the smaller units until they were ripe for fusion, rather than to compromise by creating a dual State of Serbia and Croatia. §7. _The Roumanian Question._--I have dwelt at some length upon the Southern Slav problem, because it is as complicated as it is unfamiliar to public opinion in this country. It has been the _causa causans_ of the present struggle, and if neglected or mismanaged at the final settlement, may again plunge Europe into trouble at some future date. Parallel with any solution of the Southern Slav question must come the solution of the Roumanian question, which represents the other half of Austria-Hungary's Balkan policy. The Kingdom of Roumania is, alike in territory, population, and resources, the leading power in the Balkan peninsula, but over five million Roumanians, including the very cream of the race, still live under foreign domination. Of these at least 3,500,000 are in Austria-Hungary, the great majority under the grossly oppressive rule of the Magyars; and the redemption of Transylvania and the neighbouring counties of Hungary has always been the ideal of all patriotic Roumanians, even of those who looked to a distant future for its realisation. Russia's short-sighted policy in 1878, in annexing the Roumanian province of Bessarabia as a reward for their valiant support at Plevna, drove the Roumanians into the arms of Austria-Hungary, and for a whole generation not even the perpetual irritant of Magyar tyranny in Transylvania could avail to shake the _entente_ between Vienna and Bucarest, strengthened as it was by the personal friendship of the Emperor Francis Joseph and King Charles. But the spell was broken by Austria's attitude during the Balkan War. The imperious force of circumstances brought the interests of Roumania and Serbia into line; for it was obvious that any blow aimed against Serbia's independent existence must threaten Roumania also, just as any weakening of the Serbo-Croat element in the Monarchy must react unfavourably on that of the Roumanians and other nationalities of Hungary. The growth of national feeling within the two neighbour races has proceeded for some time past on parallel lines, and even before the war there were manifest signs that the Roumanians of Hungary, whose economic and cultural progress since the beginning of the century has been very rapid, were at length nearing the end of their patience. The bomb outrage at Debreczen last February--an event which is without parallel in Roumanian history--was the first muttering of the gathering storm. Roumania occupies a position of extreme delicacy. Her natural tendency would be to espouse the cause of the Allies, since they obviously have more to offer her than their rivals. But the somewhat equivocal attitude of her statesmen has been determined not merely by an astute desire to win the spoils of war without making the necessary sacrifice--a policy which is apt to overreach itself--but also by a very