according to the latest available statistics, were valued at
136,906,000 francs; from Germany at 183,713,000; and from
Great Britain at only 85,470,000 francs. France exported
thither goods valued at no more than 35,273,000 francs.

Owing to Roumania's grievances against Russia--whose seizure of
Bessarabia nearly forty years ago left a wound which festered for
years and has only recently been cicatrized--King Carol concluded a
military convention with the Austro-Hungarian empire, the stipulations
of which have never been authoritatively disclosed. There is reason to
believe that one clause obliged the Roumanian Government to come to
the support of the Habsburg Monarchy with all its military resources
in case that empire should be wantonly attacked by another Power.
Whether this instrument, which was never laid before the Roumanian
legislature for ratification, is deemed to have been vitiated by the
lack of this indispensable sanction, or is assumed to have terminated
with the decease of the king who concluded it, is a matter of no real
moment. The relevant circumstance is the unwillingness of
Austria-Hungary to invoke the terms of the convention and the resolve
of the Bucharest Cabinet to ignore them.

Thus Roumania, like all other neutral states, was well within the
sphere of attraction of the Central Empires long before the present
conflict was unchained. And the clever tactics by which siege was laid
to the sympathies of a nation which at bottom has hardly any traits in
common with the besieger, would have entailed a complete revision and
remodelling of the polity of Russia, France and Britain, had these
Powers had any coherent programme or distant aims. But their motto
was: Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

True, none of those States ever designed a political revolution of the
Old Continent, such as Napoleon had imagined or Germany is now
striving to realize. But neither did they read aright nor even give
serious thought to the symptoms of the great conspiracy which was
being hatched by others for that purpose. Busied with their party
squabbles and social reforms, they took it for granted that
international tranquillity which was a condition of the stability of
all internal affairs was assured. Such occasional misunderstandings as
might crop up among the Powers could, they imagined, always be
smoothed over by manifestations of goodwill and timely concessions.
Fitfulness and hesitancy marke