For it was assumed that they still regarded the Bolshevist leaders as outlaws. One explanation was that they objected to allow the Rumanian army alone to occupy the Hungarian capital. But that would not account for their neglect to despatch an Inter-Allied contingent to restore order in the city and country. For they remained absolutely inactive while Kuhn's supporters were rallying and consolidating their scattered and demoralized forces, and they kept the Rumanians from balking the Bolshevist work of preparing another attack. As one of their French critics[148] remarked, they dealt exclusively in negatives--some of them pernicious enough, whereas a positive policy was imperatively called for. To reconstruct a nation, not to say a ruined world, a series of contradictory vetoes is hardly sufficient. But another explanation of their attitude was offered which gained widespread acceptance. It will be unfolded presently. The dispersed Bolshevist army, thus shielded, soon recovered its nerve, and, feeling secure on the Rumanian front, where the Allies held the invading troops immobilized, attacked the Slovaks and overran their country. For Bolshevism is by nature proselytizing. The Prague Cabinet was dismayed. The new-born Czechoslovak state was shaken. A catastrophe might, as it seemed, ensue at any moment. Rumania's troops were on the watch for the signal to resume their march, but it came not. The Czechoslovaks were soliciting it prayerfully. But the weak-kneed plenipotentiaries in Paris were minded to fight, if at all, with weapons taken from a different arsenal. In lieu of ordering the Rumanian troops to march on Budapest, they addressed themselves to the Bolshevist leader, Kuhn, summoned him to evacuate the Slovak country, and volunteered the promise that they would compel the Rumanians to withdraw. This amazing line of action was decided on by the secret Council of Three without the assent or foreknowledge of the nation to whose interests it ran counter and the head of whose government was rubbing shoulders with the plenipotentiaries every day. But M. Bratiano's existence and that of his fellow-delegate was systematically ignored. It is not easy to fathom the motives that inspired this supercilious treatment of the spokesman of a nation which was sacrificing its sons in the service of the Allies as well as its own. Personal antipathy, however real, cannot be assumed without convincing grounds to have been the mainspring.