There are many pathetic things in war--soldiers wasted with disease, blasted in arm and leg with explosive shell, withered in eye and lung by the terrible gas; but none of these things is so moving as the sight of little children, homeless, parentless, and with clothing worn and torn by travel, sleeping in empty freight cars, cold railway stations, or on the very blizzard-swept sidewalks of Russian cities, and slowly dying because they have no food. * * * * * Rumania hesitated long before entering the war. The sympathies of her people were strongly with the Allies, for military and economic reasons connected with German domination of her resources made her actual military participation with the Allied Armies difficult and dangerous. The decision, however, was made in the late summer of 1916, and an attack was made by the Rumanian army against Austrian forces. This was followed by successes which continued until Bulgaria began hostilities against the Rumanian army. Shortly after, a German army under General Mackensen against Rumania was started which ended in the capture of Bucharest in December, 1916. THE TRAGEDY OF RUMANIA STANLEY WASHBURN Copyright, Atlantic Monthly, December, 1917. [Sidenote: What it meant for Rumania to fight.] More than a year has now elapsed since Rumania entered the war. What is meant for this little country to abandon neutrality is not generally realized. Here in America we know that so long as the British fleet dominated the seas we were safe, and that we should have ample opportunity to prepare ourselves for the vicissitudes of war and to make the preparations that are now being undertaken and carried out by the administration of President Wilson. Canada and Australia likewise knew that they were in no danger of attack. [Sidenote: War's terrible cost.] But the case of Rumania was far different. She knew with a terrible certainty that the moment she entered the war she would be the target for attack on a frontier over twelve hundred kilometres long. The world criticized her for remaining neutral, and yet one wonders how many countries would have staked their national future as Rumania did when she entered the war. In a short fourteen months she has seen more than one half of her army destroyed, her fertile plains pass into the hands of her enemies, and her great oil industry almost wiped out. To-day her army, supported by Russians, is holding with difficulty hardly twenty per cent of what, before the war, was one of the most fertile and prosperous small kingdoms of Europe. [Sidenote: Why nations went to war.] [Sidenote: America's reasons.]