There is this difference, however, between the Congress of Berlin and the Conference of Paris. In 1919 the small nations protested more effectively against their exclusion from debates and their non-participation in decisions affecting their interests. They had taken advantage of the collapse of Austria-Hungary and Russia to occupy “unredeemed” territories. Rumania led the others in defying the Big Four. Refusing to abide by the decrees of a conference in which she had no voice, Rumania went ahead and formed her enlarged state as she wanted it. Only in a portion of the Banat of Temesvár and at the mouth of the Maros River are the Rumanians not under military control of Greater Rumania.
Most plausible have been the inspired articles from Paris condemning the intractability of Rumania. Rumania violated the terms of the armistice between the Allies and Hungary. Her forces occupying Budapest acted like highwaymen. The presence of a French army alone kept the Rumanians from overrunning a wholly Serbian portion of the Banat of Temesvár. Saved from the Austro-German yoke by Great Britain, France, Italy, and the United States, the Rumanians have shown their ingratitude, by refusing to abide by the wise just, and impartial decisions of the Supreme Council. They lay claim to purely Hungarian territory. They give evidence of bad faith and intolerance by not wanting to accept provisions in the Treaty of St.-Germain for the protection of racial and religious minorities. These are the charges. But before we pass judgment ought we not to hear the other side of the case and to examine the internal and external policy of Greater Rumania? What are the problems of Rumania as the Rumanians see them?
At the Peace Conference Premier Bratianu claimed as the component parts of Greater Rumania (1) the kingdom of Rumania as it was in 1914, (2) the province of Bessarabia, formerly belonging to Russia, (3) the Austrian province of Bukowina, and (4) the portion of Hungary known as Transylvania, the Maramouresh and Crishana regions, and the Banat of Temesvár. The greater part of the new frontiers claimed is clearly marked by great waterways, the Dniester, the Danube, and the Theiss. The Rumanians admit that these frontiers give them 250,000 Serbians in the angle between the Theiss and the Danube, a partly Hungarian population in the lower valley of the Maros, and many Bulgarians and Turks in the Dobrudja region taken from Bulgaria in 1913. But they argue that 100,000 Rumanians in Bulgarian territory and 300,000 Rumanians in Serbian territory on the right bank of the Danube offset Bulgarians and Serbians incorporated into Rumania. They point out, also, that more than 100,000 Rumanians will remain to Russia between the Dniester and the Bug. As for the Hungarians, if the frontier is drawn on strictly ethnographical lines, an impossible economic situation would be created, because of the loss of the means of exit by natural waterways and of the control of canals and railways.