The Prime Minister was the son of a great Rumanian patriot and wished to follow in his father’s steps; the father had united two Principalities in a kingdom, the son had set himself the task of extending that kingdom beyond the western mountains, and aspired to be the architect of the Greater Rumania of his father’s prophetic dreams. Fear of not winning makes men gamble, and this anticipatory fear pervaded Bratiano’s mind; he in whom courage went with pride now quailed before prospective self-reproach. Allied diplomacy was quick to perceive the effect of the first two moves; these had been, respectively, a threat and an assurance, the third was a promise: before Rumania intervened, General Sarrail’s[29] army would make an offensive on a scale large enough to prevent the dispatch of enemy reinforcements from the Salonika front to the Dobrudja or the Danube. The strength of the enemy forces in Northern Bulgaria was variously estimated, but the Rumanian General Staff was informed that _their_ figures were exaggerated and an emphatic denial was given as to the presence of Turkish troops. The Allied Intelligence Service overlooked the fact that Rumania still had her representatives in Sofia, and among them at least one officer who had both eyes and ears. About this time the Bulgarian Government made overtures to the Rumanian Prime Minister in regard to a separate peace. How far these overtures were sincere it would be hard to say. Their purpose was to use Rumania as an intermediary; their effect was to remove the last misgivings from Bratiano’s mind. He attached no great importance to the Salonika offensive, except so far as it might strengthen Bulgaria’s desire for peace. By the end of July the negotiations for Rumanian intervention were far advanced. In these, Russia played the leading part; proposals and counter-proposals passed continually between Russian Headquarters and the Rumanian War Office, while in Petrograd acquiescence was, at last, obtained for the full payment of Rumania’s price. On August 16 a Treaty and Military Convention were signed by Bratiano and the representatives of the four leading Allied States. The Treaty guaranteed to Rumania, in the event of the Allies being victorious, all the territory she claimed in Austria-Hungary, including the whole of the region called the Banat at the confluence of the Danube and the Theiss. In the Military Convention, the Allies promised, among other things: An offensive on the Salonika front, to begin ten days before Rumania’s first act of war; A Russian offensive in the Carpathians during Rumania’s mobilization; The dispatch of Russian forces to the Dobruja, consisting of two infantry divisions and one cavalry division; Supplies of ammunition delivered in Rumania at the rate of 300 tons per day.