Rumanian troops, when nearing
Budapest for the purpose of overthrowing it in that stronghold, first to
halt, and then to withdraw.[85] The clue to the mystery has at last been
found in a secret arrangement between Kuhn and a certain financial group
concerning the Banat. About this more will be said later. In one of my
own cablegrams to the United States I wrote: "People are everywhere
murmuring and whispering that beneath the surface of things powerful
undercurrents are flowing which invisibly sway the policy of the secret
council, and the public believes that this accounts for the sinister
vacillation and delay of which it complains."[86]

In the fragmentary utterances of the governments and their press organs
nobody placed the slightest confidence. Their testimony was discredited
in advance, on grounds which they were unable to weaken. The following
example is at once amusing and instructive. The French Parliamentary
Committee of the Budget, having asked the government for communication
of the section of the Peace Treaty dealing with finances, were told that
their demand could not be entertained, every clause of the Treaty being
a state secret. The Committee on Foreign Affairs made a like request,
with the same results. The entire Chamber next expressed a similar wish,
which elicited a firm refusal. The French Premier, it should be added,
alleged a reason which was at least specious. "I should much like," he
said, "to communicate to you the text you ask for, but I may not do so
until it has been signed by the President of the Republic. For such is
the law as embodied in Article 8 of the Constitution." Now nobody
believed that this was the true ground for his refusal. His explanation,
however, was construed as a courteous conventionality, and as such was
accepted. But once alleged, the fiction should have been respected, at
any rate by its authors. It was not. A few weeks later the Premier
ordered the publication of the text of the Treaty, although, in the
meantime, it had not been signed by M. Poincare. "The excuse founded
upon Article 8 was, therefore, a mere humbug," flippantly wrote an
influential journal.[87]

An amusing joke, which tickled all Paris was perpetrated shortly
afterward. The editor of the _Bonsoir_ imported six hundred copies of
the forbidden Treaty from Switzerland, and sent them as a present to
the Deputies of the Chamber, whereupon the parliamentary authorities
posted up a notice informing all D