In common with all the races of southeastern Europe, the Rumanians had their independence and their political unity destroyed by the Turks centuries before the awakening of what we call “national consciousness.” When they tried to take advantage of the decay of the Ottoman Empire to reconstitute a state in the modern sense of that word, i. e., by bringing together into one political organism the regions where the majority of the people spoke the same language and felt the ties of blood and common interests, they faced implacable enemies in the empires of Austria and Russia. The policy of the Hapsburgs and Romanoffs was to extend their own frontiers at the expense of the Ottoman Empire. The resurrection of the Christian races subject to Turkey into political units was opposed by both empires, because each believed that the other would control the new state. Great Britain and France, and later Germany and Italy, adopted the same policy for the same reason. Up to 1880, the Occidental powers feared Russian control of the Balkans. They did not want the Slavs to have an outlet on the Mediterranean. During the generation preceding the World War, France--and later Great Britain--shifted their opposition from Russia to Austria. Where they had worried about the Romanoffs, they now feared the Hohenzollerns. Unified Germany was gaining control of the Hapsburg Empire to further her _Drang nach Osten_. But the motives actuating Balkan policy did not change. All the Balkan States, and Rumania especially, were potential factors in upsetting the European balance of power. Hence they must be kept as small and powerless as possible, for fear of disturbing the peace of Europe. Irredentism, whether the agitation for extending frontiers was directed against Mohammedan Turkey or Christian Russia and Austria-Hungary was frowned upon. To prevent the Balkan States from forming an alliance to secure their national unity, the great powers arranged frontiers at Paris in 1856 and at Berlin in 1878 in such a way as to kindle the animosity of one Balkan race against the other. The Balkan races were not consulted in the drawing up of frontiers. They were not brought together and asked to settle their own differences by mutual compromises, with the great powers abstaining from interference. The same policy was followed at Paris in 1919. It bids fair to have the same results.