A ROUMANIAN 
 DIARY 
 
 1915, 1916, 1917 
 LADY KENNARD 
 

 
 
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 The Noonday Meal 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 1915, 1916, 1917 
 
 BY 
 
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 LADY KENNARD 
 
 WITH ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 NEW YORK 
 DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 
 
 1918 
 
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 Copyright, 1917 
 By DODD. MEAD AND COMPANY, Inc. 
 
 Gift 
 
 Ool.k.l -Ta] 1 r 
 May 5 1926 
 
PREFACE 
 
 This little book contains a short summary 
 of my own impressions of Roumania and the 
 Roumanian people as chronicled for private 
 interest during the several months I spent in 
 the country previous to its entry into the war, 
 supplemented by regular letters subsequently 
 received from friends who remained to work 
 there when circumstances had obliged me to 
 return to England. To these latter I have 
 added nothing of my own imaginings and 
 omitted little of the original text. Only the 
 form and mode of presentation are mine, but 
 I found it easier, for the sake of making of 
 the whole a consecutive narrative, to hold to 
 the original diary form. 
 
 The idea of publication was only born in 
 me when I realised how very little is known 
 by the general public of all that one of our 
 Allies has suffered of tragedy during the war. 
 I submit the narrative most tentatively, with 
 the hope that it is not altogether deficient. 
 
 iii 
 
iv PREFACE 
 
 I am indebted to Comte Etienne de Beau- 
 mont and Major Arion for the photographs 
 which appear in these pages. Were it not 
 for their kindness I should have indeed been 
 at a loss, for topical photographs of any kind 
 emanating from Eoumania are practically un- 
 obtainable. 
 
 DoBOTHY KENNARD 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 THE NOONDAY MEAL Frontispiece 
 
 FACING 
 PAGE 
 
 THE REAPING 10 
 
 ONE OF THE NEW STEAM PLOUGHS .... 26 
 
 A TYPICAL WATER WELL 42 
 
 SIFTING THE GRAIN 58 
 
 AT HER LOOM 76 
 
 HOUSE OF A WELL-TO-DO FARMER .... 90 
 
 H.M. QUEEN MARIE AFTER THE OPENING OF 
 
 PARLIAMENT 112 
 
 ARRIVAL AT JASSY 128 
 
 SHIFFANOYA, DEPOT FOR MOTOR AMBULANCES . 146 
 
 A VILLAGE CHAPEL 162 
 
 A GROUP OF RED CROSS WORKERS .... 170 
 
 EVEN ENGINES CARRIED HUMAN FREIGHT DUR- 
 ING THE RETREAT 178 
 
 RUSSO-ROUMANIAN ARMY SERVICE CORPS DUR- 
 ING THE RETREAT 186 
 
 FIELD KITCHEN AT WORK IN A LOCAL STATION 
 
 DURING THE RUSSIAN RETREAT .... 196 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 September 1915. — I do not know quite what 
 it was that brought us to Roumania. The 
 war had been going on for over a year — per- 
 haps that was the reason. There is, in every 
 human being, a wild wish to get away, even 
 if only for a time, from the place where he 
 happens to be. And there was nothing, now, 
 to hold us in England. 
 
 The journey was interesting. It promised, 
 at the outset, almost insuperable difficulties. 
 We left London with a party, all bound for 
 Bucarest, all armed with every form of lais- 
 ser passer and Customs facility. The Chan- 
 nel was netted from Folkestone to Boulogne, 
 even in those early days, and we were es- 
 corted by an airship. It sounds well to say 
 "escorted," but I have a suspicion that its 
 presence was accidental. Boulogne to Paris 
 took seven hours, and at Paris we over- 
 
 l 
 
2 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 nighted. Having missed the connection with 
 Marseilles next day, owing to a change of 
 time-table, we travelled in a troop train, sit- 
 ting np the whole night through in superla- 
 tive discomfort. At Marseilles we were 
 warned that our boat was a marked ship, as 
 she carried ammunition and a French general 
 and his staff bound for Salonika; also sixty 
 British mechanics for the Dardanelles. How- 
 ever, we decided to risk it, and the whole 
 party got on board: eight people, twenty- 
 four heavy trunks and twenty-six bits of 
 hand-luggage. All went well as far as Malta. 
 Six hours out of that port, however, we had 
 an excitement : a cargo steamer that we had 
 been watching with the interest which any 
 rival craft invariably provokes at sea sud- 
 denly seemed, at the distance of barely two 
 miles, to be listing heavily, abnormally. We 
 signalled to her repeatedly, obtaining no re- 
 sponse whatever, and, from what we could 
 see through our glasses, the boat appeared 
 deserted, as did the little lifeboat bobbing up 
 and down alongside of her. Suddenly she 
 heeled right over, blew up and disappeared, 
 and our captain frantically ordered, "Full 
 steam ahead." It was presumed that the 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 3 
 
 submarine responsible was lying in wait for 
 us also, and we spent an anxious night on 
 deck. Arrived at Athens we were again or- 
 dered off the ship, and only the fact that we 
 were to be convoyed to Salonika obtained for 
 us official permission to proceed. 
 
 In Salonika we found no room available. 
 The town was crowded out and had turned 
 into a Tower of Babel. The British Red 
 Cross Commissioner procured us a shake- 
 down where we slept, three in a room. Here 
 we were informed of the Bulgarian mobilisa- 
 tion and of the impossibility of proceeding, 
 as had been our original intention, via Sofia. 
 We were assured, however, that, could we 
 but get to Nish, we would find there some 
 means of going through to Bucarest via the 
 Danube. Remained the problem of "getting 
 to Nish, ' ' a difficult one owing to the fact that 
 an important bridge on the Salonika-Nish 
 railway line had broken down the day before. 
 Thanks, curiously enough in the existing po- 
 litical crisis, to the activities of the Bulgarian 
 consul, we got off next morning on the first 
 and, as was subsequently proved, the last 
 train through : a most uncomfortable transit. 
 We sat up for twenty-four hours in a Greek 
 
4 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 day-carriage, recently fumigated and smell- 
 ing of the process. There was not one drop 
 of water on the whole length and breadth of 
 the train; in fact, from Salonika to the 
 Danube we washed in Vichy water and Lano- 
 line grease. Arrived at Nish we found a 
 curious state of affairs: a Serbian village 
 become through the misfortunes of war the 
 country's capital. The Government officials 
 worked in improvised shanties, the diplomats 
 lived in mud huts. Our own Minister had 
 been lucky enough to obtain as Legation a 
 four-roomed hovel, and all the service in the 
 local club was done by Austrian prisoners. 
 In one of these I recognised a former waiter 
 at the Carlton in London. 
 
 We had time here to lay in a small stock of 
 food. The supply was limited, as the local 
 population was preparing to evacuate the 
 town before the expected German invasion, 
 and was as chary of parting with stock as we 
 were loth to take it. I even left behind me, as 
 a parting gift, a few small boxes of English 
 matches, worth their weight in gold. Our un- 
 pretentious, old-f ashionecl little train steamed 
 out of Nish station at four o 'clock in the aft- 
 ernoon. We were huddled together in two 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 5 
 
 second-class carriages with wooden seats, lit- 
 erally the best that the poor little country 
 could afford. Incidentally it is worthy of 
 note that our large, expensive party , travel- 
 ling in a country where the population was 
 destitute and the Government in as sorry a 
 plight, paid not one single penny from fron- 
 tier to frontier, "because we were Allies.' ' 
 Thus the grand geste of a little nation! A 
 miserably uncomfortable night was survived, 
 after a fashion. Again there was not a drop 
 of water on the train, and I will not attempt 
 to describe the picture which dawn revealed 
 of our unwashed and tired faces. Progress 
 was of the slowest, for we were constantly 
 shunted to make way for troop trains. And 
 such troop trains ! Long lines of open wag- 
 ons, where tired men leant against one an- 
 other in the manner that leaden soldiers fall 
 when a small boy piles them into his toy rail- 
 way. Broken men these, who were still ban- 
 daged with dirty rags from field-dressing 
 stations, and who clasped worn stumps of 
 rifles as if to find in them some hope of fu- 
 ture retribution upon the enemy who had 
 brought them so low. We passed at one mo- 
 ment within a stone 's-throw of the Bulgarian 
 
6 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 frontier, and found massed units of these 
 wearied troops resting by the roadside, wait- 
 ing — for war was very near. Almost were 
 we stopped at Nicoline and our train requisi- 
 tioned; thanks, however, to the persuasive 
 methods of the Serbian Government officials 
 versus the military, we were allowed to 
 proceed. 
 
 Twenty-four hours after leaving Nish we 
 reached the Danube, where, after infinite par- 
 ley, the captain of the only steamboat run- 
 ning (a Roumanian line) offered to take us 
 from Prahova to Kalaf at. The latter, a small 
 Roumanian port, was reached at 10 p.m. 
 Here we found darkness and no possible ho- 
 tel ; further, no train until the morning. We 
 were literally stranded, for our captain de- 
 clined to help us, and propelled the party, 
 plus the voluminous luggage, gently but 
 firmly landwards. He was obliged, he said, 
 to make the return journey that night. A 
 Heaven-sent Russian plutocrat who had been 
 our fellow-traveller from Salonika took pity 
 on our plight, which was also his, and char- 
 tered a special to take us all to Bucarest. 
 After having moved our luggage into it with 
 our own hands, we finally started off at mid- 
 
A EOUMANIAN DIARY 7 
 
 night, having previously drunk to the Allied 
 cause in bottles and bottles of beer, seated in 
 a jovial row on the little Kalafat pier, whilst 
 our dangling toes touched the water and 
 spread ripples in the moonlight. There was 
 a hot and heavy silence over the world, and 
 waterfowl screamed a dirge for the dead who 
 were to travel along that river towards the 
 sea. For when we arrived in Bucarest next 
 morning, it was to hear at the station that 
 Bulgaria had declared war on Serbia over- 
 night. 
 
 So here we find ourselves to-day, successful 
 travellers, a little weary, perhaps, and singu- 
 larly appreciative of food and lodging, but 
 proud of the fact that it was an English party 
 that caught the last train and the last boat 
 through. 
 
 October 1915. — Our house is comfortable. 
 It stands behind a wall and boasts a little 
 garden ; the street outside is cobbled. On the 
 right hand I can see the gables of a splendid 
 marble palace with a pillared portico, whilst 
 smelling to the left the thatch which roofs a 
 workman's cottage. These are symbolical of 
 Bucarest fifty years ago and of Bucarest to- 
 day. It is late autumn, and a chill is in the 
 
8 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 air, but I have seen some wonderful sunsets. 
 
 This is a happy little town. Everybody 
 smiles, and hardly any one has anything to 
 do. One long shopping street, the Calea Vic- 
 toriei, winds from the Chaussee towards the 
 river, and passes the Palace and the two big 
 hotels; here cheerful, informal shops flaunt 
 superfluities at prohibitive prices. The Rou- 
 manians are all rather rich (I am speaking of 
 the ones who live in cities), and love to 
 dawdle here at noon, drinking "Zwicka" at 
 the cafes, and lounging, men and women alike, 
 against the plate-glass windows, which reflect 
 both their own profiles and the silhouettes of 
 passers-by. Street cabs roll smoothly here 
 on rubber tyres, and the coachmen, resplen- 
 dent in blue velvet and scarlet sashes, have a 
 regal appearance. At first I hesitated to hail 
 them, for they seemed too grand for hire, but 
 soon discovered that self-respecting Rou- 
 manians own motors or nothing at all. 
 
 Life is childishly simple. We wake at 
 eleven, and stroll towards the Chaussee at 
 twelve. Bucarest owns several parks; two 
 are pretty and one alone is fashionable. This 
 latter is the Chaussee, a sort of grandchild 
 of the Champs Elysees, but it leads out into 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 9 
 
 the open country instead of towards a Bois. 
 Over a bridge where the trees end and fields 
 begin lies the new aviation ground. Here 
 lead all roads where motors travel, and here, 
 towards evening, end all Roumanian "perfect 
 days. ' ' For the whole population of the town 
 rides, drives and strolls there in the sunset. 
 Embryo airmen loop the loop and cast weird 
 shadows on hangars which gleam against the 
 black earth that turns to green in spring-time. 
 
 It is still warm and we play a lot of tennis. 
 Whispers come of war, all friendly, for the 
 general feeling is pro-Ally. But their tone is 
 passive, and, as a nation, Roumania is still 
 quite neutral. Nevertheless one hears mur- 
 murs of "Our Roumania/ ' " Honour,' ' 
 "Fatherland," "Ces sales Bulgares," 
 ' ' Those unspeakable Boches, ' ' and seeds have 
 been sown that will bear their fruit. 
 
 We are threatened with an influx of Allied 
 missions evacuating Sofia. Belgrade has fal- 
 len, and the Germans are streaming into 
 Serbia along the road we travelled. 
 
 In Bucarest, of course, we see the Germans 
 in hundreds. Certain shops have to be boy- 
 cotted as they are German owned, and it is 
 gratifying to note that these are shunned 
 
10 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 alike by the Roumanians and the Allies. At 
 the races on Sundays one sees the enemy 
 diplomats wandering near the railings, fat 
 and pompous, and wearing overcoats of mar- 
 vellous cut. Whenever a new village falls in 
 Serbia, Capsa's Restaurant (the Ritz of Bu- 
 carest) resounds to German toasts and Ger- 
 man voices. At a music-hall, however, to 
 which I went one evening, the Roumanian 
 audience sang and whistled "Tipperary" and 
 hooted German phrases spoken on the stage. 
 
 Society is returning to town, for the rains 
 are expected, and we have begun to play 
 bridge and to pay calls. In a vague way 
 conversation hovers about the war. But it 
 occupies itself chiefly with minor social prob- 
 lems which crop up as a result of the whirling 
 of the maelstrom. The following is an in- 
 stance — 
 
 A Dutch subject, A, marries a German 
 woman, B. A becomes, long before the out- 
 break of war, a naturalised Englishman in 
 South Africa. When war is declared he is 
 decoyed to Germany, caught and sentenced 
 to death as a spy. His wife, left stranded in 
 Roumania, is not allowed to live there with- 
 out a passport, nor is she, without one, al- 
 
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A ROUMANIAN DIARY 11 
 
 lowed to leave the country. The Dutch Gov- 
 ernment refuses to give her one as she is, by 
 marriage, a British subject. Our own refuses 
 as she is an enemy alien. The German Gov- 
 ernment also refuses because she is the wife 
 of a condemned spy. Curious ! 
 
 November 1915. — The seeds are sprouting. 
 Bucarest is stirred by anti-Governmental agi- 
 tations for war. One was held to-day, for 
 which we hired a window, just as if it had 
 been the Lord Mayor's Show. Troops pa- 
 trolled the streets, some of which had even 
 been brought from Ploesti. The windows of 
 the German and Austrian Legations have re- 
 cently been broken on various occasions, and 
 the gates were triply guarded. Various poli- 
 ticians made incendiary speeches in the public 
 square below us, urging the crowd to impor- 
 tune the King for war. They proclaimed that 
 Roumania's prolonged neutrality spelt Ger- 
 man slavery for ever. The crowd of some 
 five thousand peasants, students and citizens 
 actually charged the front rank of troops, 
 massed to the number of five hundred men, 
 before the Palace gate. Three or four citi- 
 zens and several soldiers were wounded, sev- 
 eral revolvers snapped, and one man was 
 
12 A KOUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 bayoneted in the stomach and killed. Other- 
 wise nothing happened. But straws show 
 which way the wind blows, though it may take 
 a gale to stir a nation that lives under thatch. 
 
 Seven thousand refugees have arrived in 
 Roumania from Serbia, and Bucarest is busy 
 organising relief committees which will pro- 
 vide hostels for them on the Danube. Tor- 
 rential rain has begun to fall, and one shud- 
 ders when one pictures their plight. Restive 
 tidings come from Greece, equivocal and un- 
 satisfactory. It is whispered that Bagdad 
 has fallen, and rumour is rife, whilst German 
 propaganda agents here have become ex- 
 traordinarily active lately, and spies abound. 
 Altogether we are restless and long for defi- 
 nite news of the outer world. 
 
 To-day the King opened the Chamber. I 
 believe that there was quite a scene, and fisti- 
 cuffs came into play when some would-be 
 patriots shouted, "Down with Hungary !" 
 The King was well received. 
 
 I am going to spend a month in the country. 
 Bucarest is too small to interest one for a 
 long time on end, and one grows very nervous 
 under the tension of waiting for something to 
 happen which cannot possibly come to pass 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 13 
 
 for at least a year. The peasants here re- 
 quire investigation. They are children: 
 happy, well clothed and well fed. 
 
 About a week ago I rode out very early 
 towards the aviation ground. Two Rouman- 
 ian officers were before me, trying a new aero- 
 plane. Just as I arrived, the monoplane 
 hummed away into the distance and the sun- 
 rise. I stopped to pass the time with the re- 
 maining subaltern, who had once been a 
 dancing partner. 
 
 "What a gorgeous day!" I opened — ob- 
 viously. 
 
 The little lieutenant smiled a somewhat 
 doubtful assent, then shivered and offered me 
 a cigarette. 
 
