Actiunea Diplomaticǎ a României (Nov. 1919-Mart. 1920) by V. V. TileaThe Slavonic Review, Vol. 4, No. 12 (Mar., 1926), pp. 777-779Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4202021 .

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REVIEWS. 777 Neither does the international motive appear in M. N. Lyadov's

:-report on the objects of the Sverdlov Communist University. It -deals vividly with the characteristics of the present type of students. "Our pre-revolutionary bourgeoisie was numerically weak. It had to recruit its personnel from all classes. Therefore our pre-revolutionary *academic youth appeared more democratic than in other countries. But the whole educational system was working towards the divorce ,of the proletarian or peasant from his class. When educated, the. peasant, or workman's sons became unintelligible to their own classes. A bookish education will necessarily have this effect. And our "Communist university forms no exception to the rule. The workman, severed from his environment, loses his soundness, and in the end is less -successful than the bourgeois boy, and often, after a superhuman strainn, comes out wrecked in mind and body-a useless ruin; besides this, if he is married he leads a petty bourgeois familv life in lodgings, drawing a pittance from the treasury. His proletarian outlook vanishes, the more so as in actual life, under present conditions, class conflict is hardly found, except in some large industrial centres. Indeed, one ought to draw candidates for the Communist University exclusively from such people as have worked at least two vears in large workshops to prevent them from being estranged from the Communist mentality, the married ones and their children must find a Communist asylum in the university. The pre-revolutionary privileged schools, such as the Lyceum or the Law School, selected their pupils from among the ruling class. The Communists must follow the same line, and apply the principle of class privilege in their own favour. No deviation from this privilege ought to be tolerated; proletarian education must bear its specific stamp all through.

The rest of the volume gives valuable information on the -curricula, the publications of the school., the teaching, the staff, the -students, and their views on Mr. Lyadov's suggestions mentioned above.

A. F. MEYENDORFF.

Actiunea Diplomnatica a Romaniei (Nov. i919-Mart. I920). By V. V. Tilea. Sibiu (Tipografia Poporului). 1925.

OF the many difficult situations in which -the,Paris Peace Conference became involved there was hardly one more unfortunate than the quarrel of the Great Powers with the Roumanian Government of the day-a quarrel none the less regrettable because, given the clash of two entirely opposite points of view, it was almost inevitable-a quarrel, too, for which both sides were in -greater or lesser degree responsible. M. Bratianu's imperturbable confidence both in the justice of his demands and in his ability to secure their realisation, based on his claim that the treaty he had signed with the European ,Great Powers in i916 was both legally valid (in spite of the separate

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778 THE SLAVONrIC REVIE\V.

peace Rumania had beeni forced to conclude) aiid morally ilndisputabie, was bound to come in conflict mith the view of hiis Allies, wN-ho were partly converted and whollv (so far as their personal interests were not directly concerned) obedienlt to Wilsonian doctrine and w-ere in any case not inclined to be dictated to by the Prime Minister of aln East-European State who showed no desire to uinderstand their difficulties or principles, no consideration for his nieighbours and little interest in anything except the full execution of the letter of the I9I6 treatv.

Whatever sympathy may be felt for Mr. Br'atianu's disappointment and however much the Supreme Council's cavalier treatment of hilm may be criticised, it is hardly open to question that his owni unbounded self-confidence and lack of understanding of his Allies (great anld small) were much to blame, and that, while his full hopes svere in anly case unrealisable, he might by a more temperate attitude have won for Rumania a better international standing at the Conference tllan he in fact obtained. Disgusted with the Supreme Counicil's territclrial awards-which, based on careful ethnological and econiomicexainiina- tion by a Committee, fell short of the promises of the I9I6 treaty, M. Bratianu left Paris, refused to sign either the treaty with Austria or that for the protection- of minorities and turnied the Roumalnian occupation of Budapest (into which he had been provoked by Bela Kun's attacks on the Roumanian army) from what might have been a measure deserving the full gratitude of the Allied Powers into onet designed to flout their positioni and ignore their interests. MI. Bratiailln's refusal to discuss the matter with the Supreme Council or to sign the two treaties above-mentioned anid Iis embarkation o0l a so-called policy of resistance " very nearly led to a complete rupture w-ith

them. From this disastrous policy Roumania w-as only saved lby his resignation and that of the puppet government that succeeded him, and the arrival in office of the Transylvyanian leader, Mr. Vaida-Voevod.

It is with Mr. Vaida-Voevod's four months' tenure of office that Dr. Tilea is concerned. H1imself a rransvlvanian of wide interests and knowledge, he has had the advantage of association with the Roumanian and other delegations at the Peace Conference, of workingo, with the Transylvanian leaders at home and of acting as private secretary to Dr. Vaida-Voevod during the latter's six weeks' stay in London in February and March, 1920. He, therefore, writes w-itl full knowledge, His objelt is clearly to show his fellow-countrymen the extraordinary change that came over Roumania's relations with the Western Powers and particularly with Great Britain, as the result of M. Vaida's straightforward and businesslike conduct ot Roumanian policy in London. Thanks to his energy, ho1nesty and negotiating ability, all the thorny questions relating to the evacuation of Hungary by.the Roumanian troops, the treatment of minorities, and the question of requisitioning and reparations, w-ere soon well on the way to settlement. The consent of the Powers to the rccoginitioln of

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REVIEWNS. 779

Roumaniian sovereignty over Bessarabia wN-as obtained, Roumania's financial prospects in London and her political prestige both in England and abroad improved out of all knowledge. Dr. Tilea claims that never had that prestige stood so high as just at the moment (I5 March, I920) when, as the result of the " intrigues " of his enemies in Bucarest, it was notified to him by telegram that the King had accepted his resignation-news which in this country was received with great surprise and regret, and by Roumanian-s who appreciated -M. Vaida's work for their country, with indignation and dismay.

The main theme of the book is, therefore, of most direct interest -to Roumanians, and students of Roumanian policy, but there is much selse in it which is of interest to all students of international affairs: for Dr. Tilea, in explaining how Mr. Bratianu's mistaken tactics at -the Peace Conference provoked a quarrel with the Great Powers, ,proceeds to treat very fully many of the territorial alnd other questions that gave rise to sharp discussion. His interesting map of the Banat and of the frontiers proposed by the different Allied " experts" is probably the most accurate that has yet appeared: the similar map of the frontier with Hungary seems tc owe a little more to intelligent speculation. In any case, Dr. Tilea, from the point of view of an English reader, has done good service in demolishing the absurd legend which interested propagandists disseminated in Roumania, -that the British Gov-ernment showed themselves unfriendly to Roumanian claims. In the case of the Banat, for instance, Dr. Tilea points out what a misfortune it was that the British proposal to include in Roaimania the whole Timisoara-Bazias line was not accepted. Still more importanit is the series of proofs of British sympathies with Roumania observed anid collected during Mr. Vaida's London visit. For the publication of these proofs and for his own -understanding and sympathetic advocacy of Anglo-Roumaniani friendship every English reader of the book will be deeply grateful to its able author. *-

A C-echi Humaniist it London in the it7h Century: Jan Sictor Rokycausky (I593-I6j2). By R. F. Young. London: (Published by the School of Slavonic Studies), 1925. 2S. net.

SICTOR, a " wandering scholar" of the 17th century, was a graduate of the Caroline University of Prague who, after schoolmastering in his native country for some five years, became a refugee during the convulsion of the Thirty Years' War and, after study at Heidelberg, Groningen and Levden, settled in England about I630 .and spent there the rest of his life. His passion from the beginning to the end- of his life was Latin versification; and Mr. Young gives a scholarly list of twenty-one of his opuiscida in that genre, written -at different times (they even include a volume of school-boy verses), in various countries, and on -arious themes. In exile and in

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