Full text : The report of the Minister of Finance to the Counsel of Ministers on the situation of Roumania created by the reparation and interallied debts policy

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by  different  States  who  took  the  succession,  and  the  increase  of  the  respective
territories,  an  increase  which  practically  ought  to  have  as  a  consequence  a  proportional ­
  increase  of  their  financial  and  economical  resources.
We  must  distinguish  between  two  opinions  in  this  matter.  First  of  all  as
regards  the  compensation  between  the  increase  of  the  territories  and  the  negative ­
  balance  of  the  reparations  created  by  the  Treaties,  we  must  remark  that
this  territorial  increase  is  owed  to  the  application  of  the  principle  of  nationalities, ­
  by  the  annexation  of  the  provinces  belonging  to  Roumania.  Now  the  application ­
  of  a  just  and  lawful  principle  as  that  of  nationalities  does  not  imply  in
the  least  a  reparation  policy  which  must  have  as  a  consequence  a  defficient  situation ­
  to  be  considered  as  a  corrective  of  the  territorial  increase.  Besides  this
such  a  final  situation  can  only  come  against  the  realization  of  that  very  principle ­
  of  nationalities,  which  presided  over  the  conclusion  of  peace.
In  the  second  place  as  regards  compensation  between  the  defficient  situation
created  by  the  treaties  and  the  increase  of  the  financial  and  economical  resources ­
  of  the  new  territories,  we  must  remark  that  for  any  one  who  knows  the
history  of  Austria  of  Hungary  and  of  Roumania,  the  Roumanian  provinces  in
the  state  in  which  they  were  left  by  their  former  masters,  cannot  constitute  for
the  present,  nor  for  many  years  to  come  any  considerable  increase  in  the  public
finance  line.
Roumania  in  the  8.  E.  of  Europe,  at  the  mouths  of  the  Danube  has  always
been  the  sentinel  of  European  civilization,  and  was  always  the  first  to  receive
the  brunt  and  the  troubles  of  invasions  from  the  East.
When  other  countries  in  the  west  of  Europe  had  arrived  at  the  complete
fulfilment  of  their  national  unity,  and  in  their  full  political  economical  and  financial ­
  progress,  Roumania  was  either  at  war,  or  was  exhausted  by  the
struggles,  which  her  position  of  advanced  sentinel  of  European  civilization  in
Eastern  Europe,  imposed  on  her.
It  needed  a  long  time  for  her  to  constitute  herself  into  a  small  independent ­
  State  which  represented  the  idea  of  progress  and  national  unity  for  the
rest  of  the  Roumanian  provinces  still  submitted  to  a  foreign  domination.
When  the  circumstances  and  the  consequences  of  the  late  world’s  war,  allowed ­
  Roumania  to  complete  her  national  unity,  she  is  not  at  all  in  the  pleasant ­
  situation  of  heirs  at  law  whoenyoy  with  out  any  cares  the  riches  they  have
inherited.
The  freed  territories  by  which  the  ethnical  and  geographical  unity  of  Roumania ­
  is  completed,  created  also  great  charges  rising  at  the  same  time  from  a
past  which  was  always  at  her  disadvantage,  as  well  as  from  obligations  which
her  new  situation  impose  on  her.
During  the  first  few  years  after  she'  was  united  to  Transylvania,  Bucovina
and  Bessarabia,  the  revenues  of  the  former  territory  had  to  be  partly  used  for
the  maintainance  of  the  new  territories,  which  in  the  state  in  which  their  former
masters  had  left  them  could  no  more  provide  for  their  own  needs.
For  the  economical  adaptation  and  in  order  to  catch  up  lost  time  Roumania
            
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