mistake, the consequences of which it was certain to
shift to the shoulders of the pliant people. It was then that Rumania's
leaders kicked against the pricks.

To return to the dispute between Bucharest and Paris: the Rumanian
government would have been willing to conform to the desire of the
Supreme Council and withdraw its troops if the Supreme Council would
only make good its assurance and guarantee Rumania effectually from
future attacks by the Hungarians. The proviso was reasonable, and as a
measure of self-defense imperative. The safeguard asked for was a
contingent of Allied force. But the two supreme councilors in Paris
dealt only in counters. All they had to offer to M. Bratiano were verbal
exhortations before the combat and lip-sympathy after defeat, and these
the Premier rejected. But here, as in the case of the Poles, the
representatives of the "Allied and Associated" Powers insisted. They
were profuse of promises, exhortations, and entreaties before passing to
threats--of guaranties they said nothing--but the Rumanian Premier,
turning a deaf ear to cajolery and intimidation, remained inflexible.
For he was convinced that their advice was often vitiated by gross
ignorance and not always inspired by disinterestedness, while the orders
they issued were hardly more than the velleities of well-meaning gropers
in the dark who lacked the means of executing them.

The eminent plenipotentiaries, thus set at naught by a little state,
ruminated on the embarrassing situation. In all such cases their
practice had been to resign themselves to circumstances if they proved
unable to bend circumstances to their schemes. It was thus that
President Wilson had behaved when British statesmen declined even to
hear him on the subject of the freedom of the seas, when M. Clemenceau
refused to accept a peace that denied the Saar Valley and a pledge of
military assistance to France, and when Japan insisted on the
retrocession of Shantung. Toward Italy an attitude of firmness had been
assumed, because owing to her economic dependence on Britain and the
United States she could not indulge in the luxury of nonconformity.
Hence the plenipotentiaries, and in particular Mr. Wilson, asserted
their will inexorably and were painfully surprised that one of the
lesser states had the audacity to defy it.

The circumstance that after their triumph over Italy the world's
trustees were thus publicly flouted by a little state of eastern Europe
w