uncil in Paris that such aggression would not be tolerated. This
encouraged Bela Kun, the Hungarian Trotzky, and made him so popular that
he succeeded in raising a Red army with which he crossed the River
Theiss and invaded Rumania. Whereupon the Rumanian army, being unable to
obtain support from the Supreme Council, pushed back the Hungarians,
occupied Budapest, overthrew Bela Kun's administration and restored
order in Hungary. But the Supreme Council, feeling that its authority
had been ignored by the little country, sent several messages to the
Rumanian Government peremptorily ordering it to withdraw its troops
immediately from Hungary. Here endeth the Rumanian version.

Now the real reason which actuated the Supreme Council was not that it
felt that its authority had been slighted, but because it was informed
by its representatives in Hungary that the Rumanians had not stopped
with ousting Bela Kun and suppressing Bolshevism, but were engaged in
systematically looting the country, driving off thousands of head of
livestock, and carrying away all the machinery, rolling stock, telephone
and telegraph wires and instruments and metalwork they could lay their
hands on, thereby completely crippling the industries of Hungary and
depriving great numbers of people of employment. The Rumanians retorted
that the Austro-German armies had systematically looted Rumania during
their three years of occupation and that they were only taking back
what belonged to them. The Hungarians, while admitting that Rumania had
been pretty thoroughly stripped of animals and machinery by von
Mackensen's armies, asserted that this loot had not remained in Hungary
but had been taken to Germany, which was probably true. The Supreme
Council took the position that the animals and material which the
Rumanians were rushing out of Hungary in train-loads was not the sole
property of Rumania, but that it was the property of all the Allies, and
that the Supreme Council would apportion it among them in its own good
time. The Council pointed out, furthermore, that if the Rumanians
succeeded in wrecking Hungary industrially, as they were evidently
trying to do, it would be manifestly impossible for the Hungarians to
pay any war indemnity whatsoever. And finally, that a bankrupt and
starving Hungary meant a Bolshevist Hungary and that there was already
enough trouble of that sort in Eastern Europe without adding to it. The
Rumanians proving deaf to these argume