Relapse into Bondage: Political Memoirs of a Romanian Diplomat, 1918-1947

A Prefatory Note

The manuscript of Alexandru Cretzianu’s memoirs came to me in 1981, two years after the diplomat’s death, as a consequence of an item in the New York Times on 7 September 1979 which aroused the ire of his widow, Elise Ştirbey Cretzianu. Upon the presentation of his papers to the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park, New York, Ira Hirschmann (a member of the United States War Refugee Board in 1944-45, who negotiated in Ankara with Cretzianu about the fate of Romania’s Jews) was quoted as saying that Cretzianu and his family were issued U.S. visas in exchange for his assistance in assuring the evacuation of Jews from Romania. Mme. Cretzianu vigorously denied such a deal was ever negotiated during the secret negotiations in Ankara in March 1944. Hirschmann considered that deal to have been his greatest success in that Cretzianu promised to assure that 50,000 Romanian Jews would be released, but the Times article quoted Hirschmann as saying that documentary evidence of this agreement was not included in the materials he deposited in the Roosevelt Library archives.

Thus began the genesis of steps whereby these Cretzianu memoirs would ultimately appear in print. Cretzianu penned these memoirs in English during his years in exile in the United States, and a portion of this work appeared in 1957 when the publishing house of Jonathan Cape issued The Lost Opportunity, that abbreviated portion of the memoirs dealt primarily with the immediate prewar years and the ensuing diplomacy of the wartime Antonescu regime, leading to the communization of Cretzianu’s homeland. The complete memoirs began appearing in serial form in the erratically issued journal Southeastern Europe in 1984 and only reached the establishment of King Carol’s royal dictatorship in 1938 when the serialization abruptly ended without any announcement. I secured the approval of Mr. John Boxshall (the adopted stepson of Alexandru Cretzianu and the natural-born son of Elise Cretzianu) to have the Center for Romanian Studies in Iaşi publish the complete memoirs. Mr. Boxshall also agreed, at my urging, to authorize the translation and publication in Romania of Cretzianu’s book The Lost Opportunity which appeared as Ocazia Pierdută (Iaşi: Institutul European, 1995), translated by Sorin Pârvu and with an introduction by professor V.F. Dobrinescu. It is hoped a Romanian translation of these memoirs will likewise appear in book form so that the Romanian people can read the dramatic account of Romania’s diplomatic activities during the thirty years cited in the subtitle.

I wrote an introduction for the first installment of the journal’s serialization of the memoirs which is reprinted here in a revised form. The more comprehensive preface Professor Dobrinescu wrote for the Romanian translation of The Lost Opportunity should someday be translated into English to complement what I wrote because Mr. Dobrinescu has had access to sources in Romania which I did not have the privilege of consulting. However, there is an overriding and still controversial topic unmentioned by Cretzianu in his book and in the memoirs, namely his role in negotiating with Ira Hirschmann for the release of Romanian Jews in 1944.¹ Whether sources exist in Romania or in the Hoover Institution Library at Stanford University in California (Cretzianu’s papers will remain closed to researchers until the year 2020 A.D. per order of his widow) to solve the mystery of the Cretzianu-Hirschmann negotiations in Ankara must await the appearance of findings by researchers intent on learning the truth. It was in the spirit of arousing curiosity about those negotiations that I prepared a paper on Cretzianu’s role in the Holocaust presented at the annual Holocaust conference at Millersville State College, in Millersville, Pennsylvania, in 1984; that paper was subsequently published in the Lock Haven International Review, issue No. 1, 1987, and reprinted by the Center for Romanian Studies in Romanian Civilization (V: 2, Fall, 1996).

One of the many fruitful and beneficial consequences of the revolutionary changes in Romania’s evolution in this final decade of the twentieth century is the massive undertaking by her historians to reconstruct her historiography in the spirit of free inquiry which should ultimately lead to the appearance of respectable historical scholarship and to the discarding of polemical outpourings that polluted Romania’s historical output for almost a half-century. We are beginning to see the publication of hitherto restricted documents and sources which are essential to scholars who must, for example, enjoy examining materials related to Alexandru Cretzianu and others like him who were condemned by the ousted regime. No history of Romania’s diplomacy in the interwar years and even up to 1947 can be complete without researchers examining all archival materials related to this distinguished statesman’s career.² The reader will see herein that Cretzianu was privy to the highest discussions of foreign policy during the 1930s and 1940s; no history of Romania’s diplomacy can achieve respectability with a continued neglect of the Cretzianu papers, either in Romania or in the United States. Let’s open the papers to all!

