian in speech
and sympathy, though a province of Hungary. As the Rumanians figure it
out, they once stood astride the Carpathians--"a cheval" ("on
horseback"), as they say--and so, they feel, they must and should stand
now.

We are a nation of fourteen million souls--six less than Hungary, but a
homogeneous state, solidly based. Our soil gives us minerals and fuel
and almost suffices for our needs. Our people are one of the most
prolific in the world and certainly not the least intelligent. We have
behind us a continuity of national existence lacking in other nations in
this quarter of the globe. In our modern epoch we have assimilated
French culture with indisputable success, and have given in every field
proof of a great faculty of adaptability and progress. We can become
the most important second-class power in Europe the day after the war
stops; in fifty years, when our population will have passed twenty-five
millions, a great power. We shall be a nation content with our lot, and
for that reason a factor for peace. A greater Rumania responds not only
to our ideas but to the interests of Europe. The Magyars have had every
chance, and they have lost. It is now our turn.

This is a characteristic editorial paragraph from La Roumanie, which is