 "The ground is cold and very muddy/ ' he 
 answered, with a furtive glance at the dimmed 
 splendour of his new top-boots. ' ' Six months 
 of military service have not yet accustomed 
 me to the material discomfort of early morn- 
 ing." 
 
 We waited, silently. On every side 
 stretched virgin soil, rich, black and fruitful. 
 Perhaps it was the fact that the very earth 
 had not been stirred for centuries that gave 
 
14 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 to all things on all sides their calm, intense 
 repose. Close at hand a peasant's hnt 
 belched forth charcoal fumes, and a woman 
 whose feet were bare, but who flaunted on her 
 head a scarlet kerchief, tended to children 
 and chickens indiscriminately amidst a heap 
 of refuse. Near by a shepherd, owner of them 
 all, watched his flocks and looked at nothing. 
 We strolled towards him. 
 
 "Do talk to him," I said. "I may be able 
 to understand a little. ' ' 
 
 "Well, my man," said my friend obedi- 
 ently, ' * how 's the world treating you ? Crops 
 good?" 
 
 "I am a shepherd, Excellency." 
 
 "Does it pay you well — bring you much 
 money?" 
 
 "As well as may be, Excellency; one 
 lives." 
 
 "Ask him if he's happy," I said. 
 
 "Do you like living so?" was the form my 
 question took. 
 
 "Yes, Excellency. The lambs this year are 
 fat and strong." 
 
 "Impossible people," said the officer; 
 "they think of nothing but their sheep." 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 15 
 
 "Well, you don't give them much else to 
 think about," I replied. 
 
 There was a humming overhead. The 
 lieutenant, slightly exasperated, pointed to 
 the descending monoplane, for the shepherd 
 had not raised his eyes. 
 
 "Do you know what that is?" he asked. 
 
 "No, Excellency,' ' — without interest. 
 
 "That is a machine which flies — it is called 
 an aeroplane. You must have seen them 
 before — you live here." 
 
 "We sleep after noon," replied the man 
 ruminatively. Then : ' ' Yes, I have seen a 
 machine. It stopped on the road where 
 Mitru lives, and left in the road a pool of 
 liquid which was not water. Mitru 's pig 
 drank there and it died." 
 
 It was hard not to smile. "Shall I give 
 him a ride in the aeroplane?" asked my 
 friend quizzically. 
 
 "Won't he die of fright?" 
 
 "Not he. You don't know these people. 
 Come, my man, I will take you in this machine 
 and show you what it is to fly. Would you 
 like it?" 
 
 "If it please your Excellency. The sheep 
 are feeding and will not stray." 
 
16 A EOUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 After a few words of introduction and 
 explanation to the other officer, who had 
 landed a few hundred yards behind us, the 
 shepherd was hoisted into his passenger seat 
 and the aeroplane soared away. 
 
 The woman just raised her scarlet-crowned 
 head and then resumed her sweeping. A few 
 sheep scampered away terrified. I lit another 
 cigarette. 
 
 "The English are funny people," mur- 
 mured my companion ; ' l they do not like ex- 
 periments themselves, yet they approve of 
 them for others." 
 
 "What do you call our war!" I asked. 
 
 "A certainty," was the reply. 
 
 The trip was short ; already the monoplane 
 was circling round the little cabin. It 
 swooped and came to earth where it had risen. 
 The shepherd climbed down silently and 
 stood, waiting. 
 
 "Well," said the soldiers tentatively, "did 
 you like it, or were you frightened?" 
 
 1 ' I saw my sheep smaller, ' ' was the answer. 
 Then: "Have you a present for Zwicka?" 
 
 "I told you so," said my friend; "they are 
 impossible people." 
 
A KOUMANIAN DIARY 17 
 
 "But yet they have some common sense,' ' 
 I amended, as I rode away. 
 
 If that is the Roumanian peasant as he is 
 within a stone 's-throw of his capital, I want 
 to know him in the country! 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 December 1915. — I have gone back to the 
 land with a vengeance ! The soil pursues one 
 into one's bedroom, so tenaciously does it 
 cling and clog the footwear. My British 
 brogues are ill-adapted to Roumanian coun- 
 try roads, and gather weight at every step. 
 For a country bordering on the East, where 
 "scenery" means blaze and light, the land- 
 scapes here offer peculiar contradictions. 
 Although transparent skies and sunshine are 
 in proper keeping, the colour scheme is dark 
 almost to greyness through the neutral tints 
 of earth and thatch and trees. It is winter 
 and all branches are bare. I made a curious 
 discovery to-day: a nail had worked loose 
 inside my shoe, and I needed a stone. Per- 
 haps if I had been willing to walk a mile and 
 search at every step, I might have found one, 
 but in retrospect this seems unlikely. This 
 country, which teems with ungrown corn and 
 oozes petrol, does not run to stones. Corn 
 
 18 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 19 
 
 means bread in plenty and petrol stands for 
 motor traffic, but one thing more is essential 
 in modern life, and that is material where- 
 with to build. There is none, and therefore 
 you will find few houses on a Roumanian 
 horizon. Village architecture runs to mud 
 and thatch, and when proprietors are com- 
 paratively wealthy they invest in a coat of 
 whitewash. Such buildings occasionally 
 gleam amongst distant trees ; the meaner ones 
 are marked by wisps of smoke. Often the 
 former are painted in flaunting colours and 
 designs such as those which peasant women 
 embroider on their Sunday clothes. 
 
 What strikes one most is the greatness of 
 earth qua earth and the unimportance of peo- 
 ple whose dead bodies go to make it. I have 
 lived in desert countries where space is 
 infinite and everything except humanity so 
 immense that it touches the sublime. But the 
 painter was delicate in touch, and his pictures 
 are mirage in water-colour; here we are 
 shown panorama, rich and solid, done in oils. 
 When one has known and loved the furthest 
 East, one meets with daily disappointment 
 in these Balkan states. Sometimes, on moon- 
 lit nights, when the gypsies play for dancing, 
 
20 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 one can trace in the cadence of their cracked 
 violins echoes of the flutes which Persian 
 shepherds play; bnt this is seldom. More 
 often, alas! memory recalls the Blue Hun- 
 garian Band. There is little soul in the 
 music, but plenty of inspiring rhythm. I went 
 to a "Chindia," or country dance, where all 
 the villagers came, dressed in their best, and 
 danced themselves to madness, whilst my own 
 feet grew most unruly and aspired to fan- 
 tastic evolutions inadequately realised. 
 
 They are a handsome race — swarthy some- 
 times, but with clean brown skins to veil the 
 vivid gypsy blood. Ofter they are very fair, 
 and the women recall tales of Circassian 
 slaves. Men and women alike are supple and 
 well formed; further, the native dress en- 
 hances the inherent grace. White is the pre- 
 dominating tone, for the loose shirts, open 
 at the throat, are made of cotton, sunbleached 
 and starched by drying in the wind. The 
 women wear embroidered blouses of butter 
 muslin caught together at the neck with nar- 
 row cord. This is tucked into a double apron 
 which falls in two straight panels in front 
 and behind. Sometimes these are of woven 
 wool in rich dark colours, more seldom of silk, 
 
A EOUMANIAN DIARY 21 
 
 and these boast glints of gold or silver thread. 
 It is in colour schemes that the Roumanian 
 peasant soul gives expression to ideals, and 
 the whole scale of human personality is be- 
 trayed in the contrasting tones of apron-sash 
 and kerchief. Roumanian femininity has 
 never admitted that it had a waist ; the man, 
 par contre, is flagrant in boasting of his own. 
 His shirt is cut and pleated into semblance 
 of a kilt, and the coloured waist-band which 
 marks his middle has learnt to rival the lines 
 of Persian miniatures. Tight-fitting under- 
 drawers of cotton, which tidy ankles and feet 
 away into woollen socks, embroidered in black 
 and white complete his costume ; woe, there- 
 fore, to the rarity who suffers from ill- 
 shapen legs! I never saw one. All are 
 broad-shouldered, flat-backed and tall. Grown 
 old, they have a patriarchal dignity all their 
 own wherein combine the kindly resignation 
 of the Slav and the fatalism of the East. 
 Young and old alike have happy faces, and 
 have not learnt to smile the smile which 
 knows not laughter. 
 
 I do not think that a single peasant under- 
 stands that the greatest war in history is be- 
 ing fought almost within sound of the guns. 
 
22 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 They know, vaguely, that their enemies, the 
 Bulgars, who cultivate, by force of tradition 
 and superior knowledge, most of the vege- 
 tables grown for Roumanian towns, have 
 been recalled across their border to fight. 
 And for this fact they are as vaguely grate- 
 ful, for a goodly proportion will never re- 
 turn, and a new industry glimmers as a pos- 
 sibly profitable opening for such enlightened 
 villagers as have comprehended that the 
 earth can foster other growths than corn. But, 
 for the rest, why, even we ourselves have al- 
 most forgotten the war! Small wonder to 
 it. The rains have washed the world, and 
 winds from Russia stripped the foliage from 
 all trees; nevertheless we are basking in a 
 St. Martin's summer, and feel most wonder- 
 fully warm. "We motor all day, long excur- 
 sions in unkempt-looking cars, the hum of 
 whose engines alone betrays their worth. Big 
 properties often lie thirty or forty miles 
 apart, but country-house standards are kept, 
 and that with kinship to those in England. In 
 Wallachia we are invited for week-ends of 
 tennis, motoring and companionship; Mol- 
 davia offers gun and rifle sport of every kind. 
 Little sight-seeing is possible. We spent 
 
A KOUMANIAN DIARY 23 
 
 the whole of one drowsy day in the silence of 
 a nunnery. A square courtyard, where the 
 paving-stones trapped sunlight, flanked the 
 ennobled cruet-stand which was the church. 
 The place is famed for age and sanctity. 
 Faded paintings decorated the whitewashed 
 exterior of the building, and a dreamy vague- 
 ness of incense and tired gold glimpsed 
 through the archway of the door. There were 
 several valuable ikons hidden in corners, and 
 a modern one from Odessa leaned to catch 
 the only ray of sunlight which reached the 
 altar. This had been raised some few months 
 before in honour of the Queen, who came once 
 on a visit and taught the peasants to love 
 her. 
 
 We made just one other excursion with an 
 object on the day that saw us drive thirteen 
 miles in a country cart to inspect steam 
 ploughs lately arrived from England. Our 
 way led straight across the fields, where 
 motors cannot travel. I remember the owner 
 of the property, who said to me : " These are 
 the first machines to be introduced here ; next 
 year there will be dozens, and the crop will 
 be a phenomenal one." 
 
 Two years' accumulation of unsold corn 
 
24 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 already taxes the accommodating power of 
 the country. Where is the object, therefore, 
 of a record yield? 
 
 I have failed, somehow, most singularly, in 
 the realisation of my purpose in coming and 
 living outside the radius of the city, namely, 
 the one of studying the Roumanian peasant 
 at home. A thorough knowledge of the lan- 
 guage is essential, and, even towards their 
 fellow-countrymeu, they are most curiously 
 unapproachable. One can only marvel at the 
 infinity that divides their mentality from that 
 of their brothers in the towns. Even the 
 look in their eyes changes after a few weeks 
 in the city, and decidedly for the worse in 
 every case. One must conclude that they 
 are not ready yet for confinement in bricks 
 and mortar. Besides, in such an exagger- 
 atedly agricultural land, the earth holds prim- 
 itive sway and guards most jealously children 
 who are complete dependents. Despite the 
 fact that they are rich, according to the stand- 
 ards of labourers in the West, beyond all 
 dreams of acquisition and earning, they have 
 remained most primitive, and I must honestly 
 confess that at times their sense of cleanli- 
 ness is completely dormant. Houses, hu- 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 25 
 
 mans and animals alike are indistinguishable, 
 at a few yards ' distance, against the immense 
 brown background of the covering soil. 
 
 January 1916. — The month brought snow 
 and found us back in Bucarest. Social life 
 has begun — not the fastly furious exaggera- 
 tion which novels had taught us to believe 
 holds sway. All the ladies are busy rolling 
 bandages and working at hospital supply 
 depots. This not for the profit of the Allied 
 troops, but for themselves, as a preparation 
 for their own entry on the Allied side. A 
 marked change has come over the atmos- 
 phere, and their hands have begun to grope 
 towards us where only their hearts formerly 
 inclined. A few there are amongst them 
 whose sympathy is frankly hostile, and who 
 hobnob at Capsa's with the Bodies. But so- 
 ciety treats them scurvily and shuns their 
 environs. At dances, theatre parties — such 
 as they are— and dinners we meet hosts of 
 young people, amongst them many officers, 
 and these chafe openly against the equivocal 
 attitude of their Government. The girls burn 
 with patriotism for France, a country which 
 they have been brought up to reverence. 
 Dowagers see in the future, when Roumania 
 
26 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 joins, advancement for their sons, whilst old 
 men envisage in their conversation dreams 
 which their fathers taught them to cherish of 
 a ' ' Greater Roumania. ' ' Meanwhile the men 
 of thirty-five or thereabouts are seldom seen. 
 Some are away on their estates, preparing, 
 it is said, to negotiate a great political deal 
 in corn, others are perfecting the school of 
 aviation recently inaugurated in Roumania 
 according to system learnt in France. 
 Others, again, are lost in Government build- 
 ings. We meet these latter occasionally, and 
 they invariably find means to whisper or im- 
 ply: "C'est pour bientot, notre entree. ' ' 
 Preparation everywhere, allies in all but 
 name, hesitating, nevertheless, to take the 
 final plunge into a whirlpool of horror which 
 can prove but questionably profitable. 
 
 They work during the week, but on Sun- 
 days make holiday, and the afternoon sees 
 them stream out in one gay, unending pro- 
 cession to the racecourse at the top of the 
 Chaussee. Nothing happens there, for there 
 is no racing except during the spring and 
 autumn, but everybody sees everybody else, 
 and — those persons whom everybody is 
 with. 
 
One of the New Steam Ploughs 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 27 
 
 Hats still arrive from Paris, no one quite 
 knows how, but presumably they take a three 
 weeks' journey round the Baltic Sea. It is 
 possibly more probable that they originate 
 in Vienna. And the clothes are wonderful, 
 and even more wonderfully expensive. The 
 country must be made of money. I have 
 never imagined that a place could exist on 
 this earth when even the poor were so ob- 
 viously rich. Not a middle-class family but 
 can afford themselves a weekly hired cab or 
 motor at a price of over a sovereign an hour 
 in which to spend the afternoon ! 
 
 We are tantalised by the importance, in- 
 adequacy and divergence of the news items 
 which filter through devious routes from 
 every corner of the globe. German news- 
 papers are patronised for interest 's sake, and 
 we are choked with propaganda literature is- 
 sued daily by the Wolff Bureau. The Bul- 
 garian Press Agency publications provide en- 
 tertainment for our evenings, but we all suf- 
 fer from wistful longing for the Daily Mail 
 on our breakfast table. Posts arrive from 
 home with complete regularity, though the 
 dates are prehistoric. The Roumanian pa- 
 pers, however, are fairly well informed. 
 
28 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 Their columns make bewildering study, for 
 the Allies communiques therein rub shoulders 
 with enemy news and offer kaleidoscopic in- 
 formation. 
 
 The Germans in our midst are somewhat 
 officiously en evidence these days, and one 
 cannot deny that their effusive methods of 
 propaganda bear fruit. Sometimes we come 
 face to face with enemy diplomats, intimates 
 often of pre-war days, in some restaurant 
 cloak-room. British, French, Germans and 
 Austrians alike have learnt to don a curious 
 facial expression born of these encounters, 
 which is a mixture of well-bred indifference 
 and a frankly vulgar sneer. One avoids such 
 meetings whenever possible, but tins is a tiny 
 town, and there are but some half-dozen 
 streets where one can walk in comfort. 
 
 At regular intervals some politician in the 
 Chamber makes an inflammatory speech urg- 
 ing participation in the war. Then rumour 
 runs wild, and people begin to whisper 
 over the morning aperitif, the Allied minis- 
 ters are cheered, and influential pro-Germans 
 avoid public appearances in the company of 
 their German friends. But nothing is going 
 to happen here for a long time, nor is it of 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 29 
 
 advantage to our cause that such unknown 
 waters should be prematurely stirred. On 
 every side there echoes the catch- word: 
 "Nous sommes un si petit pays — qui sait ce 
 qui peut nous arriver 1 ' ' 
 
 No one at home can comprehend the com- 
 plete isolation of this country. Straight 
 through Austria and Germany lies the only 
 reliable communication with the Paris they 
 love and honour here as a religion. Rou- 
 mania is not the originator of hypocritical 
 tactics which profess friendship for an enemy 
 so as to keep in touch with that enemy's en- 
 vironment. Social climbers will understand 
 my point. All that Roumanians have to offer 
 of private funds and sympathy they have al- 
 ready given. Not a woman one meets but has 
 a filleul somewhere in the trenches, hardly a 
 man who has no investments in some form of 
 war loan. As a race they may be held to be 
 somewhat flippant, but we have their indi- 
 vidual friendship in return for what we have 
 already given them. Should we offer them 
 more, reserving threats against a possible 
 rejection, they will probably accept it, be- 
 cause they trust us sufficiently to think that 
 they will not be asked too high a price. 
 
