CONDITIONS WITHIN ROUMANIA AND TURKEY

By Melvin M. Knight, Ph.D., Member of Roumanian Red Cross Commission

All the nations in the Balkans, excepting Greece, are in bad condition financially-and rather uncertain as to just what their condition is. Turkey is probably the worst off. Silver money is worth exactly its value by weight; and it takes 70 piasters in paper to be worth 20 in silver. Enver Pasha and a small group of satellites, "Young Turks" (usually meaning not Turk at all) most of them, have disappeared with the national treasure. Thus there is practically no bullion basis at all for the currency. Turkey was held out of bankruptcy, before the war, only by the conflicting claims of different nations. The largest creditors, as you know, were England, Germany and France. Even if the Greeks, or some group of powers, should be given a nominal political protectorate over European Turkey and the Straits, there is little doubt as to who would be the real beneficiary of the inevitable foreclosure.

Turkish army discipline is likely to be a little shocking to the sensibilities of the Occidental, until he has become more or less familiar with the customs of southeast Europe in general in this particular. Some soldiers, the overflow from barracks, were quartered in one of the long outside corridors of the Mosque of St. Sophia during my recent visit. One morning I was present while the bastinado was being administered to some culprits. One of the waiting list on a little platform at the side would be ordered down. He would lie on his back, with his shoes removed. Another soldier would grasp his legs just below the knees and hold his feet, bottoms upward, about 3 feet from the floor. The officer would then take a stout stick, about twice the thickness of a man's thumb

and 2 or 2 feet long, and strike the sole of the foot at intervals of several seconds. This officer strained his muscles; there was a vicious crack about the impact which made one wince, and wonder if the bones would not be broken. One man had eleven strokes, but his stoicism broke down after the seventh, and he cried out at every blow. At the close of the performance, the officer gave a sharp order, and the man had to jump erect on his recently pulped feet and stand at salute. One man did not whimper at all. While he was standing at attention, the officer struck him a hard blow in the face with the flat of his hand. Whether this was because he had not cried out, or whether his was an uncommon breach of discipline, I do not know. Aside from any emotional distaste for such procedure, it raises the question as to the governing capacity of a race which after many hundreds of years must or can handle its subjects in just that way. In spite of all this, it is quite fashionable for those who have spent some time in the Ottoman Empire to vehemently hate the Greeks, Jews and Armenians, and to guard the Turks as the best racial type in the Balkans. The commercial shrewdness and general rascality of these three alien races is certainly beyond debate. There is a saying that it takes two Jews to beat a Greek, and two Greeks to beat an Armenian.

Personally, the difference between the Turkish discipline and the Roumanian is not apparent to me at a glance. Both in their present form are copied from the Prussian, and both "out-Prussia" it. A Roumanian Captain P. was wildly gesticulating in the face of an army chauffeur while he harangued him (or abused him, if you like), in approximately the key of "Q-flat." The soldier was not the ordinary dirty, cringing peasant type. For example, he spoke French with some fluency-an unusual accomplishment for a common soldier. After some minutes of high-keyed questions, the answers to which were not accepted or even allowed to be finished, the soldier would unconsciously break his rigid "attention" position, and use his hands more or less as he talked (Roumanian is a Latinic

language). The Captain would then thrust down the hands and slap him viciously a number of times in the face, accompanied by imprecations. At length, the officer made some threats in evidently highly idiomatic Roumanian, of which I could not even understand the gist, but which immediately reduced the soldier to a cowed and concerned silence. Then the Captain struck him a number of times for not responding with sufficient alacrity, as he had just struck him for beginning answers he was not allowed to finish. Later, I casually asked the officer what sort of punishments they were allowed to administer to soldiers. He seemed surprised at the idea suggested by the French word "permis." He said he might have this fellow thoroughly whipped or, significantly, "perhaps worse." Upset the caste system of such an army for a moment, and its pent-up-hates give you what has been termed "Bolshevism," a term we Westerners have a way of talking much about on a rather slender basis of understanding, perhaps.

