66 
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 pro 
portional 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 nega 
tive balance of the reparations created by the Treaties, we must remark that 
this territorial increase is owed to the application of the principle of nationali 
ties, by the annexation of the provinces belonging to Roumania. Now the ap 
plication 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 si 
tuation 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 princi 
ple 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 resour 
ces 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 fi 
nancial 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 indepen 
dent 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, al 
lowed Roumania to complete her national unity, she is not at all in the plea 
sant 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 Rou 
mania 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