File No. 763.72/8118
The Ambassador in France ( Sharp) to the Secretary of State
[Received 10.15 p.m.]
2890. In talk with Mr. Antonesco, Roumanian Minister, to-day, he informed me that he had received a telegram yesterday from the King of Roumania in which he had been directed to assure President Poincare that the Roumanian Government and troops would remain loyal to the Allied cause to the last. The Minister told me that there was no other course for the Roumanian troops to pursue than to seemingly acquiesce in an armistice especially inasmuch as sixty new battalions of German troops had moved up behind them coercing such action. As a matter of fact, the Roumanian general in command was really playing for time in the hope that Generals Kaledin and Kornilov would succeed in raising a sufficient army to furnish such relief as would at least permit the safe passage of the Roumanian troops into the adjoining territory of Bessarabia which being a former territory of Roumania still numbered two million people of that nationality. He said that owing to the difficulty raised by different gauges of railway tracks the task of moving their supplies, however, would be rendered quite impossible unless they were able to secure the use of Russian locomotives and cars. An added misfortune results from the fact that the gauge of Roumanian railroads is the same as in Germany and Austria-Hungary. He said that the latest news coming to him was to the effect that the forces of Kornilov were already engaging those of the Leninists and that Kaledin was actively pushing the reorganization of new troops. The Minister also said that within the past ten days the people of Ukrainia which had heretofore been willing to agree to terms of peace had become much more disposed to treat [with] the Allies upon learning of the terms imposed by Germany.