Sherman David Spector

Professor Emeritus of History, Russell Sage College

Troy, New York³

¹ For Cretzianu to be honored with the designation Righteous Gentile by Israel for his efforts to save Romanian Jews requires intensive research into hitherto restricted archival materials.

² A noted Romanian historian has apparently eschewed his career during the communist era by producing a provocative historiographical essay which revealed the distortions committed by scholars during the era of that authoritarian regime. See Şerban Papacostea, Captive Clio: Romanian Historiography under Communist Rule, European History Quarterly, Vol. 26, No. 2, April 1996, pp. 181-208. Papacostea is Director of the Institute of History Nicolae Iorga in Bucharest, corresponding member of the Romanian Academy, and Editor of the Revista Historică (Bucharest).

³ Author of Romania at the Paris Peace Conference (New York, 1962, and Iaşi, 1995; A History of the Balkan Peoples (New York, 1971) with René Ristelhueber; Fulbright-Hays research professor at University of Bucharest in 1970.

Editor’s Introduction

Alexandru Cretzianu is one of few Romanian statesmen of the twentieth century who represents a fresh breath of genuine liberalism in a nation which has suffered so much from onslaughts by the Left and the Right. His personal life and public career are worthy of study to prove that he represented a moderating element in Romanian politics, a trend which could have created the only truly democratic state in the Balkans in the twentieth century.

Cretzianu was born in 1895 in Bucharest. He derived from Romania’s most distinguished social class. His father, George Cretzianu, served as Romanian envoy to the United States from 1926 to 1929. His grandfather was the famous Romanian poet George Cretzianu. The greatgrandfather, Prince Barbu Ştirbey, was a fabulously wealthy nineteenthcentury nobleman who was appointed prince of Wallachia by the Ottoman sultan in 1849. Educated in a school for the children of nobles, Cretzianu later studied law at the University of Iaşi. During World War I, he served as a lieutenant in a field artillery unit, was critically wounded, and later captured by German troops. After two years in a prison camp he was released in exchange for wounded German prisoners. In September 1918, he joined Romania’s diplomatic service to which he would devote his life for almost a quarter-century. He was assigned to Romanian legations in London, Rome, and Berne from 1918 to 1929 when he was summoned home to head the League of Nations section of the Romanian Foreign Ministry (1929-32) where he served and admired Foreign Minister Nicolae Titulescu (1883-1941), a champion of collective security. In 1933, Cretzianu became chief of the Political Division of the Foreign Ministry until 1938, and then its Secretary-General until 1941. On October 6, 1941, he resigned in protest against his government’s decision to remain allied to Nazi Germany in the war against Soviet Russia after Bessarabia and northern Bucovina, reincorporated by Romania during the first weeks of the Nazi-Soviet war, no longer constituted the major reason for Romania’s participation in the war.

For two years, Cretzianu remained in self-imposed retirement without compensation, until September 15, 1943, when the Antonescu regime appointed him envoy to Turkey. The Antonescu regime evidently realized the ominous significance of the Battle of Stalingrad, which ended in February 1943, and recognized that Cretzianu could use his influence and contacts in Allied nations to bring about a favorable cease-fire prior to the advance into Romania of the westward moving Red Army. How the anti-Antonescu forces convinced the Marshal (Conducătorul) to appoint, as his envoy to neutral Turkey, a statesman who was openly antagonistic to official policy remains a mystery.

In Ankara, Cretzianu strove to represent the antiwar attitudes of young King Mihai and opposition politicians, and his post in Turkey certainly gave those elements an opportunity to establish contacts with the Allied governments and to set the scene for armistice negotiations in 1944. Cretzianu would never again set foot in his native land after the armistice was signed in September 1944. To have done so would have certainly resulted in his imprisonment for life, to which he was sentenced by the communist-controlled regime in 1947 on charges of treason and rebellion. He ultimately settled in the United States, participated in the creation of the Romanian National Committee in 1949, became an American citizen in 1954, and died at his home in Florida in 1979.

