Copyright, Atlantic Monthly, December, 1917.
[Sidenote: What it meant for Rumania to fight.]
More than a year has now elapsed since Rumania entered the war. What is meant for this little country to abandon neutrality is not generally realized. Here in America we know that so long as the British fleet dominated the seas we were safe, and that we should have ample opportunity to prepare ourselves for the vicissitudes of war and to make the preparations that are now being undertaken and carried out by the administration of President Wilson. Canada and Australia likewise knew that they were in no danger of attack.
But the case of Rumania was far different. She knew with a terrible certainty that the moment she entered the war she would be the target for attack on a frontier over twelve hundred kilometres long. The world criticized her for remaining neutral, and yet one wonders how many countries would have staked their national future as Rumania did when she entered the war. In a short fourteen months she has seen more than one half of her army destroyed, her fertile plains pass into the hands of her enemies, and her great oil industry almost wiped out. To-day her army, supported by Russians, is holding with difficulty hardly twenty per cent of what, before the war, was one of the most fertile and prosperous small kingdoms of Europe.
When America entered the war she assumed, in a large measure, the obligations to which the Allies were already committed. It seems of paramount importance under these circumstances that the case and the cause of Rumania be more thoroughly understood in this country. Other countries entered the war through necessities of various sorts. America committed herself to the conflict for a cause which even the cynical German propaganda, hard as it has tried, has been unable to distort into a selfish or commercial one. We are preparing to share in every way the sacrifices, both in blood and wealth, which our allies have been making these past three years. And as our reward we ask for no selfish or commercial rights, nor do we seek to acquire extension of territory or acquisition of privilege in any part of the world. We have entered the war solely, because of wrongs committed in the past, and with the just determination that similar wrongs shall never again be perpetrated. No country and no people on this globe are more responsive to an obligation, and more determined to fulfill such an obligation when recognized, than are the American people.