After the armistice things became worse instead of better. The Hungarians were permitted to violate the conditions and keep a powerful army out of all proportion to the area which they were destined to retain, and as the Allies disposed of no countering force in eastern Europe, their commands were scoffed at by the Budapest Cabinet. In the spring of 1919 the Bolshevists of Hungary waxed militant and threatened the peace of Rumania, whose statesmen respectfully sued for permission to occupy certain commanding positions which would have enabled their armies to protect the land from invasion. But the Duumviri in Paris negatived the request. They fancied that they understood the situation better than the people on the spot. Thereupon the Bolshevists, ever ready for an opportunity, seized upon the opening afforded them by the Supreme Council, attacked the Rumanians, and invaded their territory. Nothing abashed, the two Anglo-Saxon statesmen comforted M. Bratiano and his colleagues with the expression of their regret and the promise that tranquillity would not again be disturbed. The Supreme Council would see to that. But this promise, like those that preceded it, was broken. The Rumanians went so far as to believe that the Supreme Council either had Bolshevist leanings or underwent secret influences--perhaps unwittingly--the nature of which it was not easy to ascertain. In support of these theories they urged that when the Rumanians were on the very point of annihilating the Red troops of Kuhn, it was the Supreme Council which interposed its authority to save them, and did save them effectually, when nothing else could have done it. That Kuhn was on the point of collapsing was a matter of common knowledge. A radio-telegram flashed from Budapest by one of his lieutenants contained this significant avowal: "He [Kuhn] has announced that the Hungarian forces are in flight. The troops which occupied a good position at the bridgehead of Gomi have abandoned it, carrying with them the men who were doing their duty. In Budapest preparations are going forward for equipping fifteen workmen's battalions." In other words, the downfall of Bolshevism had begun. The Rumanians were on the point of achieving it. Their troops on the bank of the river Tisza[147] were preparing to march on Budapest. And it was at that critical moment that the world-arbiters at the Conference who had anathematized the Bolshevists as the curse of civilization interposed their authority and called a halt. If they had solid grounds for intervening they were not avowed. M. Clemenceau sent for M. Bratiano and vetoed the march in peremptory terms which did scant justice to the services rendered and the sacrifices made by the Rumanian state. Secret arrangements, it was whispered, had been come to between agents of the Powers and Kuhn. At the time nobody quite understood the motive of the sudden change of disposition evinced by the Allies toward the Magyar Bolshevists.