Cretzianu’s memoirs have been in manuscript form for almost forty years. Entitled Relapse into Bondage: The Political Memoirs of a Romanian Diplomat, 1918-1947, the present work is the prelude to his previously published work, The Lost Opportunity (London: Jonathan Cape, 1957), treating his career from 1938 to 1944. In 1974, Cretzianu informed me that he had given his files on the Ankara armistice negotiations to two Romanian exile historians residing in Paris who were said to be preparing a publication. This manuscript was given to me by the late wife of Cretzianu, Elise Ştirbey Cretzianu, in hopes that it would someday be made available to readers. Mrs. Cretzianu presented her late husband’s remaining papers regarding his activities with the Romanian National Committee to the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace at Stanford University, with a restriction keeping the items closed until the year 2020 A. D.

In these pages, the reader will discern that Cretzianu faithfully presents himself as pro-Western, pro-French, pro-British, pro-League of Nations, and demonstrates that Romania was not guilty of freely joining the Axis, but had no alternative but to do so after Britain and France abandoned the Little Entente in 1938. Cretzianu first treats relations with Moscow over the thorny problem of Bessarabia, describes the fall of Titulescu whom Cretzianu revered, and gives us his personal glimpses of King Carol II whom he definitely and unapologetically disliked. Chapter 2 gives us descriptions of meetings with Beck, Beneš, and Stoyadinovitch, provides new insights into the Litvinov-Titulescu negotiations for a mutual assistance pact between the Soviet Union and Romania, and details the efforts of foreign minister Victor Antonescu to perpetuate Titulescu’s policies. Chapter 3 gives Cretzianu’s analysis of the decline of the Little Entente and Balkan Entente, the deterioration of Soviet-Romanian relations over Bessarabia, and the right-wing Goga-Cuza regime which Cretzianu despised. Chapter 4 treats Anglo-French policies regarding the Balkans which Cretzianu maintained led to Romania’s alignment with Nazi Germany. Chapter 5 presents his views on the Munich Pact of 1938. Chapter 6 has new information on the death of Iron Guard leader Codreanu, and Cretzianu’s visit to Warsaw in 1939. Chapter 7 gives us his account of a visit to London and Paris during the final summer of peace in 1939. In Chapter 8, Cretzianu wrote about the impact of the Nazi-Soviet pact. Chapter 9, treats Romania’s attempts to gain support against Russia and the critical question of Romania’s oil production. Chapter 10 has a vivid depiction of Moscow’s 1940 ultimatum to Romania to cede Bessarabia. In Chapter 11, Cretzianu describes the loss of additional territory to Hungary and Bulgaria in the Vienna Accords. Chapter 12 has a description of the Antonescu regime and the Iron Guard influences. Chapters 13 and 14 contain items about Romania’s domestic events in 1941, secret preparations for war, entry into the war, and Cretzianu’s resignation from the government. Chapters 15 and 16 provide information similar to that in Chapters 9 and 10 of Cretzianu’s The Lost Opportunity on his mission to Ankara in 1943-44 and the armistice negotiations with the Allies. Finally, Chapter 17 is also similar to the final chapter of the above-mentioned 1957 memoir.

In an idyllic and picturesque cemetery on Jupiter Island, a wealthy residential community near Palm Beach, Florida, far from his beloved homeland, rests Alexandru Cretzianu. Cretzianu had no illusions about the immoral propensity of Romanian politicians, and thus his final writings provide readers with a refreshing glimpse into the workings of a noble mind and man whose confrères in Romanian politics have been too few and too sparse in his people’s turbulent history.

Sherman David Spector

Professor Emeritus of History, Russell Sage College

Troy, New York

Relapse into Bondage

Political Memoirs of a Romanian Diplomat, 1918-1947

Chapter 1

Introduction

I was recently talking with a man who had occupied the highest diplomatic post of one of the major Allied Powers during the years that preceded the Second World War. I asked him whether he was thinking of publishing his memoirs, the historical interest of which should have been considerable. He answered: I have all the necessary material, of course; but I have no intention of furnishing anything that might provide a basis of accusation against my country.

