He gave me a copy of a speech in which he gladly admitted that he was a "responsible factor." People talked of going slow and sparing blood. Well, they might get something by sitting still, even become a great country, but they could never become a great nation. It was not territory and population they wanted, but the sword of Rumania to join in remaking the map of Europe. When the delegates gathered around the green table, they did not want the one from Rumania, as he was at the Congress of Berlin, only able to make visits to chancelleries. He must go in the same door with them, and say: "In proportion to my population, I have shed as much blood as you." He had always regretted not having children, never so much as to-day; but if he had a dozen sons, and knew that all of them would fall in the war, he would not be cast down. Even if the territory they wished could be occupied by a simple act of gendarmerie--he would say no--they must enter Budapest itself (it is only twenty-four hours' railway journey from Bucarest!)--not till then would Austria admit Rumania's superiority. People accused him of working for himself. Who was Take Ionesco in comparison with the fate of a race? As for ambition, well, he had one, and only one--he wanted to see the Rumanian tricolor floating from Buda palace, and before he died to know the moment in which he could pass before his eyes the eighteen hundred years of Rumanian history from the arrival of Trajan at Severin to the entry of Ferdinand at Budapest, and cry: "Now, Lord, let thy servant go in peace, for mine eyes have seen the saving of my race!" The Rumanian tricolor was no nearer Buda palace when I returned several months later, but Mr. Ionesco was no less hot for war. Even if Germany won, he said, they still should go in, because they would at least keep their own and Germany's respect. "Go to war?"--the phrase was inexact. "We have been at war for eleven months, only others are firing at us, but we are not firing at them. We are in a war that will decide our existence, but the soldiers dying to defend our rights, instead of being our soldiers, are soldiers of the Allies. The Allies will win, but if any one thinks that, having won without us, they will have won for us, he must be mad. Their victory without us may preserve our material life, but it will never save our moral life nor that of future generations."