The serious consequence which Germany’s alliance with Bulgaria would entail on Roumania, must ultimately oblige that country, despite the temporizing attitude of its government, to defend its vital interests. These interests now stand out more and more clearly. In the first place it is certain that the plan of Bulgarian supremacy in the Balkans (see p. 133) is as little acceptable to the Roumanians as to the Greeks. The frontier incidents, which have multiplied lately, between the Bulgarians and the Roumanians are manifest symptoms of the mutual and irreconcilable dislike of the two peoples. Besides, the Roumanians have been specially alarmed by what has happened in the part of the Dobrudja which Bulgaria was compelled to cede to Roumania in 1913 (indicated by crossed hatchings on the subjoined map). The syndicates of Bulgarian peasants in this region have plainly shown their separatist tendencies. Further, it has lately been discovered that in the New Dobrudja, the Bulgarian system of espionage has been worked, under colour of archæological excursions, by Germans, who afterwards transmitted to the Bulgarian military authorities photographs and plans of great importance. Lastly, at the beginning of 1916 Mr. Take Jonescu made known at Bukarest that Germany had promised to Bulgaria, at the expense of Roumania, not only the territory which Bulgaria had lost in 1913, but also the Roumanian Dobrudja as far as Galatz and Sulina. Since then Berlin has been obliged to throw a sop to Roumania by assuring Bukarest that Germany will put a curb on Bulgarian ambition. But this promise, a sort of blackmail extorted by the needs of the moment, forms but a very precarious guarantee for the Roumanians. They feel themselves threatened by Bulgarian ambitions, and there seems little reason to doubt that as soon as circumstances shall appear favourable, Roumania will make an end of the Bulgarian peril, as “she ought to have done in 1913,” if the Roumanian Government does not allow itself to be “hypnotized” by that of Berlin, to use the language of the _Universal_, the official connection of which with the military authorities at Bukarest is well known (quoted by _Le Temps_, 19th March, 1916). [Illustration: GREAT ROUMANIA.]