This answer revived — up to a point — such hesitations as I myself had had before beginning to write the present book. Yet, after all, it is not quite the same case. Not only is my country far from being so important in world affairs as that of my interlocutor, and hence his book would have stirred up rather greater interest than my own is likely to do; but also the conviction persists in my mind that the cause of Romania has nothing to lose and everything to gain from a sincere eyewitness account of facts and events.

It is impossible to believe that such an account can render a disservice to Romania. While I have no intention of concealing or of glossing over such faults as have unquestionably been committed by certain of my countrymen whose actions or abstentions influenced the flow of events, it is nevertheless my duty to examine here whether or not they were backed by the will or the consent of the nation. And I propose especially to analyze up to what point Romania might have adopted attitudes and lines of action different from those which, by now, have been registered by history, in view of the international conjunctures that prevailed at the time, and the attitudes of the various great powers.

Indeed, my intention is even more far-reaching than this. I attempt to deduce object lessons of a general order, arising from the tragedy of my own country.

The functions and posts that fell to my lot in the course of my long career in the Romanian diplomatic service placed me in a peculiarly advantageous position to observe from day to day, over many years, the policies of all the countries of Central and Southeastern Europe. I was able to know at close range their acts, both good and bad, their hesitations, and their mistakes. I have watched these countries in their heroic moments, as well as in their moments of defeat. Their various paths, often so divergent from that of Romania, have led them all to a similar, inexorable fate. Did we all, did any of us, deserve the bondage that was to overcome each of us? Could we have avoided our destinies?

The answers to these queries are interesting, not only from the point of view of establishing the historical truth. Above all, they are imperatively required in the interest of avoiding the dreadful mistakes which, if not provoked, at least helped to bring about the Second World War.

My country ardently believed in the League of Nations. Its foreign policy was based upon the hope that international collective security, as outlined and promised in the Covenant, would become a reality. But collective security proved to be a failure. The reasons and the circumstances of this failure are now universally known. One of its results was that Romania found herself in 1940 facing alone the hideous realities of a world in which only the might of aggressors counted. Surrounded by neighbors that were armed to the teeth and ready to pounce on her, this unfortunate country of mine went down as so many others went down during those fatal years.

Yet presently we see once more the erection and establishment of an organism that suffers from the same original sin of initial caducity, full of the same old flaws as the defunct League of Nations; and we are asked to believe and hope that the UN can save and assure the peace of the world.

Paul Valéry once said: All politicians have read their history; but one might say that they have read it only in order to gain from it the art of reconstructing catastrophes. This cruel judgement is applicable, alas, only too well to the statesmen who directed big international policy during the period between the two world wars. Is it destined to apply also to those who now are attempting to rebuild our poor planet?

* * *

It so happens that my entire professional activity covers the precise period between the end of the First World War and that of the Second. When I was attached to the Romanian Delegation to the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, I had just entered the diplomatic service, after having fought in the Romanian army and been seriously wounded in 1916 by a German bullet.

Like all those of my generation, I brought with me to Paris an ample provision of enthusiasm, hope, and illusion. The most blissful optimism seemed justified for a Romanian as no doubt it did for a Pole, a Yugoslav, or a Czech. As for ourselves, the victory of the Allies, in whose ranks we had fought, had doubled our territories, at long last reuniting all Romanians under the same flag. The fall of the three great Empires had allowed our brothers of Transylvania, of Bucovina, and of Bessarabia to proclaim their union with the Mother Country. Greater Romania, our dream of centuries, had been realized all at once. Our most redoubtable enemies were prone. Henceforth, nothing seemed to stand between us and our march to progress and to prosperity.

Descendants of the old Dacians, yet proud of the Roman blood of Trajan’s legions too, we Romanians are an ancient nation. However, as the result of barbarian invasions and of the subsequent Turkish domination, our independence was of relatively recent date. It was only by the Treaty of Paris of 1856 that we had acquired a legal European status. Our independence was officially recognized only from the time of the Treaty of Berlin of 1878.

But, from 1856 to 1914, Romania’s progress had been truly remarkable. A backward country had made prodigious steps forward in every domain: agriculture, industry, trade, communications. Cities had developed; administration had been organized; culture and education had made constant progress. It is true that much remained to be accomplished. But, if the rhythm of the past could be kept up, it seemed to be a mathematical certainty that Romania would someday attain the level of the most civilized countries of the West.

