Paris 1919 - Margaret Macmillan [89]
They also, in the case of the Europeans, kept their own national interests in mind. The French, looking for allies in central Europe, wanted both Rumania and Yugoslavia to be strong and friendly. The Italians split hairs and quibbled over procedure, all with the aim of blocking Yugoslav demands, and then appalled the Americans by hinting that they might agree to some of them in return for Italy’s own claims in the Adriatic being accepted. Even where they could have made a magnanimous, and better still a cost-free, gesture in accepting Yugoslavia’s claim on the Klagenfurt area of Austria, they would not. “Poor diplomacy,” in the opinion of Charles Seymour, a young historian from Yale University. A French colleague was blunter: “He did not mind the Italian’s crookedness, but he did object to the gaucherie.” The Americans tried valiantly to pin down the elusive just settlement, and the British tried to reconcile the Americans and the French. “There was a good deal of jockeying to begin with,” reported Seymour, “and a good deal of rather dirty work in maneuvering for position, so to speak. The British stood firm with us in killing this and in getting down to honest work.”19
Brătianu made a poor impression, refusing to compromise, showing his temper and sulking when questioned too closely. He made the curious argument that granting the whole of the Banat to Rumania would actually improve relations with Yugoslavia, like “a tooth which has to be extracted.” He also made threats: if he did not get the Banat, he would resign and let the Bolsheviks take over in Rumania. He tried to appeal over the experts’ heads to Wilson, who sent him along to see House, who had to endure a drunken harangue about how Rumania had been betrayed by its allies. Brătianu also accused Hoover of holding up loans and food supplies until American interests, Jewish ones at that, got concessions to Rumania’s oil. The news coming in from Central Europe did not help his case. Rumania was advancing beyond the armistice lines into Hungary and Bulgaria; its troops were massing on the northern edge of the Banat; it was making wild accusations that Serbs were murdering Rumanian civilians. The Yugoslavs by comparison appeared reasonable. 20
At the beginning of March the Rumanian delegation received a reinforcement when Queen Marie, accompanied by three plump daughters, arrived on the royal train. Colette described her for Le Matin: “The morning was grey, but Queen Marie carried light within her. The glitter of her golden hair, the clarity of her pink and white complexion, the glow in her imperious yet soft eyes—such an apparition renders one speechless.” The queen spoke charmingly of her longing to help her country; she called attention to her war work. “I simply went, My God!, I simply went wherever they called for me, and they needed me everywhere.” She was, she said modestly, “a sort of banner raised for my country.”21
She was indeed. It was fortunate that the heir to the Rumanian throne had married the one grandchild of Queen Victoria who had no difficulty in shaking off her English upbringing and adopting the ways of her new country. Ferdinand was deadly dull, shy and stupid; she was lovely, vivacious and adulterous. Her new subjects found this endearing. Her lovers included Joe Boyle, the dashing Canadian millionaire miner from the Klondike, and Brătianu’s brother-in-law, who fathered, it was said, all of her children except the disastrous one who became King Carol.