The frontier dispute with Serbia has been adjusted, but to the satisfaction of neither state. The Banat of Temesvár is a little country lying north of the Danube from a point above Belgrade east to the Iron Gates. The Theiss River, running due south into the Danube, separates it from the former Bacs-Bodro province of Hungary. In the angle between the Theiss and the Danube, the Serbian-speaking population overflows both rivers and penetrates for many miles into the Banat. Farther east, the Rumanian population has overflowed south of the Danube for fifty miles in the Timok Valley and in the extreme northwestern corner of Bulgaria. When the Serbians advanced their claim to a portion of the Banat, disregarding the natural river boundaries, the Rumanians countered with the statement that there would still be more Rumanians in Serbia, in territory contiguous to Rumania, than Serbians in Rumania, if the entire Banat should be awarded to Rumania. The Theiss and the Danube are natural frontiers. Either the Danube is a boundary or it is not. If it is not, the ethnographical argument cuts both ways. But the Supreme Council, in order to appease the Jugoslavs, took their side against Rumania and divided the Banat. The river from which the Banat takes its name, the canals, and the railway reach the Danube and Theiss through territory awarded to Serbia. In the hinterland are the richest coal and iron regions of the old Kingdom of Hungary. The short-sighted, self-centered diplomacy of the Big Four did not behave with real friendship for Serbia nor with regard for permanent peace in the Balkans. The principle applied was the exact opposite of the one used in deciding frontier questions between Italy and Serbia. One cannot escape from the conclusion that the underlying motive was what had always guided the great powers in their Balkan diplomacy, to limit one another’s influence and to prevent the Balkan States from arriving at a direct compromise, thus keeping troubled waters in which to fish.