The country’s political institutions had been created by bold and enthusiastic men. Their efforts had been swiftly repressed in 1848, when Turkish and Russian troops put down the popular uprising. But their zeal had not been dampened, nor their ardent faith and courage diverted.

Strongly influenced by the liberal thinkers of France (the country where most of these men had been educated), they persevered and finally succeeded. They gave Romania one of the most democratic constitutions imaginable at the time. Yet the adaptation of a people that had for centuries writhed under Turkish rule, to say nothing of several Russian occupations, to a régime, which in the West had been the result of a long evolution, could hardly be expected to take place overnight. Nevertheless, Romania’s political and social progress was undeniable. My own generation had been born and raised under a régime of freedom. The country’s press enjoyed the most complete liberty. The right of reunion and association was thoroughly respected. Religious freedom likewise. There was no bar whatever to absolute liberty of expression.

Popular representation left much to be desired, as elections were carried out under a censorial régime; nor were they entirely free from administrative interference. But popular consciousness was awakening, and it was increasingly difficult for the successive governments to make certain of election results. Indeed, universal suffrage had been establish on the morrow of the armistice, and the all-powerful Liberal Party, and the successful emergence of the new Peasant Party, demonstrating that henceforth the people were taking an increasingly active part in the control of the government.

Our victory was largely due to the United States, whose President had proclaimed, on the occasion of his message to Congress for the declaration of war: The world must be made safe for democracy.

Were we not justified in hoping that our own democratic institutions would henceforth come under the protection of international law? Had we not the right to imagine that Romanian democratic life could only prosper and perfect itself in that post-war world in which all eyes were turned toward the strong personality of President Wilson and toward the great country he represented?

By itself, the League of Nations held out great hopes. But there was more yet. President Wilson had publicly given special assurances to the countries in our part of the world. When some of us had objected to certain dispositions in the Treaty, which concerned the special right of minorities, and which we considered to run counter to our sovereignty, the President of the United States had solemnly declared in the session of May 31, 1919:

Back of that lies this fundamentally important fact that, when the decisions are made, the Allied and Associated Powers guarantee to maintain them. It is perfectly evident, upon a moment’s reflection, that the chief burden of their maintenance will fall upon the greater Powers… And therefore we must not close our eyes to the fact that in the last analysis the military and naval strength of the Great Powers will be the final guarantee of the peace of the world… There underlines all of the transactions the expectation of the part, for example, of Romania, or Czechoslovakia, or Serbia, that, if any covenants of this settlement are not observed, the United States will send her armies and her navies to see that they are observed. In these circumstances, is it unreasonable that the United States should insist upon being satisfied that the settlements are correct?

On the other hand, the disarmament of Germany, Hungary, and Bulgaria gave us a supplementary guarantee against all aggression.

Everything seemed to smile on us, and everything seemed in our favor. And yet here we are, today, awakening sorely tried from what proved to be but a dream.

How shall we explain that a nation such as Romania, which has struggled for centuries untold against adversity, which has survived invasions of Huns, Avars, Tatars, Turks, and Russians, which has shown such an aptitude for development and progress, proved yet incapable of profiting from the magnificent chance that seemed to have been granted to it? Are we not rather the victims of events and circumstances for which we were neither guilty nor responsible?

* * *

The rout actually began on the very morrow of the Paris Peace Conference. I was able to see its first symptoms in the diplomatic posts which I occupied successively: London, Rome, Berne, and Geneva. But, like so many others of my generation, I imagined that the victory which we had won was sufficient unto itself, and that its results had been irrevocably acquired. At that time, I was not yet sufficiently aware that in the life of actions, as in that of individuals, victories are not valid unless they are re-won every day.

The personal account which I want to attempt to give in this book does not properly begin until 1936. It was only at that date that I began to be closely associated with the conduct of Romania’s foreign policy. And indeed, looking back now, it seems to me that 1936 also marked a true turning-point. For, up till March 7, 1936, the possibility still existed of saving the peace and quietude of the world. The mistakes committed by all concerned up to that date had been enormous; but they were still not irreparable. Then on the day when France and Britain decided to accept without reacting the remilitarization of the Rhineland, they abandoned — perhaps forever — their position as umpires of European peace and equilibrium. I believe that my story will show clearly that this Franco-British abstention of 1936 was to have the most far-reaching consequences for such countries as Romania, Poland, and Yugoslavia.