30 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 February 1916. — When the snow fell really 
 deep and the surface of it froze, we packed an 
 outfit for winter sport and entrained for the 
 mountains. Sinaia is the obvious resort on 
 these occasions, in the same fashion as it of- 
 fers for the summer a respite from the dog 
 days. The hotels stand open in winter, as 
 does the casino in ordinary years. But this 
 time the war had closed those treacherous 
 doors. 
 
 The hotels are primitive for a country 
 which inclines instinctively towards display 
 of luxury. One cannot even obtain a comfort- 
 able bath. But Roumania borders enough 
 upon Eastern countries to catch rays from 
 their winter sunshine, and it is no hardship 
 to spend long days out of doors. Bobsleighs 
 and skis multiplied with marvellous rapidity, 
 and those amongst us who ignored the possi- 
 bilities of both were invited to go "footing" 
 for miles over the snow. Blue-misted valleys 
 and ravines where mountain water flowed 
 made switchbacks for pointed hills of fir trees, 
 and one recalled obscure parts of Switzer- 
 land, immortalised in guide-books. Villas 
 sprouted everywhere, built in painted wood 
 on the Swiss cottage system, and one was 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 31 
 
 hard put to it to remember that one was in 
 the Balkans. 
 
 Little of import occurred here, but I my- 
 self, who am a maniac for scenery, carried 
 away a mind-picture of the view from Santa 
 Anna mountain, where we enjoyed a moonlit 
 dinner eaten off rugs spread on the snow, 
 and danced to music made by villagers in a 
 wooden hut built to shelter travellers over- 
 nighted on the peak. 
 
 As far as the war was concerned we re- 
 mained passive spectators only, and that at 
 an immense distance. But from Ploesti came 
 the news that the year was to be a record one 
 for petrol output. The Roumanians them- 
 selves are only just beginning to understand 
 how rich they can so easily become; how 
 should outsiders guess it! It appears that 
 on the Austrian frontiers live stock has been 
 surreptitiously sold in large quantities to the 
 enemy. But one can hardly call this treach- 
 ery; the prices offered were stupendous and 
 the traffickers were peasants. Still, the tale 
 is not a pretty one in view of the very strin- 
 gent military laws recently passed, and I am 
 glad to say that the offenders were duly pun- 
 ished. 
 
32 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 March 1916. — We find, on our return to 
 Bucarest, that a British Bureau has been es- 
 tablished for the purchase of large quantities 
 of corn. It is hoped that such a procedure, 
 which will bring vast sums of money into the 
 country, will discourage illegal frontier traf- 
 fic such as has been discovered lately. The 
 town is in an uproar of excitement, for the 
 crops have lain unsold ever since the war 
 started, and many land-owners have suffered 
 financially. Now they are all clamouring for 
 a share in the new market, for the quantity 
 required cannot even begin to affect the over- 
 whelming supply. There is, of course, an 
 absolute impossibility of transporting the 
 purchased grain to England for lack of routes 
 and rolling stock, but it has been planned to 
 store the acquisition all over the land in gran- 
 aries built for and sealed by the British Gov- 
 ernment. All this is very feasible, but one 
 dreads what may happen should Roumania 
 come into the war and fail to stem a German 
 invasion. 
 
 The direct result of the installation of the 
 Corn Bureau has been a wave of popular en- 
 thusiasm for the British. Money talks in all 
 languages, and the British have suddenly 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY $$, 
 
 become almost popular as the French have 
 always been. If only Russia could invent a 
 beau geste of this nature, this country would 
 be completely won. Her great Northern 
 neighbour still inspires this small dependent 
 with a vague mistrust. Realising the situa- 
 tion, one cannot cavil at the existence of such 
 a sentiment. "Were the lines of communica- 
 tion through Austria once closed, Roumania 
 would find herself relying upon one railway 
 line to Petrograd for even the most insignifi- 
 cant requirements of modern life, not to men- 
 tion the whole paraphernalia essential to mod- 
 ern warfare. Beyond a few villages where 
 they have learnt a primitive cotton indus- 
 try, a few leather factories and some alcohol 
 plants, the population produces absolutely 
 nothing except the corn and the oil from out 
 its own mother earth. Meanwhile every ne- 
 cessity reaches quickly and in perfect condi- 
 tion all the gaps where it is required through 
 existing channels, and Roumania wants for 
 nothing, nor will she unless she abandon her 
 neutrality. 
 
 This corn deal will be a nasty blow for the 
 Germans, who have been trying to purchase 
 the stocks for months. It is hardly to be 
 
34 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 expected that they will take it lying down, 
 and I fancy that the Government here will be 
 faced with some unpleasant ultimatums in 
 the near future. One can only hope that a 
 loophole will be found by which this country 
 can establish for itself a still firmer neutral- 
 ity. Even those patriots who are most 
 anxious for immediate participation in the 
 war are obliged to admit that nothing is as 
 yet prepared. It is rumoured that the next 
 important political step here will be a general 
 mobilisation. Only when that is well over 
 will there be a possibility of looking round 
 and seeing definitely what is going to be 
 needed. The army is growing rather restless, 
 and waking from a sleep of infancy to watch 
 interestedly the games of older children. It 
 is the best way to learn, but it takes a long 
 time, and I am not sure that there will be time 
 enough. 
 
 April 1916. — Spring has come, quite sud- 
 denly, and we have routed out dusty cup- 
 boards for tennis racquets. There is a scarc- 
 ity of balls, which spoils our form. None 
 are allowed to come through Russia, and the 
 inferior quality of the few Austrian ones re- 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 35 
 
 ceived can be directly traced to a German 
 shortage of rubber. 
 
 Racing has begun, and we drive out every 
 Sunday, dressed in our best, to bet a little, 
 stroll a little and drink a little tea. 
 
 The whole earth seems to have cracked in 
 the same manner as do the buds on trees, 
 showing an unclercovering of delicate green, 
 which is the sprouting corn. The peasants 
 who work there are mostly women, for the 
 army has in very truth been mobilised, and 
 all the men are away digging trenches on 
 the Austrian and Bulgarian frontiers. Rou- 
 mania has entered the war in all but the ac- 
 tual declaration, and now it only remains to 
 be seen whether an open outbreak of hostili- 
 ties can be sufficiently delayed for the best to 
 be made of her very considerable assets of 
 enthusiasm and men. Several little incidents 
 have occurred lately to prove how near we 
 are to conflagration. 
 
 When the annual bazaar was held for the 
 benefit of the Sisters of Charity, the wife of 
 the Austrian minister received quantities of 
 anonymous letters warning her that, if she 
 held her annual stall, it would be boycotted 
 and that she herself would probably be in- 
 
36 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 suited. The happening was not in the best 
 of taste and one deplores it openly, but finds 
 therein considerable satisfaction neverthe- 
 less. And the German representative was 
 threatened with a thrashing at the club. 
 Fewer German propaganda leaflets have flut- 
 tered lately, and the well-known Roumanian 
 pro-Germans are keeping very quiet and are 
 seldom visible. 
 
 As a country, however, and in the eyes of 
 International Law, Roumania is still neutral, 
 and Germany is letting sleeping dogs lie for 
 some reason of her own. It is only a question 
 of months now as to when the crash will 
 come, and we are beginning, for the first 
 time, to envisage it seriously. I have been 
 making tentative inquiries as to the Red 
 Cross supplies existing, and find them most 
 woefully inadequate for the kind of need 
 there will be. The hospitals are undeniably 
 primitive. A few private individuals are pre- 
 paring Red Cross equipments and beds on 
 their estates, but such amateur efforts can 
 only provide accommodation for a very lim- 
 ited number of the wounded who arrive in 
 hundreds from a modern battle-field. And 
 they could prove no more than comfortable 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 37 
 
 convalescent homes at best, from the nature 
 of their distance from the capital and the lack 
 of railway communications. 
 
 The existing political situation makes any 
 form of preparation extraordinarily difficult, 
 and Russia is chary of giving real transport 
 help and facilities until the moment arrives 
 for Roumania to be her open ally. The 
 whole makes for a vicious circle singularly 
 difficult to evade. For Germany will be 
 obliged to act promptly and brutally on the 
 day that open hostility is declared, yet no real 
 help can be given here until such a declara- 
 tion is made. We indulge, however, in 
 numerous surreptitious activities and hope 
 for the best, although disquieting thoughts 
 are born when one pictures the future and all 
 that it may hold for us of tragedy. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 May 1916.— The National Fete, the 23rd 
 of May, marked the middle of the month, and 
 a great review was held. Troops arrived in 
 train-loads from all over the country for days 
 beforehand and were billeted on the towns- 
 folk. Despite the fact that all except the 
 actual Guards regiments turned out in sober 
 field equipment, which is grey-green in colour 
 over here, I have never seen a spectacle that 
 offered such a wonderful example of kinema- 
 colour. Perhaps this was due to the fact that 
 everything was so perfect and so small. The 
 field-pieces almost glittered for the polishing 
 which had been their lot, and all the ponies 
 had been carefully selected to match the 
 colour schemes of their various detachments. 
 The ceremony took place in the morning on 
 the length of the Chaussee. Tents and 
 stands had been built in the night, and were 
 thronged with spectators come, not to judge 
 of worth, but to admire their relations. 
 
 38 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 39 
 
 Herein they found full justification, for it 
 must be admitted, both as an example of 
 individual physical perfection and as a mili- 
 tary force, the Roumanian army calls for re- 
 spect. The standard is so high that it has 
 become a danger, for one is inclined to forget 
 the one crushing and unavoidable limitation 
 of individual numbers. All the military 
 science of the world cannot make more men 
 than the population of a country is compe- 
 tent to offer, and what are tens of thousands 
 sent to battlefields where one has learnt to 
 count the casualties in millions? King, 
 Queen and Crown Prince rode at the head 
 of their regiments and looked their best in 
 uniform. The whole was a very lovely spec- 
 tacle, but did not stand for warfare as it 
 has developed during the last two years. 
 When the beautiful little motor ambulances 
 rolled past, gleaming with new coats of paint 
 where red crosses caught the sunlight, the 
 crowd was heard to murmur: "How wonder- 
 fully equipped is our army; even the details 
 are perfect." But we others who had seen 
 the wounded arrive from Mons watched si- 
 lently and went home very thoughtful. 
 
 There are three classes of hospitals in 
 
40 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 Bucarest : about a dozen permanent and well 
 organised, attended by first-class surgeons. 
 These have existed contemporaneously with 
 the army and were instituted on French mili- 
 tary lines, so as to be prepared for war, 
 should war, by any chance, break out. In 
 peace time they serve as sanatoriums and 
 civilian hospitals, and we all go there when 
 we are ill. Then there are about ten auxil- 
 iary hospitals, which have sprung into being 
 quite lately and which are in the process of 
 organisation. They are awaiting stores and 
 supplies from home, and will probably be in 
 working order by the time that war comes to 
 us, provided, of course, that their stock ar- 
 rives satisfactorily. What they lack are effi- 
 cient doctors and nurses. Of the former there 
 are a few, mostly students who have done 
 superficial training in Germany or in France. 
 There are no nurses at all. Even those who 
 work in the established institutions are Rou- 
 manian amateurs now, because the women 
 who originally ran them were Germans, who 
 have lately been recalled to their own coun- 
 try. The Catholic nuns are really the most 
 efficient amongst them, but they are limited in 
 number and barely suffice for their own small 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 41 
 
 charity concern, which has existed for years 
 and which is financed by their Order in 
 France. The third class consists of all the 
 supplementary adjuncts that are springing 
 up daily all over the land, on private estates, 
 in schools, and in private houses belonging to 
 rich people in Bucarest. These are purely 
 temporary concerns, and do not pretend to 
 be anything else. In many cases only the 
 covering sheds exist, so as to give them an 
 excuse for a registration number. Beds and 
 stores have, naturally, been ordered, but the 
 people who are at the head of them are pri- 
 vate individuals, and consequently ignorant 
 of the first principles of medical require- 
 ments. Even the greatest optimists amongst 
 us cannot count on them as anything but 
 primitive dressing-stations for the future. I 
 think that everybody has at last realised the 
 very urgent need for preparation and reor- 
 ganisation which has held fire so long, but it 
 is by no means easy to know where to begin. 
 One cannot embark upon satisfactory activi- 
 ties when one is as lacking as we are in every 
 form of material. Germany and Austria, who 
 supply Roumania with all that she requires 
 for industrial purposes, can obviously not be 
 
42 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 approached for these, her greater needs. 
 And the Russian routes remain defiantly 
 closed to all except the very irregular trans- 
 mission of mails. A few small parcels arrive 
 by letter post, but Roumania needs many 
 shiploads of everything, from chloroform to 
 aeroplanes, before she can even begin to con- 
 sider their distribution. 
 
 The tragedy of the whole thing is that, 
 whereas the country as a whole has compre- 
 hended the universal shortage, few indi- 
 viduals can be found to embark upon ener- 
 getic measures for finding a solution to the 
 problem of supplies. One hears talk of bat- 
 tles and sees them on the brink of participa- 
 tion, knowing the while that little short of 
 disaster can come of it under the present 
 circumstances. The historic British motto 
 of: "It will all be all right in the end," is 
 inspiring only for countries strong enough to 
 survive preliminary blows and to deliver the 
 hardest hits in the last round. We have the 
 uncomfortable feeling born of living very 
 near a volcano which is going to erupt. 
 
 Personally I cannot understand why the 
 Germans are standing what they are getting 
 out here. They seem to have accepted the 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 43 
 
 facts of the corn deal, which is now an ac- 
 complished transaction. The corn is stored 
 in British granaries and the money has 
 changed hands. Consequently many people 
 who have been comparatively poor for two 
 years have suddenly become wealthy again, 
 and find the condition pleasant. They re- 
 joice quite openly over what they describe as 
 Roumania 's ' ' entry, ' ' and can leave the Ger- 
 mans no vestige of doubt as to their antago- 
 nism. 
 
 These outbursts of enthusiasm are occa- 
 sionally tempered by the fact that we get 
 little Allied news of the outside world. The 
 facts of the German repulse at Verdun leaked 
 through to us, however, and helped to destroy 
 attempts to maintain the fiction of Rou- 
 manian neutrality. One small section of 
 society remains as openly "Boche" as it has 
 always been. The business men who go to 
 make it dabble in political intrigue and occa- 
 sionally worry us by spreading rumours that 
 the Government is to be evicted, but they are 
 not very convincing and their propaganda is 
 too obvious. There can be hardly any doubt 
 now as to the direction in which we are rap- 
 idly moving. 
 
44 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 A large party of British Red Cross nurses 
 and doctors from Bulgaria recently passed 
 through Bucarest. They had been released 
 from a six months ' captivity which had been 
 their lot ever since the Bulgarian invasion 
 of Serbia. They told almost incredible tales 
 of the horrors of that campaign, and the look 
 in their eyes gave evidence which disproved 
 the possibility of exaggeration. Here they 
 received a most enthusiastic welcome and 
 were pressed to remain. But they only spent 
 three days, and then we saw them steam 
 northwards along the single railway line to 
 Petrograd and home. I must confess that I 
 saw lightning pictures of ourselves doing like- 
 wise and under similar circumstances in a 
 few months' time. 
 
 Our days are spent in drawing up lists and 
 posting them to England of things which we 
 are likely to require. They are so vast that 
 one becomes discouraged. But a beginning 
 must be made. Whether the things will ever 
 reach us remains to be seen, but anything is 
 better than inactivity, which is what we all 
 suffer from nowadays. This eternal waiting 
 for something to happen is bad for the nerves, 
 and yet it is inevitable. The longer we can 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 45 
 
 be left in peace "to wait," the better it will 
 be for us all. 
 
 June 1916. — The heat is almost overpower- 
 ing, but Bucarest is full. Many are the rea- 
 sons invented as excuses for staying on in 
 this sun-trap of heat-cracked plaster and 
 dusty green; nevertheless we all know quite 
 well why we are still here. War is spoken 
 of openly, and the only thing that is inexpli- 
 cable is the wherefore of this tarrying. 
 
 The Russian frontier has been closed for 
 the last three weeks even to English mails. 
 It is hinted that prodigious movements of 
 troops are responsible, and that is satisfac- 
 tory, for it has been officially recognised that 
 Roumania is unable to take her first step 
 alone. "We chafe impotently against the con- 
 sequent suspension of all news which is not 
 telegraphic from the outer world. So very 
 probable is it that our English papers could 
 give us more reliable information about the 
 local situation than we who are on the spot 
 can obtain ourselves. One would suppose 
 that, in a small town like this, any important 
 happening such as an official pronouncement 
 or a definite development in the critical sit- 
 uation would emanate immediately from 
 
46 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 obvious and reliable sources and become pub- 
 licly known, but this is by no means the case. 
 Here we are told only the scantiest of details, 
 and the little we hear is only rumour of the 
 wildest kind. During the last month it has 
 even been whispered that Roumania is going 
 to "go German" at the last minute, and that 
 all her preparation is for the supreme be- 
 trayal. But we can afford to laugh at such 
 a monstrous accusation, for she is definitely 
 committed in a hundred ways, and the evi- 
 dence of our own eyes is the most direct con- 
 tradiction of such a possibility as that we 
 could desire. 
 
 The Government still talk of neutrality and 
 affect a purely local preoccupation with home 
 politics. These latter, however, are purely 
 the result of opposing German and Allied 
 interests, and the pro-Germans are in an 
 individual minority, hopeless, despite the for- 
 midable support which money brings them. 
 
