The perils of premature intervention, both for the Allies and the Rumanian people, were only too obvious. While Rumania’s sole link with the Western Powers was a precarious line of communications through Russia, her neutrality was preferable to her alliance; the former was no doubt unsatisfactory, but the latter exposed a reservoir of food supplies and petrol to invasion from the south and west. Even if properly equipped and efficiently maintained, the Rumanian Army would have had no easy task; in the absence of these conditions it was madness to go to war. In Paris, the irritation was profound. The French Government had assumed control of the negotiations with the neutral Balkan States, and was mastered by an impatience born of intolerance and fear. This frame of mind had been induced by a total misconception of the real facts of the case. There was no danger that the Rumanian people, however tempted, would join the Central Powers. Bratiano surveyed the European situation through the same telescope as the Allies. He saw their final triumph clearly, but knew it was not so close as they imagined. His vision, perhaps, had magnified the distance by looking through the larger end, but, unlike them, he knew the complexity of the problem to be dealt with in the East; they viewed it merely as an adjunct to the slaughter in the West. The Quai d’Orsay was quite incapable of appreciating the Rumanian point of view; its self-appointed task was “to bring Rumania in.” Persuasion, on moral and sentimental grounds, had been unavailing. Some details of the Italian Treaty had leaked out, and had revealed a marked absence of the principles of self-sacrifice and abnegation, in the cause of liberty, on the part of a greater Latin State. It was clear that Rumania, like Italy, would have to get her price; much would depend, however, on the way that price was paid.