The debacle of Greece in Asia Minor, the dramatic return of the Turks to Thrace, and the sudden overthrow of the Stambulisky régime in Bulgaria compelled the new Jugoslav Government to make a military demonstration in Macedonia in June, 1923. From Nish to Strumnitza troops were concentrated. The Serbians intimated at Lausanne to the Turks and at Sofia to the Bulgarians that no move to modify or upset the Treaty of Neuilly would be tolerated. In view of what has happened at Lausanne, however, it is doubtful if this attitude can be maintained. When the Turks successfully resisted the Treaty of Sèvres, they made a precedent and set an example for the other conquered nations. The Bulgarian revolution is the logical result of the success of the Angora Nationalist movement. Jugoslavia is not yet secure, in so far as the Balkans are concerned, in her fruits of victory.
We have three groups of minor nations in Central and Eastern Europe: those whose emancipation or extension of frontiers is at the expense of the Central Empires; those whose emancipation or extension of frontiers is at the expense of Russia; and the Balkan States, completing their emancipation from Turkey and establishing new frontiers at the expense of each other. Czechoslovakia belongs to the first category; Poland and Lithuania to the first and second categories; Finland and the Baltic States to the second category; the Ukraine also to the second category, although her claim to Eastern Galicia, denied by the Supreme Council, would put her in the first category as well; Jugoslavia to the first and third categories; Greece and Bulgaria and Albania to the third category. Rumania has the unique distinction of being in all three groups. And the factors and conditions in the creation of Greater Rumania are different from those that attend the resurrection or enlargement of the other minor states. Our small Allies (and Austria, Hungary, and Bulgaria) face the general problems of the groups to which they belong. Rumania faces all the problems of all the groups.
Like Greece and Serbia, Rumania is confronted with a complete and radical remolding of the old political organism and a transformation of her social and economic life by the incorporation of “unredeemed” elements too large and too different culturally to assimilate; her agrarian and electoral problems are similar to those of Hungary; with Poland, she must face Bolshevism or make concessions to the irredentism of Russian subject races or find herself later forced to choose between Russia and Germany; she has frontier aspirations in common with Bulgaria and Italy against Serbia; she must resist the conspiracy of Great Britain and France to substitute themselves for Germany as her economic suzerain; and, as her only outlet is through the Dardanelles, she cannot remain indifferent to the disposition of Constantinople.