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RUMANIAN FEARS
i47
Bulgaria not only constituted a sharp blow to their
amour-propre but also an undoubted menace. During
the whole Balkan war Rumania had unflinchingly
performed her duties as a neutral, allowing free passage
through her territory for all munitions which the
German and Austro-Hungarian works sent to Turkey
via the Black Sea, where the Bulgarians, whose naval
forces were inadequate, could not sink or seize the
Turkish transports. It can easily be imagined that such
a way of proceeding would not exactly predispose the
Bulgarians in Rumania’s favour, even if between the
two nations there had not been another cause for
rivalry and mutual displeasure. But this cause existed.
In 1878, at the conclusion of the Russo-Turkish
Peace, the Bulgarian chauvinists had expressed their
displeasure at Russia giving part of the Dobrudja as
far as the forts of Silistria to the Rumanian Principality
in exchange for that part of Bessarabia close to the
Danube which had been taken from Russia by the treaty
of 1856. According to the Bulgarians, Russia, although
taking back all the southern part of Bessarabia, ought
to give the whole of the Dobrudja to Bulgaria and thus
become, across the mouths of the Danube, the
immediate neighbour of the Slav Principality which she had
just created. The Rumanians, on the contrary, were of
opinion that Russia ought to leave Southern Bessarabia
to them, adding to it, as a reward for having " saved the
Russian Army at Plevna," the whole of the Dobrudja with
Silistria and Tutrukan and nearly as far as Varna. The
two sides founded their exclusive claims to the Dobrudja
on ethnographical principles. According to the Bulgarian
version, nearly the whole of the Dobrudja is peopled with
Bulgarians; according to the Rumanians it is inhabited
solely by Rumanians. In reality, this province
represents the same motley mixture of population as Southern
Bessarabia : Turks, Gagailzi, Tatar-Budjaks, Tziganes,
and—in the towns—Armenians, Greeks and Jews, make
up with Rumanians, Bulgarians and Russians of the
Old Faith, the population of the Dobrudja, which in its
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