If a permanent partition of the territories in this part of the world is now to be made, the one certainty is that the Bulgarians will not get all the territories chiefly inhabited by people of that nationality. The English secret service agents have been very actively trying to eliminate the intellectual disease now popularly called "Pro-Bulgarianism," but called by a very different name ten years ago by English writers. Many English and Americans who visit central Macedonia contract this disease, and must be segregated, as it is quite contagious.

Before the Great War, the Roumanians claimed to be a nation of some fourteen millions of people, if all their people could be given them. Of course, a number of people in any possible division would belong to other races, but it was considered legitimate to claim anything which had 55 per cent Roumanians, or even less, if the other races were numerous, so that there were more Roumanians than any other one nationality. Now, after the war and the typhus epidemics, it was surprising to find that the Roumanians have become a race of nineteen millions. Such regions as the Banat, which doubtless contains some Roumanians, are not sub

ject to debate (by either side). This territory, for example, is absolutely necessary, we are assured, because it alone would establish a logical frontier, and because it contains valuable iron works.

I wish first to make a rough sketch of economic conditions here, and then to make a few remarks on the political situation. Some goods are now coming in and the prices of the lightest articles of a nature to be easily transported have been considerably modified. A good pair of shoes is still worth 400 or 500 lei (the lei is equivalent to a franc in normal times), and only a short time ago they were worth 1000. During the winter just closed, good secondhand overcoats sold as high as 2000 francs, and even higher. New ones were unobtainable. The prices of other clothes were pretty much in proportion. One must be rich to have proper clothing, in a climate similar to that of New York.

Food prices were quite as bad, and have not changed very much yet. Flour until American imports began to come in, was almost out of the market, entirely so for the poor. Tea, the great national mild drink, was 280 lei the kilo; sugar 50 lei, and corn meal from 6 or 7 to 15 depending upon the locality. People made huge fortunes out of these things, speculating on the necessities of the starving. Of course, the government passed regulations. But if you pass a law that sugar can sell for no more than 11 or 12 francs the kilo, the big dealer, a friend of some minister or other, will sell at the fixed price to a number of his friends, collecting large "tips" for the privilege of buying so cheaply. When the article finally gets to the poor consumer, it is 35 or 40 lei after all.

The government controls all the transportation, means for which are very scarce. Of 1400 locomotives before the war, only a little over 100 are now in condition to run, and many of these are very poor. The Germans are roundly cursed for this situation, in order to keep the poor quiet, while the friends of the Government wax fabulously rich on the monopoly thereby created. The members of the Government grant permits to transport

only to their "friends" who either use the permits to haul things from where they are cheap to where they are high priced, or sell the precious permissions outright to speculators. The result is fortunes for the government's friends, plenty to eat and wear for those able to pay, and the most wretched want for the nation at large.

A few ordinary grafters have been skimming the cream off the market. Thread sold until a week or two ago at $2 and $3 per spool. Every Roumanian ship which docked carried one or two people, officers, couriers, etc., who managed to slip enough of such articles to make a few thousands of francs profit. The French rushed "relief" to the Roumanians-doubtless in response to the call of their Commercial Bureau here. This relief took the form of perfumes and silk stockings (!) which were sold to the rich at prices the writer fears to report, as he certainly would not be believed. The papers now tell us that the French are going to open a similar "Commercial Bureau" in Bulgaria, to let French traders know where the largest profits are to be made. So far, the Americans seem to be the only people with any idea at all of relief properregardless of the money to be made. And even at this, the French are openly hostile to us for spoiling the market for the French profiteers on wartime starvation conditions. If we had never done anything for France along the same lines, the breath of their ingratitude would not be so keen.

There is a real dearth of materials in Roumania, and the Food Commission, distinctly an American institution in all its functions, is doing a wonderful piece of work. Only this morning, I met a Lieutenant Commander who had just docked three American flour ships at Constanza, bearing 24,000 tons of that precious material. But there is no doubt, in spite of all the energy and efficiency of the American officers, that a great deal of speculation in American flour is going on. Moreover, there are some supplies in the country, at reasonable prices, but only the friends of officials can get permission to transport them to the cities at several hundred per cent profit.

THE JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, VOL. 10, NO. 1, 1919