I knew him, as an old man, he had none of
those attributes. He was a clever diplomat, a conciliatory power, a
safe mediator, and one who avoided trouble, but not of a nature to
risk all and weather the storm. That was known to all, and no one,
therefore, could think that the King would try to put himself on our
side against the clearly expressed views of all Roumania. My idea is
that if he had been differently constituted he could successfully have
risked the experiment. The King possessed in Carp a man of quite
unusual, even reckless, activity and energy, and from the first moment
he placed himself and his activities at the King's disposal. If the
King, without asking, had ordered mobilisation, Carp's great energy
would have certainly carried it through. But, in the military
situation as it was then, the Roumanian army would have been forced to
the rear of the Russian, and in all probability the first result of
the battlefields would have changed the situation entirely, and the
blood that was shed mutually in victorious battles would have brought
forth the unity that the spirit of our alliance never succeeded in
evolving. But the King was not a man of such calibre. He could not
change his nature, and what he did do entirely concurred with his
methods from the time he ascended the throne.

As long as the King lived there was the positive assurance that
Roumania would not side against us, for he would have prevented any
mobilisation against us with the same firm wisdom which had always
enabled him to avert any agitation in the land. He would then have
seen that the Roumanians are not a warlike people like the Bulgarians,
and that Roumania had not the slightest intention of risking anything
in the campaign. A policy of procrastination in the wise hands of the
King would have delayed hostilities against us indefinitely.

Immediately after the outbreak of war Bratianu began his game, which
consisted of entrenching the Roumanian Government firmly and willingly
in a position between the two groups of Powers, and bandying favours
about from one to the other, reaping equal profits from each, until
the moment when the stronger of the two should be recognised as such
and the weaker then attacked.

Even from 1914-16 Roumania was never really neutral. She always
favoured our enemies, and as far as lay in her power hindered all our
actions.

The transport of horses and ammunition to Turkey in the summer of 1915
that was exacted