History is full of such “might have beens.” Time is a kind of fourth dimension affecting every human action. King Charles’s opportunity occurred when he was old and tired. Made over-cautious by his knowledge of the play of external forces on the Balkan situation, he feared a general conflagration, which might consume his life’s work at a stroke. And so he left ill alone, and hoped to end his days in peace. Probably the best known of King Charles’s ministers in 1912 was M. Take Jonescu, whose tireless energy in the cultivation of relationships and souvenirs in foreign capitals had earned for him the title of “the Great European.” This title was not undeserved, though applied ironically in nine cases out of ten. M. Take Jonescu had acquired the habit of generalizing from Rumanian affairs so as to make them embrace the whole of the old world and the new; this had enlarged his horizon and given him a vision which at times was startlingly prophetic. He recognized more clearly than any of his countrymen the rôle of Rumania at the Conference and what could and should be done. The restless, versatile man of the people was fascinated by the splendid possibilities of a bold and imaginative Rumanian policy. Not so his colleagues of the Conservative Party; they opposed inertia to ideas, and behind them stood the King. M. Take Jonescu had a lawyer’s training and was no champion of lost causes. This cause was lost indeed while King Charles was on the throne; only a cataclysm could have saved it--a “Cascade des Trônes.”[16] The Rumanian statesman foresaw, and in his vaguely anarchic fashion wished for this consummation, about which he was to write a few years later, but the lawyer threw up his brief and devoted his undoubted talents to bargaining and the conclusion of a Treaty which King Charles himself described as a “drum-head truce.” In the Near East, men have a passion for subtle and tortuous negotiations, which are comprehended in the phrase “un marchandage Balkanique,”[17] which end in compromises, effect no settlement, and serve to postpone the evil day. The Austro-Hungarian representative in Bucharest must have heaved a sigh of relief when it became clear that Rumania’s participation in the Conference would be restricted to land-grabbing in the Dobruja.[18] Silistria and a district from which one of the best Bulgarian infantry regiments drew its recruits were claimed, and eventually annexed, by Rumania. No great extent of territory this, but enough to hurt.