 I hear it openly discussed that the first 
 Roumanian move will be a gigantic forward 
 movement into Transylvania. From this 
 country's point of view, the world-war will 
 obtain its participation from one ambition 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 47 
 
 alone, and that the conquest of territories 
 which are hers by blood ties and heritage. 
 
 Oh dear ! This waiting is nervous work. I 
 feel that I must do something active or take 
 refuge in a sleeping draught. We are now 
 informed that all is ready, but that nothing 
 can happen until the Russian troops arrive. 
 Certainly there is no sign of them yet. Mean- 
 while every day sees new outbursts of mili- 
 tary activity in the town and in the suburbs. 
 Troops march through in hundreds, and 
 I cannot believe that the Germans are igno- 
 rant of all that is toward. On the other hand, 
 if they know that war is spoken of as 
 a question of weeks, perhaps of days, why 
 on earth don't they assert themselves, in- 
 stead of pretending to believe implicitly the 
 reiterated official protestations of complete 
 neutrality? One can only conclude that they 
 are lying in wait for us in some unpleasant 
 fashion, and that is not a comforting 
 thought. Only one thing is certain, and that 
 is the break which is coming. This state of 
 things cannot possibly last much longer. The 
 fuse has been lighted. 
 
 July 1916. — A month has passed and we are 
 still here, still neutral, still on tenterhooks. 
 
48 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 There is no news from Russia, but troops are 
 said to have crossed the Danube. 
 
 All the ladies have been requested to report 
 themselves at the Headquarters of the Rou- 
 manian Red Cross. We Englishwomen can 
 go and work where we like, and I have offered 
 myself to one of the big military hospitals. 
 I was asked whether I had ever done any 
 nursing, and was obliged to give a negative 
 reply. But I was told that it "did not 
 matter, ' ' my hands would be useful. I work 
 there feverishly every day trying to accumu- 
 late as much knowledge and nursing informa- 
 tion as is possible. Nurses are even more 
 completely non-existent than I had realised. 
 There is not a woman in the place who knows 
 the first principles of hospital training such 
 as we have in England, and I feel just as com- 
 petent as are any of the others to use lavish 
 quantities of disinfectants and to do exactly 
 as I am told. The doctor who is to be my 
 immediate chief is a very clever man; he 
 knows how to teach me my job, and now it is 
 only a question of time. 
 
 The days fly past. Each evening the con- 
 flagration seems inevitable within the next 
 twenty-four hours, every morning sees us 
 
A EOUMANIAN DIARY 49 
 
 sunk in apathy and summer stupor. And the 
 heat is indescribable. We avoid meeting peo- 
 ple ; where 's the use ? They know now more 
 than we do ourselves, and talking about the 
 situation only aggravates the tension. 
 
CHAPTEE IV 
 
 August 1916. — War is really coming. Our 
 street to-day looks quite martial; there is a 
 remount office at the end of it, and streams 
 of men go in and out there all the time. We 
 have been warned that all the telegraph wires 
 to Austria-Hungary will be cut to-morrow. 
 Of this the enemy envoys, apparently, know 
 nothing. There is to be a Crown Council 
 to-morrow night to deal with final private 
 affairs, though it is hoped that the Germans 
 will regard it as the terrified result of a 
 haughty ultimatum which they sent Rou- 
 mania this week. The attack is planned for 
 to-morrow. Things are getting exciting, but 
 one still hesitates to credit that the moment 
 has come at last. 
 
 It is said that our first taste of warfare 
 will be an aerial bombardment. I have or- 
 dered water to be kept in all the bath-tubs 
 from to-day forward, and am having a tap 
 connection provided between the garden hose 
 
 50 
 
A EOUMANIAN DIARY 51 
 
 and the pantry. All the blankets are piled in 
 the front hall. Perhaps in this manner we 
 can ensure a slight protection against fire. 
 
 The Roumanians are not over-confident. 
 In fact, they don't expect to begin by win- 
 ning. They say there will be reverses, losses 
 near the Danube towns ; this because the Rus- 
 sians have not yet arrived and may come 
 rather late. But the General Staff holds to 
 the bait of Transylvania, and means to gam- 
 ble high. 
 
 We sent out for the newspapers to-day and 
 were told that publication was prohibited, 
 presumably for fear of possible leakage about 
 the attack, which aims at being a surprise 
 one. Many of the houses where important 
 personages live are watched. Now we just 
 sit and wait for news from the first Rou- 
 manian front. The words seem strange as I 
 write them. It sounds queer somehow, and 
 horrible when I picture further and imagine 
 what lies ahead of us. No one at home can 
 understand the weak fear that undermines 
 the morale of those who live in "Little Coun- 
 tries." Our soldiers fight with cannon, these 
 men mostly with their hands, and they have 
 only two each. And there are no great fac- 
 
52 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 tories behind them crashing out ammunition ; 
 they are dependent upon train supplies over 
 an independable route. Oh yes ! it will soon 
 be brought home to us, this war, which has 
 only meant words to us women in England, 
 where the Zeppelin raids were the only mate- 
 rial taste we got. 
 
 The prolonged waiting is hard. There is 
 little harder. It's like watching an accident 
 avoided — or happen. I personally have never 
 been frightened, and don 't know at all how I 
 should behave in a systematic bombardment. 
 Our two little red English fire-squirts, bought 
 a long while previously in a German shop, 
 look singularly small and pathetic, and I 
 cannot help wishing that they were bigger! 
 I have packed the silver away, also the china. 
 I have tried to busy myself all day with ab- 
 surd superfluities, and all the time I find 
 myself listening. . . . 
 
 Oh, I do hope that I'll have the luck to live 
 through this war ; it would be such bad luck 
 not to ! But out here there is no reason why 
 any one should. Three German aeroplanes or 
 one Zeppelin could play hell with this little 
 town of trees and plaster. And Bulgaria is 
 only one hour's flight away! However, to sit 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 53 
 
 and wait here for a year, anticipating war, 
 and then to be extinguished promptly by a 
 Bulgarian bomb, would be an injustice un- 
 worthy of the Almighty. It is really only 
 an impersonal desire to be in at the finish, 
 not the wish to live, that prompts these 
 words. 
 
 Later. — Hurrah! the die is cast. All the 
 telephone wires have been cut, the enemy 
 envoys are to be packed off this evening, and 
 mobilisation for active service begins at mid- 
 night. We have already been declared "un- 
 der martial law." War will be declared in 
 Vienna, a little bit late, by the Roumanian 
 minister. I met the German minister here 
 walking towards his Legation this morning, 
 and wanted to make a face at him. That is 
 the way one feels. 
 
 Later. — Well! the passes are half taken, 
 wounded are coming in, also prisoners. It 
 is really war, and I am really in it ! ! ! 
 
 Bucarest is quite calm. Orders have come 
 round to extinguish all the lights in view of 
 the Zeppelin raids which have actually begun. 
 I had only one little green light burning in 
 my house last night when the first one was 
 signalled, and the police came and told me to 
 
54 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 put it out. I was so snubbed that I did not 
 attempt a candle, and sat through the raid 
 in the dark. 
 
 All the church bells rang wildly when the 
 signal came through, and the guns were 
 infernal, popping like mad. I counted 
 twelve searchlights and tried to believe in the 
 actuality of the happening, but honestly, if I 
 had not hurt myself by bumping into a tin 
 trunk in the dark, I should feel to-day as if I 
 had dreamt the whole thing. One thing, how- 
 ever, struck me forcibly, and will remain as a 
 humorous recollection until I die: in this 
 quiet town, lying peacefully under a starlit 
 heaven with no sound of traffic to spoil the 
 silence, the sound that deafened us was not 
 the shooting, but the dogs!! Thousands of 
 them barked, every age and size of yap imag- 
 inable, and I pictured them all with 
 surprised, stiff noses, furious and impotent. 
 They caught a nest of spies signalling to the 
 Zepp, and we are expecting another raid to- 
 night, as the first was probably only a trial 
 trip. I hope they won't come daily, though 
 there is nothing to prevent it — our aerial de- 
 fences are decidedly primitive. These visita- 
 tions upset one 's sleep. Only five bombs were 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 55 
 
 dropped last night, and I feel somehow as 
 if they were reserving themselves for some- 
 thing really nasty. 
 
 There was no butter to-day for breakfast, 
 but we were very cheerful about it, because 
 we heard that a big tunnel has been taken 
 intact on the Precleal line, which ensures the 
 army communications. It had been feared 
 that the Austrians would destroy it. I sup- 
 pose that they had no time; still, one hopes 
 that it will not prove to have been a ruse that 
 they did not do so. These soldiers are new to 
 warfare and the enemy is not. It would be 
 disastrous if local successes went to their 
 heads. 
 
 September 1916. — All is still safe and 
 quiet ; so far we have not even had food diffi- 
 culties. Zepps crossed the Danube last night 
 and were signalled here, but there was too 
 much wind for them, presumably, for they 
 never arrived. 
 
 I have fallen into regular hospital routine, 
 and have been given charge of one of the 
 pavilions into which our own institution is 
 divided. Needless to say that I feel singu- 
 larly incompetent, but am bound to acknowl- 
 edge that it had become a matter of neces- 
 
56 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 sity to put some reliable person at the head 
 of each. Most of the women who work there 
 are young girls who have no notion of respon- 
 sibility or method. They do not know enough 
 to take the most ordinary of sanitary precau- 
 tions. I go at breakfast time every day till 
 late at night, and only get home for lunch, 
 and supper in the middle of the night. 
 
 Everybody is in the highest spirits; the 
 Roumanian advance is almost brilliant, and 
 one can hardly credit the communiques that 
 come in, they are so splendid. Nevertheless 
 I can't help feeling that this nation has not 
 the faintest conception of the horrid things 
 that might happen to it should things, by any 
 chance, begin to go wrong ; and the start has 
 really been too one-sided. 
 
 Later. — It has been a wild twenty-four 
 hours ! To-day, at three o 'clock on a sunny 
 afternoon, I drove back to my hospital. In 
 the open market-place, which is the half-way 
 house, I noticed all the people looking up and 
 gesticulating, and then for half an hour I 
 was really in the war, for there were six 
 Taubes overhead all dropping bombs. 
 
 As we neared the hospital shrapnel began 
 to fall. The bombs, of course, fell all round. 
 
A EOUMANIAN DIARY 57 
 
 I picked up one man wounded and uncon- 
 scious and took him on with me in the car. 
 A woman was killed at the gate of the hos- 
 pital and one man died on the doorstep. 
 There are barracks just near by, and all the 
 soldiers got out of hand and fired their rifles 
 madly in all directions. Two men wounded 
 by their own comrades were carried in to us 
 afterwards. We settled down to work, and 
 had three operations between four and seven. 
 Just as we were preparing to go home 
 stretchers began to come in from different 
 parts of the town where bombs had fallen. I 
 wired home not to expect me till they saw me, 
 and we worked on till 9.30, when all the oper- 
 ations were over. The wounded were all over 
 the town, and all the other hospitals filled up 
 too. The casualties were thirty dead and 
 over a hundred wounded, for the streets were 
 crowded when the Taubes came. The beasts 
 flew round and round, thus hardly a quarter 
 of the town escaped. All our airmen had 
 gone to the front. I suspect spies of having 
 informed the enemy; there was nothing to 
 stop them and they did just what they liked. 
 They flew very very low, and I saw the pilot 's 
 face in one quite plainly as he turned. I got 
 
58 A EOUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 home to find that five large pieces of shrapnel 
 had fallen in the garden. Apparently the 
 confusion in the town whilst the actual raid 
 was going on was terrific. The troops lost 
 their heads and fired quite aimlessly, killing 
 men and women before they could be 
 stopped. 
 
 One couldn't be excited in the hospital, 
 there was no time. If a doctor is cutting off 
 things and calls out "pansement" or "acquae 
 lacta" like a pistol-shot at you, you somehow 
 find it even if you don't know what it is. 
 One just works without the faintest under- 
 standing of what one is doing. After it was 
 all over we collapsed, and sat in the model 
 hospital kitchen with a petrol cooking-lamp 
 for our only light (the electric light had been 
 turned off at the main and we operated by 
 candle illumination only), and drank hot tea 
 and Zwicka and tried to recover. I don't 
 feel that it is over yet; we shall have them 
 back before the morning. They have only an 
 hour to fly for more bombs. But twice in 
 twenty-four hours is rather hard on one's 
 nerves; and I forgot to say that they came 
 last night too, but I was too sleepy to get up 
 and listen. 
 
Sifting the Gkain 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 59 
 
 It was a pretty sight to-day with the puffs 
 of white smoke like cigarette rings against 
 the blue sky, a curious contrast to the ter- 
 rorised faces round. The bombs fell abso- 
 lutely all round the hospital, but did not hit 
 it, thank God! The populace is raging, and 
 will probably lynch some German women who 
 are still allowed to be at large. All the men 
 are, of course, interned, in the hotels. It has 
 been a bit too strenuous with the hospital 
 work thrown in, but it is exhilarating to watch 
 the men recover. Up till now they are get- 
 ting on splendidly in pavilion number four. 
 We have over a hundred. 
 
 Later. — They came again last night — six 
 Taubes. That makes three visits in twenty- 
 four hours. I was too worn out to move, 
 though the whole house shook and the thuds 
 sounded uncomfortably close. This morning 
 I am told that they were all round us, and that 
 the rest of the household spent the night in 
 the cellar. I think that I had the best of it. 
 I remember thinking to myself : "If it is go- 
 ing to happen I had rather be asleep," but 
 I was really too weary to care. When one 
 has stood for six and a half hours watching 
 people under chloroform one does not mind 
 
60 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 what happens after. My feet were wrapped 
 in alcohol bandages, they were so sore, and 
 it would have taken the whole German army 
 to move me. 
 
 I was sent for very early by my doctor 
 chief and we worked feverishly, the surgeons 
 only half dressed in their uniform, myself in 
 ordinary clothes, as there was no time to get 
 into overalls. Twenty women and children 
 are laid out in the mortuary. I have ceased 
 to be affected by corpses, but I hate amputa- 
 tions. To-day, whilst we were operating, an 
 actor who helps stood holding an artery in a 
 pair of tweezers whilst the doctor tied, and 
 suddenly said : ' ' Shakespeare was right when 
 he said " and then he spouted in Rou- 
 manian the passage about " losing one's 
 digits is worse than losing one's life." 
 
 On the way home I drove past a house 
 where live some friends of mine. They had a 
 most wonderful escape in the night; fortu- 
 nately all are alive, no one knows why. Three 
 bombs must have hit their house, which was 
 all dropping to bits, and all the windows were 
 blown into the rooms, and one wooden bed 
 looked like a sort of fancy pincushion as a 
 result. Every single thing except the four 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 61 
 
 people who lived there were shattered, a huge 
 hole gaped in each bedroom, and there were 
 apertures in the walls made by bits of the 
 pavement forced in from outside. 
 
 It had ceased to be surprising this after- 
 noon when those devils flew back to us again 
 just after we had got to the hospital after 
 lunch and were well started on an operation ! 
 But this time we nearly had a panic with the 
 wounded. I stayed on in the ward with the 
 helpless cases, for they said: "If you will 
 stay with us, we are not afraid.' ' The lightly 
 wounded were sent to the cellar. 
 
 As I write it is about 6.30, and, according 
 to the time the Taubes take to reload, they 
 should be back by seven. I worked out the 
 ethics of one's feelings towards them to-day 
 at lunch and came to the conclusion that: 
 (1) if one is killed one does not mind; (2) if 
 one is wounded one only minds for a time; 
 and (3) if one is neither one minds less. But 
 something from outside should be done to 
 help us, for this has become a bombarded 
 town and is defenceless. Our own aeroplanes 
 are needed at the front, but some French avi- 
 ators are expected to-day, which will make us 
 feel a little safer. The hospital, standing as 
 
62 A EOUMANIAN DIAEY 
 
 it does in the centre of a military quarter, is 
 an objective for the raids, and I must hon- 
 estly confess that I don't like going back 
 there a bit. But we now have a dozen really 
 serious cases which require hard nursing, and 
 one knows that if one did not go perhaps no 
 one else would. 
 
 The peasant soldiers who are brought back 
 wounded from the front are paralysed with 
 terror born of ignorance of the operating- 
 table. But the convalescents help the morale, 
 for they tell the others that "operation is 
 good," and the poor wretches have begun to 
 plead for c ' operation at once. ' ' I have heard 
 some say: "Please, doctor, cut it off; do not 
 try to save it," but so far he has rescued a 
 lot of limbs by waiting. He himself, natu- 
 rally, is learning daily, and I have heard him 
 pronounce that "if he saves that leg, he will 
 believe in anything." Morale makes three- 
 quarters of a victory: the men, who are all 
 children, say wistfully : "If you say that arm 
 is all right, I will take the soup and go to 
 sleep. ' ' Yesterday two men cried because the 
 doctor postponed their operations till to-mor- 
 row, and one of the three who were to be 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 63 
 
 treated at once had a nervous collapse from 
 pure fright. 
 
