e in the amount of food consumed. To show how much alive the rural
question is, it is enough to state that peasant risings occurred in 1888,
1889, 1894, 1900, and 1907; that new distributions of land took place in
1881 and 1889; that land was promised to the peasants as well at the time
of the campaign of 1877 as at that of 1913; and that more or less happily
conceived measures concerning rural questions have been passed in almost
every parliamentary session. The general tendency of such legislation
partook of the 'free contract' nature, though owing to the social
condition of the peasantry the acts in question had to embody protective
measures providing for a maximum rent for arable and pasture land, and a
minimum wage for the peasant labourer.

Solutions have been suggested in profusion. That a solution is possible no
one can doubt. One writer, basing his arguments on official statistics
which show that the days of employment in 1905 averaged only ninety-one
for each peasant, claims that only the introduction of circulating capital
and the creation of new branches of activity can bring about a change. The
suggested remedy may be open to discussion; but our author is undoubtedly
right when, asking himself why this solution has not yet been attempted,
he says: 'Our country is governed at present by an agrarian class.... Her
whole power rests in her ownership of the land, our only wealth. The
introduction of circulating capital would result in the disintegration of
that wealth, in the loss of its unique quality, and, as a consequence, in
the social decline of its possessors.'[1] This is the fundamental evil
which prevents any solution of the rural question. A small class of
politicians, with the complicity of a large army of covetous and
unscrupulous officials, live in oriental indolence out of the sufferings
of four-fifths of the Rumanian nation. Though elementary education is
compulsory, more than 60 per cent. of the population are still illiterate,
mainly on account of the inadequacy of the educational budget. Justice is
a myth for the peasant. Of political rights he is, in fact, absolutely
deprived. The large majority, and by far the sanest part of the Rumanian
nation, are thus fraudulently kept outside the political and social life
of the country. It is not surmising too much, therefore, to say that the
opportunity of emancipating the Transylvanians would not have been
wilfully neglected, had that part of the Rumanian