But before arriving at this decisive year, I must briefly recall certain essential sign-posts that preceded it.

I was in London, where I worked as Secretary of Legation from 1919 to 1922, when the first important post-war event took place, which was destined to influence profoundly the future of international life: the abandonment of Europe by the United States. It is hardly necessary to recall here the full extent of the effect of America’s return to isolationism. Certain it is that it marked the beginning of catastrophe for the Old Continent.

There have been attempts to explain this phenomenon in the light of various simplistic considerations: tactical errors, President Wilson’s difficult character and illness, and so on. Such things can explain no more than the failure of the Senate to ratify the Treaty of Versailles and of the Covenant, and this but incompletely. But the earthquake effect of the 1920 Presidential elections, when the isolationist candidate won a landslide majority of some seven million votes, upon those nations to which the former American Chief Executive had promised the support of this country’s armies and navies went far beyond that. Henceforth, something had gone out of the very essence of their security. As for the League of Nations, it could offer but slight mitigating hope.

On the other hand, the policy which Lloyd George suddenly decided to adopt with regard to the Soviet Union was likewise to change for us the data of our most important single problem of international policy. It had previously seemed indeed that, with respect to relations with the Soviets, the decisive word had been said by Clemenceau, in his speech of December 23, 1919, when he declared: In order to prevent the Bolsheviks from throwing themselves upon the civilized world, we shall encircle them with a barbed wire fence.

We had been assured that this was to be the policy of the victorious Great Powers with regard to the Soviet Union. As for Romania, she seemed to be called upon to provide one of the most important strands of that barbed wire fence. Yet in London we could discern as early as 1920 that Lloyd George seemed less and less disposed to take into account the opinions and predictions of his governmental colleague, Winston Churchill, and that he had largely renounced any policy that might be directed against the Soviets. Contact had already been established with a view to commercial relations. In June 1920, Krassin was received in London, and in March of the following year a British-Soviet Trade Treaty was concluded, through which the Soviets gained an incipient recognition.

When Vaida-Voevod, Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the government set up following the first elections held in Greater Romania, came to London in February 1920, Lloyd George advised him to come to an understanding with the Soviets. Yet advice — pressing and repeated advice — in the opposite sense was forthcoming from the Quai d’Orsay.

So here we were, already in a most difficult position, but fatally bound to follow the counsels of France. For to the long-standing and deep affection, gratitude, and close cultural ties which we had for the French people, the enormous prestige of the French army had been added, following the exploits of Marne and of Verdun. To us, as to so many others, the military might and genius of France seemed unquestionably predominant in Europe. Furthermore, France was carrying out an active and vigorous policy in our parts, and promised us her aid and support for the future, whereas Great Britain showed but the utmost reserve, and seemed more and more anxious to avoid all commitments in Southeastern Europe.

However, Vaida-Voevod thought it worthwhile to take into account the advice of Lloyd George. Taking advantage of Litvinov’s presence in Copenhagen, he suggested that Soviet-Romanian talks be initiated, sending to this effect, as unofficial messenger, a certain Ciotor who was a member of the Press Service of our Legation in London. The latter soon began sending the most promising telegrams, concerning his conversations with Litvinov. Litvinov offered us not only the formal juridical recognition of Bessarabia, but also the integral restitution of the treasure of the Romanian National Bank (which we had sent to Russia at the time when German troops invaded the greater part of our country, and which the Soviet government had seized on the morrow of the Revolution). But, in exchange, we were asked to recognize the Soviet government de jure and to accept a Soviet legation in Bucharest, together with all that this implied in the way of subversive propaganda and espionage risks.

Should we constitute the first breach in the celebrated barbed wire fence? The answer to this puzzling query was retarded by an internal government crisis in Romania. Bringing into play his constitutional prerogatives, King Ferdinand dismissed Vaida-Voevod and called upon General Averescu to form a new government. The latter had resigned from the army, after having been one of the most prominent of our military commanders during the war. His prestige and popularity were enormous. He had little trouble in winning the parliamentary elections which were called.