 It is all so wonderful to me! To see the 
 big muscles cut away and through, to see a 
 horrible wound grow daily less painful in- 
 stead of a life lost through gangrene. A man 
 pumping blood three days ago from a main 
 artery is to-day eating heartily and getting 
 well. Contrary to all existing regulations, I 
 have procured permission to give hot tea and 
 a cigarette after the operations when the men 
 ask for it themselves and no active injury can 
 result. It saves their morale and quietens 
 their nerves. They have the wonderful re- 
 cuperative power of undeveloped nervous 
 systems, and many can stand almost anything 
 without anaesthetics. 
 
 Curious ! A month ago I felt faint when I 
 saw blood or smelt a nasty smell. 
 
 Later. — The aviators have come and there 
 was no raid last night, but we got no sleep, 
 for we are creatures of habit and missed the 
 noise. It is now 7.30 a.m., and they ought 
 to be with us soon. The town is restless and 
 shows signs of panic. Our servants rush to 
 the cellar whenever the alarm bells ring to 
 say that the Taubes have crossed the Dan- 
 
64 A EOUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 ube. This is the new system : when the bells 
 have spoken no one is allowed out. They 
 sounded this morning very early, and we 
 are sitting expecting a raid at any minute. 
 As a matter of fact — there they are ! ! ! 
 
 Later, — One bomb fell over our garden wall 
 and smashed all the kitchen windows. I 
 chased round the house to see the departing 
 Taube's tails. The household is in the cellar, 
 for the noise is still going on. Here they are, 
 the raiders, coming back, according to sound 
 — no, they are off again. The aeroplanes 
 carry about six or eight bombs each, so if one 
 can locate six or eight crashes to each ma- 
 chine in sight, you can feel more or less peace- 
 ful for a few hours. The day raids are the 
 easiest to manage ; one can see the way they 
 are going and make for the opposite direc- 
 tion. 
 
 People have been hurt quite near our 
 house ; a bomb fell in the street just where I 
 can't see the place from my window, killing 
 three and wounding two who passed there. 
 
 A very shaky domestic has just carried up 
 my breakfast. Personally I don't like the 
 cellar, and prefer a part of the house where 
 I can see and move about. The raid was a 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 65 
 
 short one and is already over. I presume 
 that our aviators went up and did some 
 chasing. 
 
 Later. — I went round to the hospital to find 
 that a patient had been killed in his bed in 
 pavilion number three. The men there are 
 clamouring to be moved, and if this sort of 
 thing goes on the whole place will have to 
 be evacuated, though there is no alternative 
 site where greater safety can be provided. 
 But a panic would be fatal. It would spread 
 to the town and bring about a rush for the 
 trains. 
 
 The streets did not offer a pretty sight. 
 Several dead horses lay about, and a horse 
 bleeds prolificacy. 
 
 It's an odd life ; one has to think how many 
 are standing it hourly in the trenches. No 
 one can realise a real air bombardment until 
 they have been in it any more than I did 
 before I saw it. I know now what the Bible 
 meant when it told us that a " heart turned 
 to water/ ' I am frankly frightened, and had 
 no appetite for lunch! 
 
 Later. — We have had two days' peace and 
 feel much better, but my nerve has decidedly 
 gone. It's seeing the wounded that does it. 
 
66 A EOUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 One does not realise the horrors properly un- 
 til a raid is well over. Three of the poor 
 legless fellows who were brought into the 
 hospital died. I am trying to console myself 
 with the remaining one, who will recover. 
 The man who works a quick-firer in the 
 hospital grounds blew his own stomach out 
 and a child was killed beside him. They lay 
 there for a day before they were found. 
 Three men were blown to bits in another pa- 
 vilion. I think that the Red Cross flags 
 should be taken down ; it is obvious that the 
 Germans try for them. 
 
 Undoubtedly the enemy are well informed, 
 because they always manage to come in force 
 when our own fliers are away. They are 
 scared of the Frenchmen and have never 
 given them a chance. Apparently the night 
 raids are the work of a Zeppelin and the six 
 Taubes only come by day. They can see this 
 town as easily as a map in the hand. 
 
 Zepp and Taube bombs behave differently, 
 and procedure for avoiding them is contra- 
 dictory. At least this is my own theory. 
 The latter are small and pointed and timed, 
 they pierce the floor and explode downstairs, 
 so one climbs away from them; the former 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 67 
 
 explode on contact, so one makes for the 
 underground. But night time is the time for 
 sleep, and one really prefers to trust to luck 
 when one is tired out. So far we have been 
 lucky. 
 
 Later. — After forty-eight hours of peace 
 they came again, the six Taubes. But this 
 time it was simply a very amusing entertain- 
 ment. As luck would have it our French 
 airmen are at home, and the chase went right 
 over our heads. Apparently they feel so safe 
 that they come unarmed, and they were 
 driven about distractedly all over the town 
 and never dropped a bomb. Unfortunately 
 we have, as yet, no fast machines, and they 
 all got away; but, Lord! how they did have 
 to hustle! 
 
 The Red Cross flags have been removed 
 from all the hospitals, and the men are slowly 
 regaining their nerve. The doctor and I 
 carry harmless doses of bromide and dole it 
 out to people who look as if they need it. 
 Somehow I don't think that we shall have 
 many more of these attacks. It was so obvi- 
 ous to-day that the enemy were demoralised 
 by even the mildest show of resistance. 
 
68 A ROUMANIAN DIAEY 
 
 Later. — The warnings we get are beginning 
 to bore us. We bad two to-day and no raid. 
 There are so many preparation whistles and 
 then so many calming whistles that one is 
 liable to get mixed np. I was in my bath 
 with one and doing my hair with the other. 
 I did not hurry over either performance. 
 One is accustomed to anything nowadays, and 
 the French airmen give one a feeling of 
 security. 
 
 One of them had an unfortunate experi- 
 ence to-day. He was flying home in the twi- 
 light, back from a little private "strafe," and 
 travelling very low. The Roumanian soldiers 
 fired at him under the impression that he 
 was a solitary raider. He had to come down, 
 and the populace set upon him with sticks 
 and beat his head in and broke his jaw before 
 they realised their mistake. 
 
 The news from our front is rather vague. 
 In fact, we have had none just lately. The 
 last that we heard was that the Roumanians 
 had a firm hold in Transylvania and that all 
 was going well. But that was a week ago, 
 and there has been nothing since. 
 
 One cannot help feeling just a little wor- 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 69 
 
 ried. However, there is nothing to do except 
 stick to one's own particular job. 
 
 All the wounded in my pavilion call me 
 "Little Mother" now, and I have grown to 
 love each individual man. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 October 1916. — I have not had the heart to 
 keep this diary for the last few weeks, the 
 situation has so completely changed. Our 
 air-raid excitements (which, by. the way, 
 have completely stopped) seem to have faded 
 into absolute insignificance and into a very 
 distant past when one still had a sense of 
 humour. 
 
 But it was all too true. The Germans were 
 just — waiting. Waiting their own time, and 
 that time came. We hardly know ourselves 
 what has happened or how far and fast our 
 army has retreated, but we know that things 
 are very serious from the complete absence 
 of reliable news. 
 
 We are told that French and British offi- 
 cers are coming. They may save us yet, but 
 they must come soon. Some of the Rou- 
 manians were splendid. These the peasant 
 sons of peasant warriors who fought and won 
 through in the days when war was war, not 
 
 70 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 71 
 
 massacre. They are uncivilised enough to re- 
 member the fighting science taught them in 
 folk-songs : ' ' Strike — strike hard ! ' ' 
 
 The arrival of a French command may 
 still save the capital, but one doubts it, for 
 the passes are obviously falling with incred- 
 ible rapidity, and the wounded are coming in 
 in hundreds. 
 
 We now have thirty-five cases in each of 
 our wards, planned to hold fifteen. They are 
 packed like herrings, poor wretches, and lying 
 two in a bed. We keep one room for gan- 
 grene cases; but what is one room? And 
 there is no real operating-hall ! Still one does 
 the best one can. And the doctor is a hero. 
 
 It was inaccurate to say that the air raids 
 are over — only they have become so unim- 
 portant that one forgets them. They have 
 slackened tremendously, and our air defences 
 have been made more or less up to date. 
 Yesterday, for instance, twenty bombs were 
 dropped near the station and did no damage. 
 On the other hand, an enemy machine was 
 brought down near the suburbs — the others 
 all made off into the sunset. 
 
 Almost all the recent arrivals in the hos- 
 pital have been operation cases. We are 
 
72 A EOUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 treating three trepanned heads, and all are 
 going to live and think again. Sometimes I 
 can hardly credit the fact that this woman, 
 indifferent to blood and white bones and gan- 
 grene horrors, is myself. I had been inside 
 one hospital in my life, and that when I 
 was the person who was ill. One of the men 
 in pavilion four has lost his knee-bone, but 
 there is a possibility, apparently, of screwing 
 one on. Another has a beautiful new jaw of 
 gutta-percha. Once we saw him smile, and 
 the whole room rocked with the laughter of 
 the others. But the doctor and I are very 
 proud of him. 
 
 On the whole, if it were not so tragic, 
 things would be rather funny. Everything 
 seems so stark, staring mad. The town is 
 beginning to panic, and I don't blame it. 
 An attempt is being made to institute a 
 Coalition Government, but I doubt whether 
 they will find any combination to coalesce. 
 We hear rumours of an advancing German 
 army of 800,000 men, and half the town 
 thinks that the Bulgarians have already 
 crossed the Danube. If anything really seri- 
 ous happens we shall have great difficulty in 
 getting away, for there are hardly any trains. 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIAEY 73 
 
 It sounds impossible, but I was told to-day 
 that we shall probably have to pack up and 
 leave in forty-eight hours' time, to spend the 
 winter in — well, we don't know where, but in 
 the snow, anyway ! ! And this not because the 
 Bulgars have crossed the frontier, but be- 
 cause the Germans really have rushed the 
 passes and are marching rapidly towards us. 
 
 I shall, of course, leave all my belongings 
 behind, but I am prevented from starting to 
 pack them safely away because that would 
 frighten the servants. I tried to think of a 
 few little things to take away as souvenirs, 
 and then gave up in despair. For what is the 
 use of trying to take anything in the two 
 steamer-trunks which is all that will be al- 
 lowed for our household? If only we knew 
 where we were going and how far, and 
 whether by sea or land, things would be so 
 much easier. 
 
 We all had champagne to-night for dinner. 
 Stocks are low, but if the Germans are really 
 invading us — well, we certainly don't intend 
 to leave anything worth having. We had a 
 great discussion as to the rival merits of 
 flight in a possible train or in our own visible 
 motor. And we voted against the motor, for 
 
! i a ROUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 ball ba '."■ two hundred milei at Leai t to 
 i ravel, and the motor i oal ! poiwible 
 thai blow up the only i ailway line 
 
 wlif/i the last moment come§< A Roumanian 
 genera] came to tea and laid 
 leave by night." I laid " v.!;' re to»" n<- 
 answered "God knowi l ft yhicb /..< . en 
 conraging I 
 
 [f I don't pack loon, I know that wa ahall 
 all start In a bnrry In the middle of the night 
 for an unknown destination and Uiat I nhall 
 bave time to collect nothing, On the other 
 handy If I do pack, ive iball moat certainly 
 : it here for veeki and end by not goin 
 ;jjj. Perbapa the n cond alternative 1 1 the 
 
 i one, for one i unpack again 
 
 i feel ah lolutely incoherent 
 
 dei pi!': \.\n: pr/'Mcriil idttMH 
 
 phere of ner rone nncei tali cling to the 
 
 conviction that thin ot i eally be a 1 1*-" 1 
 
 re are told. Po i ib] / every time that the 
 Govei nment or the General I Itfi ' bad 
 
 dreami in the night, we ahal! be ordered to 
 
 (mate tfa Ithin tbii ty ii i bow i 
 
 Bnt tbii ii onr I i m, and 
 
 bonnd to ti irod 
 
 that if ' my can hold ttu r< maining 
 
\ ROUMANIAN 1)1 Ul\ 
 
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76 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 unknown" — if we start. But we have been 
 promised houses to live in, which complicates 
 the packing. How on earth house-linen, 
 clothes and sundries are to fit into two steam- 
 er-trunks, I cannot conceive. 
 
 Every time I go to the hospital nowadays 
 the soldiers smile with pleasure and say: 
 "So you have not yet run away?" They 
 will be left behind, I suppose, poor wretches ; 
 and one can do nothing. Still, in a way they 
 will be better off than we are. For really the 
 prospect does not smile. All supplies of 
 necessaries in the town are fast giving out. 
 A great many of the shops are shut, and 
 people rush about the streets looking dis- 
 tracted. Apparently we are going to lack 
 soap, food and fuel, so we shall be dirty, 
 hungry and cold. And this indefinitely, for 
 if the Germans overrun the country, Russia 
 will be far too busy supplying her own army 
 to send us civilians anything at all, wherever 
 we may happen to be. 
 
 Meanwhile some of the passes are still 
 intact, and one cannot help thinking that a 
 great deal of fuss is, perhaps, being made 
 about nothing at all. 
 
 Later. — If this diary of mine does not tally 
 
t. 
 
 At Her Loom 
 
A EOUMANIAN DIARY 77 
 
 with history when history comes to be writ- 
 ten, it will not be my fault. We get no news 
 at all from the outside world, consequently 
 all we hear is rumour, and that contradicts 
 itself every half -hour. We are now living in 
 a house that is completely stripped of all but 
 the barest necessities. Every time anybody 
 wants anything, it has to be unpacked from 
 the place, usually unfindable, where it was 
 stowed away. It is now a week since we were 
 told that we were leaving in forty-eight hours, 
 and we are still here. I knew that that would 
 happen. It took us two and a half days to 
 reach this state of living, which touches the 
 maximum of discomfort, and we shall prob- 
 ably continue in it for a few months and then 
 unpack again. 
 
 The air raids have stopped. The last Zep- 
 pelin dropped bombs on a German intern- 
 ment camp, and sixteen fat Germans suc- 
 cumbed as a result of this miscalculation. The 
 rest of the interned have now been spread 
 about all over the town, and spies have not 
 delayed in passing on this information, which 
 appears to have discouraged the raiders. 
 
 The French General Staff is expected 
 hourly, as are the Russian troops. On the 
 
78 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 whole, the population lias recovered remark- 
 ably well from the recent panic. 
 
 With the usual contradictoriness of human 
 nature, I am convinced that this peaceful 
 interval is only the lull before a very un- 
 pleasant storm, and feel, for the first time, 
 that we shall really have to evacuate the 
 town. Last week was such a whirlwind of 
 flurried conjecture that one had no time to 
 think, but we are now preparing with serious 
 forethought for the discomfort that lies 
 ahead. The hospital still claims most of my 
 time, but most of the original patients are 
 convalescent, and few have come in just 
 lately. 
 
 Our latest excitement has been the dis- 
 covery by a member of the American Lega- 
 tion of all kinds of horrors buried by the Ger- 
 mans in the German Legation garden. Cases 
 of dynamite were found and tubes containing 
 disease germs. It sounds incredible, and will 
 produce headlines a mile high in our English 
 ha'penny Press. Consequently no one will 
 credit the tale. But it is true, and I have 
 spoken of the thing with a man who assisted 
 at the excavation. 
 
 What nobody seems to realise is that this 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 79 
 
 interval should be taken advantage of for the 
 destruction of the immense stores of corn and 
 oil lying all over the country. Naturally one 
 hesitates to destroy outward and visible as- 
 sets, but it is imperative that the Germans 
 should not get them. To the simple layman's 
 mind the obvious thing to do would be to 
 pour one over the other and burn both. But 
 when I suggested this I was laughed at. In- 
 superable difficulties lie in the way of destruc- 
 tion owing to the fact that the granaries lie 
 immense distances apart in the heart of the 
 provinces, and that communications are com- 
 pletely lacking. Effective measures would 
 take weeks of time, which we will not be 
 given. 
 
 Later. — The news is bad again, and a sec- 
 ond fiat has gone forth : we are to be deprived 
 of our luggage, as evacuation is really im- 
 minent. 
 
 I have never sr>ent an odder day. We 
 packed jam and sugar and all available soap 
 into every spare corner. We all frankly for- 
 got our lunch until past two and then found 
 nothing in the house, so went without. We 
 were told that we had twelve hours to finish 
 up in and that the boxes would be called for 
 
80 A EOUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 at midnight. Of all the many terrible pack- 
 ings that I have done on Eastern caravan 
 journeys, this has been infinitely the worst. 
 I know that I will wish that I had sent none 
 of the things which now seem indispensable 
 and that I will need all which I left behind. I 
 have racked my brains to think of a place for 
 three precious bottles of champagne, and 
 have decided to stow them in a hold-all with 
 the family eiderdowns. The linen-trnnk is 
 stuffed with jam — jam that came from Eng- 
 land, and possibly the last that I shall ever 
 eat. I get occasional attacks of maudlin sen- 
 timent over small possessions which I am 
 obliged to leave ; on the other hand, am aban- 
 doning articles of considerable value without 
 a qualm. Not a bed has been made in the 
 whole house, and, once the luggage has gone, 
 we shall have to camp out on sofas. 
 
