1940-07-01 — Page 13

Monday,

HONGKONG TELEGRAPH

July 1940.

BESSARABIAN

RUMANIA

Its Oil, its Weakness

its fate a certainty

made

THE key to what has happened in Roumania lies in the pictures at the top and bottom of this page. It was rich. It was weak, That is enough for any modern Dictator.

Roumania's rolling wheatfields, its great oil fields- the finest in Europe-made it a temptation to every aggressive ruler. It's military weakness, its tangle of minorities, its backward, semi-feudal' political system made the temptation almost unbearable to the have-not nations. It was too casy a proposition to last long in a Europe where Dictators take what they fancy whenever they think they can get it.

·

Invasion is not new to Roumanis. The wars of cen- turies, the flights of peoples, have left this land which is the gateway from Europe to the Middle East with a minority problem unique even for the Balkans.

Russians, Germans, Czechs, Roumanians, Hungarians, Turks, Serbs, Bessarabians, Ruthenians vie for domina- tion of Roumanian politics.

BULGAR

MINORITIES of a dozen different nations have always made organised Government, adequate military preparation intensely difficult problems for Rumania,

KING, CAROL is the much publicised king of a very-nearly musical comedy Kingdom.

BUCHAREST is a modern city. But part of Rumania's army transport is still drawn by ox-carts.

SAXONS

GOOSE-STEPPING German peasants look picturesque in their Rumanian costumes. But they were a fifth- column weakness in the state.

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RUMANIA'S great oll-fields were coveted-alike by Germany, Russia, Italy and the Allies. Under pressura: from all be 42. TYPICAL OF Bầ four, Romania had had to steer a very difficult' course since the war began:

stmodern war,

mania is this picture of Suceviiză