New Cabinet

Since the first of the year, correspondents at Bucharest have amused themselves by announcing the fall of the Bratiano cabinet every other week while denying this eventuality between times. The truth of the matter has been that Premier Jon Bratiano's Liberal party has indeed been losing ground, as was indicated recently at the minor municipal elections; and with the parliamentary elections now immediately in the offing, it was thought that he would prefer to step down from power a little in advance of the coming storm. The correspondents seized upon every rumor that he had resigned and cabled it as news.

Tantalizing. Meanwhile the exquisitely urbane and subtle M. Bratiano continued to consume his light Parisian breakfast at nine each morning, after which his superbly sleek motor car bore him first to the government bureaus and usually thereafter to the royal palace. As he mounted the palace steps in impeccable morning clothes, often humming to himself a tune from the light opera he had attended the night before, he seemed the antithesis of a statesman. Once within the palace, however, Premier Bratiano dropped his mask of dilettantism and conferred earnestly with Queen Marie, Roumania's other completely disarming superdiplomat.

Last week these little tete-a-tetes bore fruit. King Ferdinand of Roumania, who has been reported somewhat estranged from his wife of late (TIME, Feb. 15), was won over to assist M. Bratiano a little longer to control the state by guile and indirection.

Shift. Apparently yielding before the pressure of adverse criticism directed by the Parliamentary Opposition, M. Bratiano last week handed in his Cabinet's resignation at last, and Bucharest was thrilled by the last of many rumors that King Ferdinand would request one of the Opposition leaders to form a Ministry. Instead, His Majesty blandly summoned General Fofoza Alexander Averescu and commanded him to undertake the formation of a Government. No move could have been more significant.

Puppet. Eight years ago, M. Bratiano, premier then as now, made use of General Averescu to parry a blow which might have crushed his own political skull like an eggshell. The great German Feldmarschall, August von Mackensen, later "the most famous German war prisoner," was about to strike that blow. On Feb. 6, 1918, he stood with his hobnailed Prussian boot figuratively upon the neck of Roumania and despatched to Premier Bratiano a 96- hour ultimatum embodying the crushing peace terms which Roumania later signed as the Treaty of Bucharest.*

Indignantly M. Bratiano declared (for home consumption): "No nation can accept terms so humiliating!" He did not however fly in the face of von Mackensen, like a bandolined canary bird defying a mailed Attila. Instead, M. Bratiano oozed out of office; and the King summoned General Averescu, whom von Mackensen had already thrashed on the battlefield, to take the added political punishment administered by the Treaty of Bucharest.

Then Germany crumpled. The Peace Conference met at Paris, and M. Bratiano journeyed thither again in his element. He returned with an Allied blessing upon the addition to Roumania of Bessarabia, Bukowina and Transylvania. That is to say, he obtained the credit for enlarging the area of Roumania from approximately that of England to roughly that of the British Isles. His puppet, General Averescu, had long ago obligingly disappeared. Since then, Premier Jon Bratiano and his brother Vintila, have ridden somewhat roughshod over their political enemies. They now apparently find it convenient to suffer an eclipse.

The New Cabinet. Premier General Averescu proceeded to call into his new Cabinet, last week, two faithful Generals who will do or die as they are told. Of his eleven new Ministers, seven served in his last scapegoat Cabinet (1919). Since Premier Averescu is politically only the leader of a tiny minority party having but five votes in the Chamber, it is idle to pretend that he in anything but the loyal pawn of Bratiano, who commands in the present Parliament 250 votes.

The twelve loyal henchmen:

General Averescu....Premier

M. Goga....Interior

M. Mitilanou....Foreign Affairs

M. Lapadatu....Finances

General Mircesco....War

General Valoana....Industry

M. Petrovici....Public Works

M. Cudalibu....Justice

M. Negulesco....Education

M. Goldis....Religious Affairs

M. Garoflio....Agriculture

M. Tranou....Labor

"Consequences." One of General Averescu's first acts as Premier was to order suppressed the Opposition news organ Lupta which had commented upon the new Cabinet thus: "In face of the country's unanimous expectation that it would receive a Government which it had indicated unquestionably was its choice, it is answered again with a Government by the Bratiano family. May God protect Roumania from the consequences of this deed."

*Signed in May, 1918. It has been called "a flagrant contradiction of the very notion of peace." Had not the Allies crushed Germany in the West, the Roumanian railroads would have been turned over to Germany by this treaty for 15 years; Austria-Hungary would have acquired large additions of Roumanian territory; and Germans would have received wheat, salt and oil concessions in Roumania which they might have exploited to her complete economic ruin.