 I went to the kitchen to try and get a little 
 tea, and when I came back found a large party 
 of friends with their servants, luggage and 
 children in the drawing-room, asserting 
 cheerfully that they had come as they thought 
 "it would be nicer for us all to go together." 
 I'm in the state of mind where I would say 
 ' i Yes ' ' to anything until the moment arrived 
 
A KOUMANIAN DIARY 81 
 
 when I said "NO," then, if the person ar- 
 gued, I would shoot it — I mean her — him. All 
 the luggage is stacked in the drawing-room — 
 train luggage, house luggage, friends' lug- 
 gage, servants ' luggage. It is pandemonium. 
 
 Now I am lying down waiting for tea. 
 Every bone in my body, every nerve in my 
 mind aches with excitement. Of the military 
 situation the English papers could tell us 
 more than we know ourselves, for we hear 
 not one blessed thing. Except that the lug- 
 gage goes to-night and we to-morrow — if only 
 we knew where to ! ! 
 
 Besides, the only certain thing is that the 
 luggage goes to-night. For all we know the 
 plans may have changed by to-morrow, and 
 we shall be sitting here without one single 
 practical belonging in the world. And then 
 the problem will be to find us all sleeping 
 accommodation, for there is a young army 
 in the house. "We tell every one who comes 
 to stay and camp out. If we start it will be 
 all right; if we don't, there'll be all night to 
 make beds in and all next day to unmake them 
 in; and there is no soap and there are no 
 towels, and there will most certainly be no 
 hot water ever again, because I packed the 
 
82 A ROUMANIAN DIAEY 
 
 last precious bundles of wood that remained 
 to us into a suit-case with the boots ! 
 
 We have just heard that there are 30,000 
 people waiting at the station. There is only 
 one station. If this is true, we have decided 
 that they can take our luggage, that the 
 Germans can arrive in their thousands, but 
 we will not move into a crowd like that un- 
 less we are pushed there — and pushed hard. 
 
 The cook has appeared quite ready to start 
 with six dead chickens hanging on a string 
 from her arm. She says that they will be 
 useful. We are now going to dine off cheese 
 and go to bed to wait for to-morrow. 
 
 Later. — We woke to find the luggage gone. 
 My bed was funny : a little travelling cushion 
 and myself upon it, covered with a dust-sheet 
 and a fur coat. Everybody looks tired. And 
 now we have been told that we are not going 
 to-day and that it may not be necessary for 
 us to go at all. I have told the cook to pre- 
 pare two of her chickens. 
 
 The luggage returned to us at eleven with 
 the message that all heavy baggage leaves 
 to-morrow. And now we don't know whether 
 this means "no luggage van with us" or a 
 ' i trunk van on our train. " It is an important 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 83 
 
 point. Should one keep necessary things back 
 for the train and there turn out to be no van 
 Oh dear ! I am tired. And the unpleas- 
 ant fact remains that ajl our linen, clothes 
 and blankets depart into vague and unknown 
 space at five o'clock to-morrow, and that we 
 get left with nothing except the clothes we 
 stand up in, four dead chickens, and a pot of 
 jam which I unpacked and opened this morn- 
 ing when the trunks came home. 
 
 In short, we stay here, notified each day, if 
 a new pass falls, to "go at once." In this 
 case we start, and probably get told when we 
 reach the train that the pass has been walked 
 back into again and that we are to stay. 
 
 I went back to work after lunch, and found 
 that a wounded Austrian prisoner had just 
 been brought in. I asked him how they felt 
 about the war in his country, and he answered 
 in German: "Oh, it is sometimes a good war 
 and often a bad one. I want to sleep." That 
 is the way we all feel. The Queen is evacuat- 
 ing her hospital, and now perhaps they will 
 have a try to do the same with ours. 
 
 A few English refugees turned up at our 
 house to-day. One, a woman, said with a 
 tearful smile: "Will my throat be cut?" I 
 
84 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 don't think she was sure herself whether she 
 was joking or not. We are all in a sort of 
 hysterical state and laugh at anything. And 
 we certainly look very funny. The house 
 looks odd too, for there are queer makeshifts 
 in every room where people slept, and hosts 
 of strange belongings. So long as the trunks 
 are standing in a solid-looking pile in the hall 
 and within reach one can afford to smile, but 
 to-morrow at this hour things will look very 
 different if they have gone and we are still 
 here. People cling to such funny treasures on 
 these occasions. One man has his pockets 
 bulging with war-maps, and all the women 
 rain powder-puffs from every receptacle. 
 Servants clasp their food, and a few stray 
 children who have turned up are surrounded 
 by bottles of milk. The house has become an 
 hotel, because we feel lost and bewildered and 
 prefer to keep together, though there is little 
 conversation. 
 
 The streets are empty — not a cab is in 
 sight. All the shutters are drawn in the 
 shops, and the only sign of life is to be found 
 about the hospitals. The weather is wonder- 
 ful. Brilliant sunshine gives glow to the 
 autumn tints, and the whole world is clean — 
 
A KOUMANIAN DIARY 85 
 
 smelling of recent rain and wind. When I 
 think of the cold and the snow and the un- 
 known miseries that are before ns all, of the 
 disease which is bound to come, of this happy 
 little town as I knew it first, barely a year 
 ago, I want, like the Austrian soldier, to "go 
 to sleep.' ' 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 November 1916. — Half my prophecy came 
 true: we are still sitting quite solidly in 
 Bucarest. Luckily, however, our luggage 
 never left us, for the panic quietened with in- 
 credible rapidity and we were told that all 
 danger was over. The Germans were re- 
 pulsed at the frontier during the days that 
 we got no news and have not advanced since. 
 The French General Staff has arrived and 
 installed itself in a manner which gives us 
 confidence most disproportionate to the small 
 amount which reason tells us that it is 
 humanly capable of accomplishing. A Brit- 
 ish aviator flew over in his aeroplane from 
 Salonika, and this gives us the cheerful feel- 
 ing that we are in touch with our own army. 
 This despite the fact that a conquered Serbia 
 lies between. The only direct consequence of 
 the panic is that innumerable people seem to 
 be lost, and the general mix-up is indescrib- 
 
 86 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 87 
 
 able. I myself simply cannot understand why 
 the Germans are not already here. 
 
 It took us several days to reconstruct life 
 along previous and already somewhat primi- 
 tive principles. The various visiting families 
 were sorted out and returned, together with 
 their respective belongings, to their own 
 homes. Necessities were extracted from our 
 own trunks and we have resumed a normal 
 existence, which comprises punctual though 
 frugal meals and occasional baths. But the 
 danger, to my mind, is by no means over, and 
 only the top layers have been stirred in my 
 trunks. 
 
 Our hospital is full up again with new ar- 
 rivals, and I work there daily. The men 
 are dears, and I have discovered that a few 
 parcels of cheap sweets distributed make up 
 for long hours of almost unbearable suffer- 
 ing. The few amongst them who can read in- 
 variably choose the Bible or prayer-books 
 from out the literature at their disposal. Un- 
 fortunately I don't know enough of the lan- 
 guage to ask them consecutive questions 
 about their experiences, but I doubt whether 
 they would be capable of coherent answering. 
 All look dazed and worried when fighting is 
 
88 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 mentioned. We have been entirely without 
 news again for a week, and somehow we en- 
 visage from this disturbing happenings in the 
 near future. We have been strongly advised 
 to keep all belongings packed in case of a sud- 
 den emergency, because the next time the 
 Germans advance in force they will be so near 
 that we shall have but a few hours' notice, 
 and it will not be a false alarm. The direct 
 result of this is that it makes one nervous to 
 leave the house at all. It would be so upset- 
 ting to come home one day and find every- 
 thing gone! The only thing left to do is to 
 try and appreciate the humorous side of life 
 as we are living it. 
 
 Letters arrive from home written by people 
 who know the wealth of this country, urging 
 us to burn the corn — as if we kept it in a 
 little box on our writing-tables ! All energies 
 are concentrated with trying to impress the 
 people with the urgent necessity of doing so 
 and of breaking up the petrol plants. It is 
 hard to make them understand that the 
 German invasion has only been delayed a 
 little and that it will surely come. One can 
 only be thankful for this short respite, which 
 gives them a chance of making the enemy 
 
A EOUMANIAN DIARY 89 
 
 conquest less lucrative for him than it would 
 otherwise have proved. But the country folk 
 refuse to destroy their property. They say 
 that the British Bureau can destroy its own 
 and that they will offer every facility but no 
 actual help, whatever such ambiguity may 
 mean. It is hard to blame them : corn stands 
 to them for past, present and future existence, 
 and one must be superhuman willingly to 
 annihilate all three. 
 
 Later, — We are now completely stranded 
 in an almost deserted town, for our belong- 
 ings have actually left us. Indelibly branded 
 upon my mind is a moonlit picture of a Gov- 
 ernment servant perched high on a mountain 
 of trunks piled in inextricable confusion at 
 dead of night into the motor-lorry that finally 
 arrived, at half an hour's notice, to take them 
 away. The man bumped off into the night 
 surrounded by bottles of drinking water and 
 waving farewell with a fresh-lit cigarette that 
 glowed a cheerful red as he disappeared 
 round a corner of the road. It seems quite 
 impossible that we shall ever see him or his 
 inanimate charges again, for we do not know 
 where they went. Of our own departure we 
 
90 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 hear nothing ; in fact, the news is supposed to 
 be better again to-day. 
 
 The youngest son of the Queen has died 
 after terrible suffering. At such a moment it 
 seems almost more than a woman should be 
 asked to bear. Nevertheless his mother still 
 works at the hospitals, and her soldiers love 
 to see her. 
 
 One of our English aviators, newly arrived, 
 turned up to-day after having been lost for 
 nearly a week. Apparently he has had a most 
 exciting time. After landing in Bulgaria by 
 accident, he was chased by soldiers and 
 managed to get into the air again, although 
 his compass was out of order. He then dis- 
 covered a river and descended low towards it, 
 only to get shot at by a monitor. Instead of 
 flying away, he pursued the boat and razed 
 it with his machine-gun until the crew jumped 
 into the water. He finally made a guess at 
 the direction of "home," and got there!! 
 He reports a "gorgeous time," and fell upon 
 food here after three days' fast. This kind 
 of story cheers everybody up. 
 
 Now that the trunks have really gone and 
 we are left with nothing but the clothes we 
 stand up in, makeshift beds our only resting- 
 

 T'..y'i'-' 
 
 ~r * 
 
A EOUMANIAN DIARY 91 
 
 place and ourselves fireless and uncomfort- 
 able, things seem to have really quietened 
 down. We get innumerable Zepp alarms and 
 occasional raids have begun again, but the 
 constant presence of a few armed machines of 
 our own has shaken the wonderful German 
 nerve considerably, and their men usually 
 make off without having done any serious 
 damage. The Roumanian army is fighting 
 magnificently on all the fronts, and there is 
 just a chance of our holding out. 
 
 But the whole traffic of the country is nat- 
 urally terribly disorganised, and really one 
 wonders why anything gets done. A man 
 who had to go to the Russian frontier 
 recently on business took fifty hours to ac- 
 complish a journey that once took twelve. 
 The poor wretch had to stand all the way be- 
 tween two windows in a train of fifty car- 
 riages, crowded inside and on the roof. He 
 arrived back more dead than alive, having 
 paid two francs for one slice of bread, and 
 obtained no other food. If a big rush comes, 
 it will be terrible on that single railway line, 
 and I fear that hundreds will succumb. 
 
 Bucarest has become a veritable Tower of 
 Babel. The streets are full of foreign uni- 
 
92 A EOUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 forms all rushing in different directions and 
 looking very busy. We are told that further 
 quantities of French and British officers are 
 due, also detachments of motor ambulances 
 and Red Cross units. But the difficulties in 
 the way of their actual movements are stu- 
 pendous. A British Red Cross hospital, com- 
 plete, with twenty-eight doctors and nurses, 
 has indeed been heard of somewhere on its 
 way out from home, but they are all stuck 
 somewhere on the road and quite untraceable. 
 When one hears of contretemps like this and 
 sees the daily horrors due to just the lack of 
 the things which we know to be coming and 
 which never seem to come, one grows discour- 
 aged beyond words. 
 
 I have been visiting other hospitals lately 
 with a view to getting a general idea of con- 
 ditions and supplies. The whole system is 
 so disorganised that there is no need even 
 for an official permit for such expeditions. 
 Anybody is allowed to go anywhere, provided 
 that one does not look like a German. I had 
 been under the impression that our own hos- 
 pital was primitive, but, alas ! it is luxurious 
 and well stocked compared to the others that 
 I saw. The two best and grandest were over- 
 
A EOUMANIAN DIARY 93 
 
 crowded in treble proportion to their powers 
 of accommodation, but they had, at least, an 
 atmosphere of antiseptics and stereotyped 
 surroundings; all the others were pathetic. 
 The men lay on the ground, which was cov- 
 ered with wooden boards. Some shared a 
 mattress with four or five others, the rest 
 lay without even a pillow to their heads. It 
 was obvious that they had not been attended 
 to for hours ; this not from neglect, but for 
 the reason that the doctors are working night 
 and day to keep belated pace with the 
 wounded who arrive in batches of several 
 hundreds at a time. I passed the station, 
 where a trainload of them had just come in. 
 They lay out in the waste ground behind the 
 building, in full sunlight, pitiful in their help- 
 lessness. They had no water and no food, 
 just a few cigarettes, and I did not hear one 
 single moan or complaint. I was told that 
 these were the lucky ones, for arrangements 
 had been made for them to be called for be- 
 fore sunset. During the short half-hour I 
 spent there we had an air raid— quite a bad 
 one. Over thirty bombs dropped near us, but 
 fortunately no one was hurt, though one of 
 the ladies who had come to distribute a little 
 
94 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 food and drink was nearly buried by an ex- 
 plosion. 
 
 I am told on all sides that the chloroform 
 will shortly give out, even though it is most 
 sparingly used. As for the ordinary hospital 
 requisites, they are simply non-existent. 
 From the point of view of the unfortunate 
 wounded, my expedition brought me to the 
 pessimistic conclusion that it would be a god- 
 send to them if the Germans captured the 
 town. Therein lies their only hope of ob- 
 taining supplies. 
 
 Later. — The news is bad again, and the 
 advancing Germans are reported to be in the 
 plains and well over the Austrian frontier. 
 Up to the present moment there are no signs 
 of panic, and it is possible now that there 
 will not be another even if we do have to 
 leave in a hurry. For the population has not 
 only learnt a lesson during the first scare, 
 but also it has had time to get used to the 
 idea that the loss of a capital does not nec- 
 essarily mean the loss of a country. I fancy 
 that a great proportion of the society people 
 who have nothing to do with the Court or 
 with the Government will not attempt to leave 
 the capital even if the Germans arrive. What 
 
A EOUMANIAN DIARY 95 
 
 would be the object? They are non-com- 
 batants and can do the Germans no possible 
 harm, and it will serve the Roumanian cause 
 better to leave every facility for those who 
 have to go and " carry on" in whatever place 
 they may finally land in, which place will be 
 the less overcrowded for each individual who 
 stays behind. 
 
 The warning has once again gone round to 
 all who will have to leave when the moment 
 comes for them to hold themselves in readi- 
 ness for an immediate start, and I believe 
 that, at the slightest further enemy advance, 
 we shall really be off at last. The Queen has 
 sent her children to the country, where they 
 are supposed to be out of the immediate dan- 
 ger of air raids. She herself intends to re- 
 main here until the last minute, and is 
 wonderfully plucky and calm. 
 
 A curious sort of social life has begun 
 again, though business is at a standstill. 
 Bucarest was obliged to release several hun- 
 dred interned German clerks, as they were 
 the only ones who could carry on the enter- 
 prises started before the war. A dangerous 
 proceeding, but there was nothing else to 
 do. They stand about in groups in the Calea 
 
96 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 Vittorese, talking German, and made me so 
 angry one day when I went for a walk that 
 I went home and shut myself np. It was ap- 
 parently absolutely vital to allow them their 
 freedom — even the banks had not the per- 
 sonnel to work without them. 
 
 The Roumanians are optimistic as a race 
 and fight instinctively against depression, but 
 they like to be cheerful en bande, and become 
 gloomy, individually, when they find them- 
 selves alone. So there are plenty of friendly 
 little tea-parties, where the only thing lacking 
 is the tea and the food that habitually sup- 
 ports it. Men, women and children alike 
 work all day, but, when evening comes, they 
 foregather and even make a little music. It 
 is then that the wildest rumours spread. The 
 French and British officers are very popular, 
 and one meets them on terms of intimacy 
 with their hosts wherever they find time to 
 go. One sees less of the Russians. 
 
 The air raids, although ineffective in most 
 cases, are annoying. They frighten the 
 wounded and upset the people, whose nerves 
 are still jumpy from the shadow of evacua- 
 tion. And they keep alive in us, who would 
 otherwise be tranquil, a constant fear of what 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 97 
 
 is still to come. My personal opinion is that 
 the Government would do well to evacuate 
 this town now, and as quickly and quietly as 
 possible, so as to avoid the rush when the last 
 moment comes, as it most inevitably will. It 
 is so hard to know what to believe nowadays. 
 One is told at breakfast that the Germans are 
 well on their way back to Austria, and then 
 hears after lunch that their scouts have been 
 seen near Bucarest. One makes no plans for 
 the morrow, and just lives on from day to day 
 with the frightened feeling that all is not so 
 well as we are told, and that we shall have a 
 very complete and sudden awakening soon 
 from the present interval of peace and quiet. 
 
