763.72119/3217: Telegram
The Minister in Roumania ( Vopicka ) to the Secretary of State
[Received December 28—10:15 p.m.]
142. The following is the memorandum referred to in my telegram 134 of November 10th:
“Roumania has the right, both morally and politically to realization of her claims. She knows that the Allies recognize them in virtue of the principles which they represent and which were formulated by President Wilson on September 27th, 1918, when he declared ‘That the solutions of the war are born from the nature and the circumstances of the war itself; all that the statesmen or assemblies could do is to realize or betray’.6 In fact the question of the Roumanians of Hungary was imposed by its own nature the day when the principles of justice, of independence and of liberty of the people were proclaimed; it was also imposed by the circumstances of the war when by the treaty of August [Page 388] 17, 1916,7 the Allies engaged themselves to assure to the Roumanians their national unity. Roumania has fulfilled her part of this treaty, the spirit of justice which animated the Allies made known to them that in the common work of great and small Roumania has bravely and loyally brought her contribution of efforts, sacrifices and results, because at an hour which could be decisive for the enemy her action has turned from other fronts and attracted on her an effort out of all proportion with the force which she represented in the fight; but naturally the results were also greater than those which she had the right to expect from her intervention.
The Peace of Bucharest8 which has never been sanctioned by the King nor ratified should not cancel the engagements of this treaty because Roumania has not submitted until after the peace of Brest-Litovsk9 and the subjection of Ukraine to the Central Powers, that is to say before a state of right in which Russia the representative of the Allies at the side of Roumania who had promised direct collaboration has made an agreement with the enemy.
Till the last hope of a smaller partial remaking of a Russian front Roumania resisted all menaces; as also up to last hour she resisted all proposals which, before the Russian definite peace, could have made her situation easier.
The official representative[s] of the Allies in Jassy have recognized that the armed tentative [?] exercised by the Roumanian army against the Bolsheviks, was the last military effort which anyone had the right to expect from her; after this effort the great care imposed by the common interest was to withdraw the Roumanian army from conditions which would have taken from it all possibility of a new action in some other phase of the world war. This phase has commenced.
It is natural because it is just that all which followed the Brest-Litovsk peace and the submission of Ukrainia to the enemy should be considered as null in its essence and in its results. And this because immediately the possibility presented itself Roumania, without a moment of delay, has retaken also on military ground a collaboration with the Allies dictated by the bonds which the King and the country have never considered as broken.”
- For exact text, see Foreign Relations, 1918, supp. 1, vol. i, p. 316.↩
- French text in R. Ministero degli Affari Esteri, Trattati e Convenzioni fra il regno d’ltalia e gli altri stati, vol. 23, p. 412.↩
- See Foreign Relations, 1918, supp. 1, vol. i, p. 771.↩
- Ibid., 1918, Russia, vol. i, pp. 442–475.↩