Averescu was personally in favor of an understanding with the Soviets; but his Foreign Minister, Take Ionescu, showed himself less anxious, heeding the cries that came from the Quai d’Orsay, with which he was actively collaborating in view of establishing the regional understandings tying us to our Polish, Czechoslovak, and Yugoslav neighbors.

The problem, in fact, was far from being so simple. It might be useful to open a parenthesis here on the subject of the relations between Romania and Russia.

* * *

Romania’s foreign policy was dominated by the Russian problem. Situated on the borders of an empire ten times as populous and immeasurably more vast and powerful, squarely in the empire’s path toward the Straits and the Mediterranean, the lands inhabited by the Romanians have long since formed an object of coveted possession, and had for centuries been subjected to threats and to acts of force by their powerful neighbor.

The Russian tendency to expand to the Delta of the Danube had begun to manifest itself as early as the seventeenth century. By the Treaty of Kuchuk-Kainardji, Russia had obtained from the Turks in 1774, in the form of a right to intervene on behalf of the Danubian Principalities, a pretext that was to favor her enterprises in this region. This treaty had followed closely upon the first partitioning of Poland of 1772. Thereafter, Poles and Romanians were destined to be subjected in parallel to the brutal pressure of the Eastern giant.

At Tilsit, in July 1807, and at Erfurt, in October 1808, Tsar Alexander I demanded and obtained Napoleon’s consent to the annexation by Russia of the Romanian Principalities. This was formally mentioned in the Franco-Russian convention, signed at Erfurt, on October 12, 1808.

The subsequent evolution of the relations between the two empires caused Russia to renounce momentarily the fulfillment of this projected annexation. In 1812, on the eve of her own invasion by the Napoleonic armies, Russia made haste to end the hostilities with Turkey, which had as their object the domination of the Danubian Principalities. Yet in the Russo-Turkish treaty, signed in Bucharest on May 28, 1812, the Sublime Porte overstepped its rights as a suzerain power, and consented to Russia’s outright annexation of the eastern part of the Romanian Principality of Moldavia, known under the name of Bessarabia and which was inhabited up to that time almost exclusively by Romanians. Russia, however, was not content with this preliminary gain, and did not thereby renounce this ambition to annex the entirety of the Romanian lands, in order to come still closer to coveted Constantinople. In January 1853, we find the Emperor Nicholas I proposing to Sir Hamilton Seymour, the British Ambassador, a deal, whereby England should annex Crete and Egypt, while Russia gained the Romanian Principalities, Bulgaria, and Serbia. The London government refused to consider this projected precursor of what were later to be called spheres of influence. On the contrary, it now found it necessary, in the interest of the traditional balance of power, to support the declining Ottoman Empire. The Anglo-French victory in Crimea was soon to put a temporary stop to Russian expansion. The treaty signed in Paris, following the Russian defeat, even restored to Moldavia and to the Romanian nation the southern part of Bessarabia.

But by 1877, the Russian march to the Mediterranean was ready to start once more. It was only the tenacity of purpose displayed by Lord Beaconsfield that brought about the annulment of the Treaty of San Stefano, and a limitation of Russian expansion through the Treaty of Berlin. But even England was unable to prevent the re-annexation by Russia of Southern Bessarabia: an elegant and significant gesture made at the expense of Romania, which had so gallantly fought and won the victory against the Turks at Russia’s side.

It was only in 1918 that a favorable moment arrived once more, allowing the people of Bessarabia freely and spontaneously to express their will, and to vote for reunion with Romania.

The memory of all these avatars and that of eight separate Russian invasions — 1739, 1769, 1788, 1808, 1828, 1848, and 1853 — without counting the friendly occupation of 1877, was hardly of a nature to inspire Romanians with confidence in dealing with Russia. And now a new menacing element was added to the problem, since the Russians had, in addition, become determined Bolsheviks, decided, according to their own avowed purpose, to provoke revolution in every country in the world.

* * *

Romania had already shown that she was most anxious to avoid any conflict with this new Russia, and to abstain from any act of provocation. Ion Brătianu, the chief of the Liberal Party, who had led the country in the war against Germany up to the end of 1917, and who came back to power immediately following the armistice, had refused to allow Romanian troops to participate in the joint French and Greek expedition against Odessa. His successors, Vaida-Voevod and Averescu, likewise rigorously abstained from giving the least support to the Whites, Denikin or Wrangel, and from all interference in the Polish-Soviet conflict.

But from this to becoming the first country to accord de jure recognition to the Soviets was quite a step to take. Neither Averescu nor — and especially not — his Foreign Minister, Take Ionescu, could bring himself to take the decision. In a Europe in full reconstruction, from which the United States had withdrawn, and in which Britain seemed resolved to reduce its obligations to a minimum, France alone stood out, appearing as the sole strong element upon which we could depend. To have failed to follow the views and advice of France would have implied nothing less than the risk of remaining suspended in a void on the very morrow of the common victory. It was therefore only logical that the Romanian government, taking into account the pressing counsels of Paris, should decide to show no haste whatever in continuing the talks with the Soviets.

It was in the autumn of 1921 that the conversations were once again taken up in Warsaw. But by then the situation was no longer so favorable, as the Soviet Union had already gained recognition successively from the three Baltic Republics, from Finland, Persia, Afghanistan, Poland, and Turkey. Instead of being the first of the Soviet Union’s neighbors to extend such recognition, Romania could henceforth be only the last. The political interests of Moscow were no longer so strongly at stake. We were not long left in doubt as to this fact, for the Soviet delegate, Karakhan, lost no time in declaring that conditions had changed since the Copenhagen talks. While the Soviet Union continued to show itself disposed to recognize Bessarabia as Romanian territory, it now refused to restore the Romanian treasure. The talks ended without any results.

* * *

The matter of our relations with the Soviet Union was not the only issue in which we found ourselves torn between the divergent policies of France and of Britain. Thus, in London we encountered a markedly cold atmosphere with regard to the newly established constellation, displayed by the alliances just concluded between Romania, Serbia, and Czechoslovakia, to which the name of Little Entente had immediately been given. Similarly, the British government gave no encouragement whatever to our alliance with Poland.

Yet all these alliances were perfectly congruent with those regional pacts, allowed and even encouraged by the Covenant of the League of Nations. None the less, Britain not only made it clear that she intended to have nothing to do with any idea of commitments with regard to the countries of our part of Europe, but she displayed the utmost displeasure in seeing these alliances taking shape under the aegis of France. Britain indeed showed every sign of returning to her old policy of European balance, and the army of France stuck visibly in London’s craw. The idea that France could depend on the armies of Romania, Poland, Serbia, and Czechoslovakia was not made to please anyone in England.

At that time, I was often invited to the Wharf, the Asquith country home, and I well remember how often my host would take up the cudgels saying: We should have insisted on the immediate limitation to the strictest minimum of all the armies of the small countries of Central and Eastern Europe. British government circles did not put the matter quite so bluntly; but it was not hard to see that they felt the same way about it.

A cartoon published by Punch in January 1924 quite clearly expressed the British mentality of those post-war years. It showed the French President of the Council, Poincaré, digging into a huge sack, marked owed to Allies, and scattering fistfuls of coins to a group of ragamuffins, dressed in Romanian, Yugoslav, and Polish costumes. It was captioned: There you are, my boys. Now go and buy yourselves some soldiers and guns. And to make it quite unmistakably plain, in the elaborate manner of British humor at the time, it specified that it represented M. Poincaré (distributing largesse to the Little Entente and other new friends).

And again, how did I recall, during the fatal days of 1939 and 1940, when it would have been to Britain’s priceless advantage to have all these small countries thoroughly armed and strong, that typical answer that was given us at the Foreign Office in 1922. We had requested to be granted a part of the huge quantity of war material delivered by Germany. The official reply advised us that His Majesty’s government confidently expects that all this war material will be destroyed.

Yet Lloyd George himself, shortly before his own defeat, saw himself forced to make certain proposals to us, which showed that he had ended by realizing that a strongly armed Romania might at times be useful to Britain. The defeat of the Greek armies in Asia Minor, and the advance of the Kemalist troops to the shores of the Straits had posed, in September 1922, a grave problem for the London government. At first, Lloyd George had decided to defend the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles with arms. He immediately remembered the Romanian army, and proposed that the Bucharest government send at least one division to participate in the defense of Constantinople, alongside the other Allied contingents. Thus a new and most delicate problem faced the Romanian government, and once more she saw herself obliged