 Later. — Quite an excitement!!! All the 
 whistles are blowing madly and all the bells 
 are ringing. This heralds another big raid. 
 I wonder if it will really come off; we have 
 not had a serious one for weeks, and one has 
 begun to mistrust all these warnings which so 
 often culminate in nothing. 
 
 Yes, here they come. The big new guns 
 do make a noise compared to the miserable 
 little pops we used to hear. Blase as I have 
 grown, this is unusually thrilling, and I am 
 going out to see what is happening. 
 
98 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 Later. — Well, that was the worst attack we 
 have ever had. It lasted well over an hour. 
 Bombs fell near the Bank and the Post Office; 
 and, of course, in the vicinity of every hos- 
 pital. The town dies away nowadays at the 
 first alarm, the streets empty as if by magic, 
 consequently few people are killed. Appar- 
 ently thirteen bombs exploded in the garden 
 of the country house where the Royal chil- 
 dren were sent last week, but nobody was 
 hurt, although the house was hit. Even the 
 fires which started were safely extinguished. 
 It must have been a narrow escape, and 
 proves how well informed are the Germans 
 of all current events. 
 
 Now that the excitement is over, we have 
 other and more important things to think 
 about, for the order has come to start, and 
 to start as soon as possible, for Jassy. "We 
 are to be allowed to take some extra luggage 
 with us, and are told that the original cases, 
 despatched a fortnight or so ago, will be 
 waiting for us when we arrive. It all sounds 
 too good to be true after the scanty attention 
 which we had expected to receive, and I am 
 more thankful than I can say that the time 
 for moving has really come. We have ran- 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 99 
 
 sacked the few shops that still do business, 
 and bought up any remaining stores. There 
 is no point in leaving anything for the Ger- 
 mans. Up to the present there is no sign of 
 panic. We feel almost as if we were going 
 off for a long week-end, as the absence of all 
 heavy luggage makes everything easier. 
 
 I went to the hospital for the last time, 
 though the men did not realise it a bit. They 
 have not been told that the Germans are 
 within marching distance of the town. 
 Where's the use? It would only frighten 
 them, and they already have enough to bear. 
 They will discover it soon, and one hopes that 
 they will not suffer. I hated leaving the men 
 who were making good recoveries; one has 
 learnt to take such a personal interest in the 
 hard cases and to know all their little idio- 
 syncrasies so well that one has grown fond 
 of them as individuals. They seem so forlorn 
 somehow, and stranded. 
 
 A few sportsmen have started off on ex- 
 peditions to encourage the peasants to de- 
 stroy as much corn as they can manage to set 
 alight. Apparently a good deal has already 
 been accomplished on the quiet, and we still 
 have a few clear days ahead in which much 
 
100 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 can be done. All that we hear now is rumour 
 fantastic. The Government keeps its own 
 counsel and refuses to give any information 
 beyond the announcement that all British 
 subjects would do well to leave Bucarest as 
 quickly as possible, and that arrangements 
 are being made for their journey, and for 
 the small amount of baggage that remains 
 to them. Nothing is said about the kind of 
 accommodation we are likely to find in Jassy. 
 It is a town which bears the same relation- 
 ship to the capital as does Norwich to Lon- 
 don, and was already slightly over-populated 
 before the war. I was there once in the 
 autumn of last year, and recall a sort of pre- 
 tentious village of low-lying plaster houses 
 each one of which was surrounded by a gar- 
 den. Gardens are nice adjuncts to country 
 life, but they do not promise enticing accom- 
 modation for winter months. There is in 
 us all the worrying premonition that those 
 amongst us who are not the very first arrivals 
 there will have a quite remarkably uncom- 
 fortable time!! However, as there is only 
 going to be one train and we shall, conse- 
 quently, arrive together at Jassy station, the 
 confusion can only begin when we get there, 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 101 
 
 so the only thing left for us to do as prep- 
 aration is to learn how best to grab our hand- 
 luggage and run. 
 
 We are all cheerful, and opinion is unani- 
 mous that it is satisfactory to be moving at 
 last. I do not think that the populace has 
 been told that the exodus is imminent. The 
 town is far too quiet. When the real rush 
 begins, there are bound to be terrible scenes. 
 
 News has just come of a steady German 
 advance and that the need for haste is very 
 urgent. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 December 1916, Jassy. — Well, we have 
 reached Jassy, and have not yet recovered 
 from the surprise of having actually got 
 somewhere and being able to sit down. 
 
 Early in the morning of our last day in 
 Bucarest, we sallied forth into the almost 
 deserted streets and collected two cabs after 
 nearly an hour's search. We locked them 
 bodily into our own courtyard, so as to make 
 certain of their actuality. At 1.30 we heard 
 that there was a real panic in the town, and 
 we were advised to leave our house for the 
 station at five o 'clock. It was stated that the 
 luggage — what remained of it — would be 
 called for at two. At 5.20 we were still sit- 
 ting dejectedly on top of it — naturally noth- 
 ing had come. Time was a very serious 
 object, and we decided to abandon all save 
 the tea-baskets and travelling blankets, which 
 could be piled into our two precious vehicles. 
 
 At the station we found a seething crowd 
 
 102 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 103 
 
 and a train standing, into which all Bucarest 
 wa3 trying to get. I positively refused to 
 board it or even go near it, feeling somehow 
 that there must be another one somewhere. 
 We found the station-master and told him 
 that we were foreigners, and he led us 
 through dark passages (by this time it was 
 six o'clock) to a distant platform, where we 
 found a long line of carriages, engineless, 
 dark and locked. Apparently no notice had 
 been received that foreigners and diplomats 
 were really leaving. We established our- 
 selves firmly on the step of one of the wagons 
 and sent into the town for a key. Within 
 half an hour we were standing fighting for 
 that carriage; it took that amount of time 
 for others to find the empty train. The key 
 arrived and we surged in, a seething mass of 
 people, moving in waves. The doors were 
 banged on the coat-tails of the last man in, 
 and the train started before we had even 
 formed a proper queue in the passage. Most 
 of the women were offered seats, the rest of 
 the passengers stood or lay on the floor 
 amongst the baggage; there was no water, 
 there was no light, there was no food. The 
 clock had been put back a year or so and we 
 
104 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 were back in Serbia on our journey to the 
 Danube, only there were fourteen people in 
 the carriage instead of eight. Russian sol- 
 diers were encamped in their hundreds on the 
 platforms of the stations where we stopped ; 
 Russian nurses travelled with us in the din- 
 ing-car; Russian officers stood in the passages 
 and came in at intervals to ask our business 
 — these were the Russians who had begun to 
 arrive too late. It was pandemonium let 
 loose. Those few who had tea-baskets fed the 
 others who had none. Again and again until 
 I was bored silly, my poor little kettle boiled 
 until it boiled itself out and died. One man 
 had bought a string of sausages during those 
 last frantic minutes at the Bucarest station, 
 and a Russian officer produced some bread 
 and a little chocolate. That is all the food 
 that fourteen people shared for twenty hours ! 
 What happened in the other carriages I can- 
 not even imagine. There was no communica- 
 tion possible, for the passage-way between 
 the compartments was completely blocked. 
 The journey from Bucarest to Jassy lasts 
 nine hours in normal times : in the twentieth 
 hour of our journey we steamed into the sta- 
 tion there, to find that the prefect of the town 
 
A KOUMANIAN DIARY 105 
 
 had not been warned that refugees were com- 
 ing and that nothing was forthcoming, 
 neither accommodation nor food ! ! 
 
 We sat at the station for four solid hours, 
 whilst all the people who had any energy left 
 after our shattering night made rows in all 
 directions. Where's the use of making rows 
 on these occasions? It seemed to my mind 
 of far greater importance to hunt for food. 
 After all, one can sleep anywhere provided 
 that one is sufficiently tired, and the Lord 
 knows that we were that, but food is a seri- 
 ous consideration. I found some, of sorts, in 
 the secondary buffet of the station. A howl- 
 ing mob came and went, and I fought most 
 fiercely for two slices of bread and a slab 
 of chocolate. Two ramshackle cabs subse- 
 quently appeared from nowhere and were be- 
 sieged. No one could attain them, and so we 
 decided to become sensible and form a queue. 
 We went off in batches of four at a time, 
 those two miserable horses making trips until 
 one of them lay down. The prefect stood out- 
 side the station entrance giving the drivers 
 addresses where to go. When we arrived at 
 the place allotted to us, we found one room 
 and no bed — it was the sitting-room of a 
 
106 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 suburban villa. We bad remained more or 
 less cbeerful until that moment, but it 
 brought rebellion. There comes a time when 
 one will accept no more, and we decided in 
 our desperation to spend the night in the cab 
 which had brought us, and which was at- 
 tempting to sneak back to the station and 
 fetch more tenants for that single room. Rea- 
 son came to our rescue, and we returned inside 
 it to the station to make inquiries about our 
 luggage, which was supposed to have arrived 
 at Jassy weeks before. The station-master 
 was vague and distracted in his information, 
 nevertheless he gave us the address of an 
 Englishman living in Jassy who had received 
 a large consignment of Bucarest baggage a 
 few days previously. By this time it was 
 pitch dark, but we climbed back undaunted 
 into the faithful cab. Even the tea-baskets 
 were still with us. The horses began to move 
 in a sort of staggery fashion, but when we 
 reached the foot of a steep cobbled hill which 
 stretched into seeming infinity ahead of the 
 carriage, they jibbed and refused to budge 
 another inch. We got out and walked on for 
 about half a mile according to the driver's 
 instructions. An amazed Englishman opened 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 107 
 
 the door of a depressingly tiny house and we 
 proceeded to explain almost hysterically fast, 
 incoherent from terror lest he should close it 
 upon us before we had time to finish. Yes, 
 it was all right, our luggage was there I 
 could even see bits of it in the hall; and the 
 man invited us in. But we could see that 
 something was worrying him, and when we 
 got inside we found out what that something 
 was. Two shake-down beds filled the tiny 
 drawing-room and two British officers in 
 pyjamas filled the beds. They had just 
 arrived from Russia, and looked very nice 
 and big and reliable. The house looked nice 
 too, and warm and comfortable, and our faces 
 must have told the owners that we had no in- 
 tention whatsoever of leaving it, because they 
 made no attempt to turn us out. 
 
 The two heavenly-looking beds were evacu- 
 ated and turned out to be emergency sofas. 
 The officers disappeared with their sleeping- 
 bags into what was probably the pantry, and 
 we sat up on the sofas drinking bread-and- 
 milk. It was nice to see our boxes lying 
 about, and we felt friendly towards the whole 
 world. We had reached that form of hysteri- 
 cal weariness in which one can do nothing but 
 
108 A EOUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 laugh, until, if one is a woman, one cries; 
 and our kind hosts, realising this, departed 
 and left us to the sofas and to a really won- 
 derful sleep. 
 
 This morning a great many of our fellow- 
 travellers keep on turning up. No one quite 
 likes to inquire of them how they spent the 
 night in view of our own obvious good for- 
 tune. Our servants, at least a few of them, 
 have appeared mysteriously from nowhere. 
 They can only hold up their hands and gasp 
 when the journey is mentioned. Most of 
 them discovered our refuge and slept on the 
 floor of the kitchen. I don't think that any 
 house in the world has ever had such a dis- 
 proportionate number of people in it as has 
 this one and so little food! Butter costs 
 twenty francs a pound, and there is nothing 
 else to be got except black bread. It is soft 
 and fresh and I love it, but one can't live on 
 it for ever. Of course, things cannot remain 
 in this condition; in fact, the prefect came 
 round this morning to say that we are to be 
 given a house — a real house — of our own, and 
 that soon. At present we are still waifs and 
 strays at the mercy of people's kindness. 
 
 Refugees fill the town, there is not a room 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 109 
 
 to be had, and the real influx from Bucarest 
 has not yet begun to arrive, far less that 
 from the surrounding districts. Only two 
 trains have come in, our own and the other 
 which was in the Bucarest station when we 
 left it. Telegrams from people who are lost 
 are beginning to arrive, and one wire reached 
 me from Bucarest to say that my motor was 
 on its way and might be in Jassy within two 
 days' time. The chauffeur, however, has 
 always been an optimist. Luckily one of the 
 servants who turned up this morning was the 
 cook. She had succeeded in bringing three 
 ducks with her intact, and so we are able to 
 repay some of the hospitality so unceremoni- 
 ously commandeered with a little food for 
 the household. 
 
 This country town which has so suddenly 
 been called upon to turn into a capital is by 
 no means fitted for the part. Situated as it 
 is close to the big oil-fields, it was already 
 overcrowded before the war broke out, and 
 the builders have been trying vainly for the 
 last two years to keep pace with the steadily 
 growing importance of the place. It is ex- 
 actly like seeing a country bumpkin dressed 
 up in evening clothes as one finds them 
 
110 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 parodied on the musical comedy stage. Stone 
 palaces built in modern Russian style brush 
 the mud walls of peasant huts. The streets 
 straggle about without aim or object and lead 
 nowhere ; there are hardly any shops. There 
 is, or rather was, one restaurant near the 
 station. I say was, because there will soon 
 be nothing left of it. People literally be- 
 siege its doors, and the walls shake from the 
 influx of the crowd. It offers practically 
 nothing to eat. I met an unhappy couple who 
 had struggled for two hours in the hungry 
 throng, and who had finally succeeded in 
 snatching a loaf of bread and a glass of min- 
 eral water, for which they were never asked 
 to pay, as they never arrived within reach 
 of the counter. What is going to happen 
 when the rest of the refugees arrive from 
 Bucarest, no one knows. 
 
 I believe that the Court got here this morn- 
 ing, but has not been seen. One presumes 
 that the Royal Family at least will be given 
 a roof to cover it. I tremble to think what 
 would have happened to us had not these 
 dear people taken pity on our plight. Dozens 
 of our fellow-travellers are still wandering 
 forlornly about in a despairing search for 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 111 
 
 rooms. Our arrival was totally unexpected, 
 as Jassy had been without news from the 
 capital for two days. No one knows what is 
 happening in Bucarest, or how near the 
 Germans are, or whether those left behind 
 will still have time to get away. 
 
 This town is full of Russians, and one 
 hardly feels as if one was in Roumania. The 
 frontier is pleasantly close, and its proximity 
 gives one a certain feeling of security, be- 
 cause, for all we know, we may be flying 
 towards it in two or three days ' time. I don 't 
 see anything at present that looks as if it 
 were going to stop an advancing German 
 army, nor did I along the whole route we 
 travelled yesterday. We live in an absolutely 
 distracted whirlwind of uncertainty. 
 
 Later. — I do not know the day of the month 
 or the week! We have spent three night- 
 mare periods of time sleeping when and 
 where we could, fighting for our food amidst 
 struggling masses of humanity, unwashed 
 and underfed. 
 
 And now, at last, there is peace. Peace, at 
 least, for us, for we have been allotted a 
 house, a palace, with six rooms and a garden 
 in front of it where flowers grow. It has a 
 
112 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 black hole in the cellar for a kitchen, and no 
 servants' accommodation whatsoever. There 
 is a shanty attached where we have stored the 
 motor (which arrived in the middle of one 
 night), the chauffeur, our empty boxes and 
 the servants. They are not very comfortable, 
 but they are better off than are most of their 
 compatriots. 
 
 I don't know whom this house belongs to. 
 My bed is made of pink-and-orange plush, 
 and the room is decorated with plaster col- 
 umns. The fireplace is built into the wall in 
 an alcove at the height of my waist. It is 
 supported with carved scrolls and bits of 
 plastered woodwork that looks like organ pip- 
 ing. A quarter log of wood will just squeeze 
 into the opening if one pushes hard, but we 
 have not had the courage as yet to make fires 
 — or beds. The kitchen has two plaster holes 
 cut into the wall with an iron shelf across the 
 top for a stove ; the beds have no mattresses 
 and no pillows. It is easier to live on bread 
 and to sleep under rugs. Naturally no water 
 runs, because there are no pipes anywhere, 
 and all that we have we go and fetch our- 
 selves from the pump that we have been lucky 
 enough to find in the back yard. There are 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 113 
 
 no bells, and the electric light only half works. 
 That is to say, in some of the rooms it does 
 not light at all, and in the others it lights 
 half-heartedly and then goes out ; personally 
 I prefer the former, because one can prepare 
 for it with candles. At present we have a 
 good stock of candles, because I had the fore- 
 thought to visit the nearest church and buy 
 up all the wax tapers they had in 
 stock. "When they give out I don't know what 
 will happen. 
 
 I have discovered that the Queen is lodged 
 with her children in a tiny house just outside 
 the town. Now that she is provided for it is 
 possible that most of the people who came 
 through on our train will find accommodation 
 of some sort or other, though none of them 
 can hope for anything but miserable discom- 
 fort. We ourselves have realised, and 
 quickly too, how quite extraordinarily lucky 
 we are. 
 
