1940-07-01 — Page 23

Monday,

HONGKONG TELEGRAPH –

July 1, 1940.

GYPSY

Its

RUMANIA

Oil, its Weakness made

its fate a certainty

THE key to what has happened in Roumania lles 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. Its 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 easy 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 Roumania. 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.

BULGART

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,

RUMANIA'S great oil-fields were coveted alike by Germany, Russia, Italy and the. Alliés. Under pressure, from all four,. Rumania had had to steer a very difficult course since the war began,7%

SAXONS

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

fifth

"TYPICAL of backward Rumania is

modern warang sanga

ura of