Very well. We stood at least for the vindication of Serbian nationality. But the 'Balance' demanded that we should win Italy to our side of the scale. She had to be paid. So on April 20th, 1915, without informing Serbia, Sir Edward Grey signed a Treaty (the last article of which stipulated that it should be kept secret) giving to Italy the whole of Dalmatia, in its present extent, together with the islands north and west of the Dalmatian coast and Istria as far as the Quarnero and the Istrian Islands. That Treaty placed under Italian rule whole populations of Southern Slavs, creating inevitably a Southern Slav irredentism, and put the Yugo-Slavia, that we professed to be creating, under the same kind of economic disability which it had suffered from the Austrian Empire. One is not astonished to find Signor Salandra describing the principles which should guide his policy as 'a freedom from all preoccupations and prejudices, and from every sentiment except that of "Sacred egoism" (_sacro egoismo_) for Italy.' To-day, it need hardly be said, there is bitter hatred between our Serbian Ally and our Italian Ally, and most patriotic Yugo-Slavs regard war with Italy one day as inevitable.[41] Yet, assuredly, Sir Edward Grey is not to be blamed. If allegiance to the Balance of Power was to come first, allegiance to any principle, of nationality or of anything else, must come second. The moral implications of this political method received another illustration in the case of the Rumanian Treaty. Its nature is indicated in the Report of General Polivanov, amongst the papers published at Petrograd and dated 7th-20th November, 1916. It explains how Rumania was at first a neutral, but shifting between different inclinations--a wish not to come in too late for the partition of Austria-Hungary, and a wish to earn as much as possible at the expense of the belligerents. At first, according to this Report, she favoured our enemies and had obtained very favourable commercial agreements with Germany and Austria-Hungary. Then in 1916, on the Russian successes under Brusilov, she inclined to the Entente Powers. The Russian Chief of the Staff thought Rumanian neutrality preferable to her intervention, but later on General Alexeiev adopted the view of the Allies, 'who looked upon Rumania's entry as a decisive blow for Austria-Hungary and as the nearing of the War's end.' So in August, 1916, an agreement was signed with Rumania (by whom it was signed is not stated), assigning to her Bukovina and all Transylvania. 'The events which followed,' says the report, 'showed how greatly our Allies were mistaken and how they overvalued Rumania's entry.' In fact, Rumania was in a brief time utterly overthrown. And then Polivanov points out that the collapse of Rumania's plans as a Great Power 'is not particularly opposed to Russia's interests.'