 A wire has reached us from some English 
 friends in Bucarest saying that they had been 
 waiting for twenty hours at the station with- 
 out hope of a train, and that it was now 
 rumoured that all trains are to be stopped, 
 because Jassy could not hold more than the 
 
114 A ROUMANIAN DIAEY 
 
 crowds who are already on their way; to my 
 mind, Jassy cannot possibly manage more 
 people than are already here, and I think that 
 it could easily dispense with a few thousand 
 of those. The Germans are said to be twenty 
 kilometres from Bucarest now, in which case 
 they will be in the town within the next 
 three days. There has been an enormous 
 exodus on foot from the capital, we are told, 
 quite apart from the hundreds who have left 
 it in motors and carriages. All are on their 
 way here, of course, and I cannot conceive 
 how we are all to go on as we are living. It 
 is past laughing. I can laugh if I am not 
 hungry, but I am always hungry here. Our 
 house food has given out, and we have had 
 our last two meals at the restaurant. For 
 lunch we secured an egg each and some bread, 
 after an hour's fight for a plate — to be quite 
 accurate, half an hour by the station clock. 
 
 No one knows where anybody else is living, 
 and one meets people by accident only in the 
 street. They are always running frantically 
 so as to get ahead of some one else for some- 
 thing. One hardly remembers one's own 
 address consecutively, and most people 
 change it every day, because they are contin- 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 115 
 
 ually in the process of being handed on. 
 There are hardly any cabs, and those few 
 one sees invariably have four or five Russian 
 officers sitting inside them. Never was there 
 such discomfort, though there has been, of 
 course, much greater misery. But for the 
 former this life beats anything that one could 
 ever have imagined. Our journey through 
 Serbia wasn't in it; there, at least, we were 
 always getting on and away, and with a haven 
 in view; but here — well, we are just here, and, 
 as far as we can judge of the situation, it 
 can only get worse. 
 
 The servants wear expressions, one and all, 
 which one had learnt to associate with family 
 funerals. The women tell me that they have 
 blue bruises all over them from sleeping on 
 the floor. None of them have had anything 
 to eat all day, and they one and all look 
 extraordinarily dirty. This, however, is what 
 we do ourselves. We did not bring much in 
 the way of supplies, even in the original 
 luggage which preceded us, as space was 
 limited and we needed it all for blankets and 
 house linen, so now we are " saving our un- 
 derclothes, ' ' for we shall certainly be unable 
 to have anything washed for weeks. 
 
116 A EOUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 I possess two boxes of English soap, which 
 have to be guarded as if they contained the 
 Crown Jewels. We allow ourselves a soap 
 wash once a day, and even then the cake 
 dwindles visibly. We have not had a bath 
 since we started, and see no prospect of ever 
 having another. The men decided to visit 
 the public baths which exist, it appears, in 
 the town, but one of the newly arrived Eng- 
 lish doctors flew round on a bicycle warning 
 them each in turn not to go, because there was 
 an epidemic of mange amongst the poor who 
 patronised the establishments. Nice place, 
 Jassy! And we have got to live here now 
 until the war is over! 
 
 Luckily we are having wonderful weather 
 and the streets are dry. What they will be 
 like when the snow comes, I tremble to think. 
 The air is cold, but it is still the fresh cold of 
 late autumn; snow seldom falls here before 
 January, and perhaps, by that time, we shall 
 have been able to arrange for heating and 
 hot water in some primitive way. I must 
 confess that I don't quite see how this is 
 going to be managed, but one's brain becomes 
 singularly fertile of inventions when one is 
 thrown upon one's own resources like this. 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 117 
 
 We have gone back to primitive life in more 
 ways than one. As a first step, we have fallen 
 quite naturally into a system of exchange and 
 barter. I worked a profitable transaction this 
 morning by bargaining one of my precious 
 cakes of soap for a Dutch cheese and a dried 
 fish from the Danube. This will feed us for 
 two days, if carefully eked out with jam. Our 
 house has become a sort of Bureau where the 
 lost English congregate and find their rela- 
 tions. People wander in and out forlornly at 
 every hour of the day, and leave their lug- 
 gage for an hour or so whilst they go and 
 forage for food and lodging. Occasionally 
 they repay us by bringing back a loaf of 
 bread or a pot of native jam which they have 
 had the luck to appropriate on their expedi- 
 tion. And then we share it, sitting on the 
 floor or on the beds. There are no chairs in 
 this house as yet ; we have been told that we 
 may get some to-morrow when the owner has 
 had time to sort them out from amongst his 
 superfluous belongings. Where he and his 
 family have taken refuge no one seems to 
 know. They must hate us for turning them 
 out, but the pill is in truth gilded, for they 
 are remarkably well paid for it. Rents are 
 
118 A KOUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 quite prohibitive, and people can invite the 
 most fantastic prices for the veriest hovels 
 and obtain their extortions without question. 
 
 Later. — A dishevelled spectacle of what 
 was once a moderately well organised hos- 
 pital has turned up from Bucarest. That is 
 to say that the beds, linen and a few of the 
 precious stores arrived in separate train- 
 loads convoyed by the doctors. All the 
 wounded had to be left behind. I was told 
 to return to work, and went. 
 
 It was immediately obvious that there was 
 urgent need to collect every scrap of mate- 
 rial existent in this depleted town which could 
 possible be made to serve in the future, and 
 so the chief surgeon and I hired a cab which 
 held him comfortably and me hardly at all, 
 and we asked the prefect to order the driver 
 not to desert us under pain of capital pun- 
 ishment. Thus we sallied forth to probe the 
 shopping resources of Jassy. Behind the 
 first counter we were received with upraised 
 hands and the announcement that "nothing 
 could be bought because nothing remained to 
 sell." However, we refused to accept such 
 a depressing ultimatum, and turned ourselves 
 into a combined foraging and requisitioning 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 119 
 
 party. "We opened drawers and boxes and 
 invaded cellars and back rooms, whilst the 
 dumfounded shopmen stood by in speechless 
 fury. Honestly, I cannot myself understand 
 in retrospect how it came about that we were 
 allowed to do as we did. But our energy was 
 rewarded. We discovered fourteen yards of 
 invaluable rubber tubing in a bicycle repair 
 shop, and all the catgut we needed in a vio- 
 lin-maker's store. It is wonderful what 
 imagination will do for one in an emergency ! ! 
 I unearthed 3000 yards of curious stuffs for 
 miscellaneous use in making bandages, com- 
 presses and operation towels, etc., and my 
 friend the doctor has a private machine for 
 rolling the first of these. In fact, we col- 
 lected such a quantity of useful things that 
 the packages swamped our little cab, and we 
 were obliged to hold up and commandeer a 
 passing private motor which, luckily, be- 
 longed to a generous-minded owner, who did 
 not object to taking the things home for us. 
 I consider that we had a thoroughly success- 
 ful day, which was unfortunately spoilt, from 
 my own point of view, because I fell into a 
 hole in one of the sidewalks and became so 
 interested in extricating myself that I 
 
120 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 dropped my bag which contained my money 
 and the keys of all my trunks. When I dis- 
 covered the loss, I could naturally no longer 
 locate the hole. So now the boxes which had 
 not yet been unpacked will have to be broken 
 open, and that is the last straw ! 
 
 Within the next few days we hope to have 
 the hospital in working order again. There 
 is cause for gratitude in that the enormous 
 quantities of stores which are expected from 
 England daily did not arrive when they were 
 first hoped for, three or four weeks ago. We 
 can now catch them en route for their orig- 
 inal destination, whereas they would other- 
 wise have been lost for ever as far as we are 
 concerned, though the Germans would have 
 benefited hugely thereby. 
 
 The streets are so crowded with Russians 
 of every age and denomination that one 
 hardly finds the indigenous population, which 
 has most wisely retired behind its own locked 
 front doors. 
 
 And more Russians pour in quite steadily 
 from the north, whilst increasing numbers of 
 refugees flock from the south. It is really 
 interesting to find out how many hundreds 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 121 
 
 an overcrowded town can hold after it has 
 doubly overreached the limit. 
 
 Everything is confusion confounded — and 
 everybody is hungry. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 December 1916. — The situation, from a 
 state of things chaotic, but directly traceable, 
 has become completely and absolutely ob- 
 scure. An ominous silence broods over us, 
 not a telegram has come through for a week, 
 and we are in the blackest ignorance of every- 
 thing except Jassy. I have unpacked noth- 
 ing. For all that we know, the Germans may 
 be advancing upon us rapidly. This time, 
 evacuation would mean — just the clothes we 
 stand up in, and a few motors ploughing 
 through a marsh of mud. For it has begun to 
 snow and to rain and to blow angry autumn 
 winds. The Russians have occupied this town 
 and commandeered the hospitals. Provided 
 that they hold at the front, it is the best thing 
 that could possibly have happened to us. If 
 they don't, it will prove to be the very worst, 
 because people don't bother about other peo- 
 ple when things go wrong. 
 
 The General Staff is established in a vil- 
 122 
 
A KOUMANIAN DIARY 123 
 
 lage well within motoring distance of our- 
 selves, but no news arrives except by hand, 
 and then it treats of business only, and busi- 
 ness was ever discreet. 
 
 As far as our material comfort is con- 
 cerned, we are living in clover compared to 
 what our friends are obliged to put up with. 
 Our cook has managed to establish communi- 
 cation with a farm just outside the town and 
 refuses to divulge the address. Her wisdom 
 is proven, for ours is the only household 
 where we are able to keep up the fiction of 
 regular meals. Further, one member of the 
 household gets a hot bath in rotation every 
 day. It takes several hours to prepare and 
 forms the subject of conversation for empty 
 pauses — what it is going to feel like, what it 
 did feel like, whether A's bath was better 
 than B's, etc., etc. And it is difficult not to 
 become pretentious on the strength of it. A 
 never-ending stream of people of all classes 
 passes through our door, the house has be- 
 come a sort of club — it is the only building 
 that manages to look like a resting-place in 
 the town, and the cook occasionally invites 
 strangers to assist at the birth of a cake. I 
 have collected six wooden tables in the hall. 
 
124 A EOUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 They stand in rows, and everything happens 
 on them. In fact, one marvels at people hav- 
 ing worked themselves np over any further 
 form of furniture. It is so easy to point to 
 a table when one is asked: "Where is your 
 office, or bed, or cupboard, or kitchen f " and 
 answer: "You'll find it on the big, or little, 
 or white, or brown table.' 9 
 
 I discovered that a quondam friend of mine 
 had landed with her whole family somewhere 
 in our street, and sallied forth yesterday to 
 pay a call. Formerly she had owned, and 
 cared for, a large country house on the out- 
 skirts of Bucarest, where we had often gone 
 to dance after dinner. Apparently the fight- 
 ing centred there when the Germans arrived, 
 and those peasants who ran were shot down. 
 She has lost everything; and I remember 
 that, almost as intensely as she loved her 
 possessions, she loved her peasants. I came 
 home and — the words must be written — re- 
 tired to my room and was violently sick. This 
 after training in a hospital of carnage where 
 I haven't felt a qualm. Human beings are 
 such funny things. She looked so sad when 
 she spoke of individual bits of furniture and 
 sketches made in her garden that I suddenly 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 125 
 
 recalled all the little belongings which I had 
 myself found so easy to leave behind and be- 
 came almost hysterical. Really, to leave all 
 that one owns is quite disgusting when dis- 
 sected. Que fais-je dans cette galeref And 
 now it is whispered that we may have to pack 
 and run again, run faster, carry less, and 
 have further to go. I cannot really believe 
 it. Russians keep pouring through Jassy, not 
 in hundreds but in thousands, and, even if 
 they don't fight, their bulk will stand between 
 us and the Germans, and the latter may only 
 look at them and then stand still. 
 
 Even German soldiers, victorious and ad- 
 vancing, must eventually be tempted by the 
 insidious invitation of that last thought. I 
 had pictured actual warfare as enthusiasm, 
 glory, heroism, exaltation, what one wills, 
 but not as this irresistible craving for rest. 
 The very word wakes in one a sort of wonder, 
 and one has learnt to comprise therein the 
 first childish idea of heaven — a splendid, 
 golden sleep. 
 
 Later. — Last night we visited at sunset 
 such a scene of horror as can never, and 
 should never, be described. A train from 
 Bucarest — the last to start — overladen with 
 
126 A EOUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 overweary destitution, paralysed already at 
 the start with poverty, ignorance and fear — 
 from which description one can snrmise that 
 there were in it many women — collided and 
 derailed. Perhaps the despair which is born 
 of hopeless flight communicated itself to an 
 otherwise soulless machine — who knows? — 
 the fact remains that it hurled itself most 
 thoroughly to perdition. No one knows how 
 many hundreds died there by the roadside, 
 some in the flames of the engine's exploded 
 petrol tank, the greater number crushed into 
 one huge formless mass of flesh and horse- 
 hair, splintered bones and wood. The train 
 had started from the capital three whole days 
 before. Family groups clustered on the 
 roofs of carriages whose framework swelled 
 to bursting from the crowded turmoil within. 
 Many died prematurely from exposure, and 
 the few survivors from the final tragedy told 
 nightmare stories of children's corpses 
 brushed past the carriage windows when the 
 train swept under bridges whose height no 
 one had had the thought to measure mentally 
 before they braved the roof. Such cruelty of 
 negligence is inconceivable — and yet the 
 proof that it was real was brought home to 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 127 
 
 us who turned the wreckage with averted 
 faces, by the obvious indifference of the 
 stunned survivors as to whether they were pro- 
 nounced to be unhurt, crippled or dying. Mute 
 misery of pain — we have learnt yet one more 
 lesson. The scene last night was just a con- 
 centrated battle-field which lacked the royalty 
 of cannon and individual heroism to make of 
 an open-air slaughterhouse a splendid place 
 to die. 
 
 There was nothing to be done except to 
 collect children who had lost their mothers 
 and their dolls, and this we did to double the 
 extent of all available accommodation. Rus- 
 sian soldiers remained behind with carts of 
 quicklime to bury in a common grave the 
 debris of machine and lives. 
 
 I woke this morning to find a message from 
 the station-master informing me that a whole 
 goods train of Red Cross stores from Eng- 
 land had arrived during the night, and would 
 any one responsible come to the station and 
 fetch them? There is no one responsible, 
 consequently we have all become so ! I do not 
 even know whether the things are the ones 
 we ordered from England weeks ago, or 
 whether they form part of the enormous 
 
128 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 quantities of Government supplies expected 
 all through last summer. 
 
 For the last three or four nights I have had 
 four vague Englishmen sleeping on sofas and 
 tables, and their presence has been, to say the 
 least of it, inconvenient; but to-day they have 
 made themselves very useful. We all went to 
 the station en bande, and stood from 9 a.m. 
 till 6 in mud up to our knees trying to get 
 the goods off their Russian trucks. Here all 
 alike have proved incapable of producing 
 carts or motors. I have seen hundreds bump- 
 ing about — military lorries amongst them — 
 carrying officers ' pianos and baggage station- 
 wards, all private property destined to be 
 expedited, together with their wives and 
 families, to Russia. The fact remains, how- 
 ever, that we were flatly refused motors, and 
 one can only blame the state of chaos that 
 reigns in every organising department. Fi- 
 nally, and in despair, I approached a re- 
 sponsible official and demanded some form 
 of transport for the stores, however, primi- 
 tive. 
 
 The Queen 's private motor-lorry was sug- 
 gested and almost materialised, but at the last 
 moment was discovered to have gone off into 
 

 *4P 
 
 ;/ 
 
 V/^m 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 129 
 
 the country to fetch fodder for the Palace 
 cows. Self-control completely deserted me, 
 and I told the important personage who was 
 my last hope that I had seen his military 
 motors carrying luggage belonging to offi- 
 cers ' wives to the station whilst his soldiers 
 died. Rhetoric prevailed where personal 
 energy had availed less than nothing, and 
 my whole party climbed into pony carts 
 which appeared from nowhere. We bumped 
 off, perched on the top of them, in the direc- 
 tion vaguely indicated as a depot for hospital 
 stores provided by the Queen. Arrived there, 
 we found it occupied by a Jew and his whole 
 prolific family, who looked exceedingly com- 
 fortable. We went to the Chief of Police 
 and to the Palace, we got an A.D.C. and some 
 sergeants de ville, and persuaded them to 
 evacuate that Jew and all his belongings. 
 Having seen the good work well started, we 
 returned to the station and walked three-quar- 
 ters of a mile down the line of rails to find 
 the convoy. Trains were pulling in and out 
 in all directions without rhyme or reason, 
 often they would find themselves face to face 
 and resign themselves to a deadlock of stop- 
 page. Whistles screamed in disproportion to 
 
130 A EOUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 the aimless traffic, and both sides of the line 
 were marked with an indescribable confusion 
 of gaily painted personal luggage, refugees 
 and stores of ammunition. The only facts we 
 really and actively noticed were the rain and 
 the filth. We enlisted a squad of Russian sol- 
 diers who looked as if they needed occupa- 
 tion, and they helped us willingly and with 
 deep respect. I have never understood until 
 to-day the amount that hands can accom- 
 plish. We had to do everything ourselves, 
 and actually succeeded in starting a few 
 loaded carts off towards the depot at sunset. 
 The drivers had previously announced that 
 they definitely refused to do more than one 
 journey to-night, but we got hold of the police 
 again before they went home, and threat- 
 ened to search them out and imprison them 
 next day if they did not turn up at the station 
 by sunrise. 
 
 The irritating part about this whole un- 
 speakable confusion is that no one can be 
 blamed because no individual is responsible. 
 But I must say that we would all feel much 
 better to-night if we could vent our simmer- 
 ing rage on somebody. