There is a good deal of politics in Roumania, and partisanship usually encourages radical measures during political campaigns. But King Carol is more than a figurehead. He takes a deep interest in diplomatic and legislative affairs, and has recently concluded negotiations for an alliance with Turkey, Austria, and Germany against the other Balkan states, England, and Greece. Although Roumania has the same religion, neither the government nor the people have much political sympathy with their neighbours in Bulgaria, Macedonia, Servia, and Greece, and in case of war between Greece and Turkey, Roumania would undoubtedly be found on the side of the latter. The influence of Austria and Germany is much greater in Roumania than that of any other nation, which is not unnatural, as the king is a German, and a near relative of the kaiser.
The Roumanian army, for its size, is often said to be the best in Europe. The king is a trained soldier and has taken an active personal interest in its organization and equipment. But the people grumble at the expense. The standing army for a nation of 6,000,000 people here is precisely as large as that of the United States, with a population of 80,000,000, not including 200,000 reserves, who are paid full wages for two months in the year, when they are in camp. The army of Roumania costs more than $15,000,000 a year, which is almost equal to $2.50 of taxation per capita upon every man, woman and child in the country.
Roumania is fortunate in having unusually rich resources. The wide plains in the valley of the Danube produce enormous crops of grain and are cultivated with American machinery. Several of the manufacturers of agricultural implements in the United States have branch houses, whose sales mount into the millions every year. Roumania is the most profitable market for American agricultural implements in Europe excepting Russia and Hungary. The farms are large and are owned by a landed aristocracy — there are no orders of nobility in the country — who live in a feudal state and have armies of retainers born and brought up on the soil they cultivate. The land owners are called boyards — the same term is used in Russia — and the profits they make from their lands are expended in maintaining handsome and extravagant establishments in Bukharest.
There are enormous flocks of sheep also, mounting into millions, and immense herds of cattle scattered among the foothills and on the mountain slopes. The sheep and cattle barons of Roumania have residences in Bukharest also, and spend a great deal of their money there. Few of them ever try to live on their ranches, which are in charge of overseers, and they do nothing to improve the condition of their labourers or to provide them with schools or even decent habitations. The farm villages throughout the country
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are in a primitive condition — worse than those of Ireland. They have not been improved for centuries, but the peasants are not unhappy or discontented and they do not know that their condition could be bettered. The Greek priests keep them in order and exercise a similar influence to that of the Roman Catholic clergy in Ireland and Italy, and while they have the credit of being honest and earnest, most of them are uneducated and some are actually illiterate. I was told that there was scarcely a hundred university men among the entire clergy of the orthodox Greek church in Roumania, although there are nearly seven thousand churches, six bishops, two archbishops and a patriarch, who is at the head of the spiritual system of the country.
There is plenty of petroleum of a high grade and two or three German corporations are refining it, but the exports are small owing to the inability of local refiners to compete with the Standard Oil Company. The market is practically limited to Roumania and the adjacent countries. Several years ago the Standard Oil Company tried to obtain control of the Roumanian wells in order to get a more complete command of the market in the East, in competition with the Russian producers at Baku; but the Germans had more influence with the government and kept the Americans out. There is a disposition among business men here to regret the outcome of that transaction, because they believe the Standard Oil Company would have made a great deal more petroleum than the Germans have ever done, and would have contributed in a larger degree to the prosperity of the country. The government officials sympathize with this view of the case, and if the Standard Oil Company should again attempt to secure control of the industry in Roumania it would have the encouragement of the administration and the business organizations. The German refiners are doing practically nothing in the way of improvement and expansion, and are actually letting their plants run down.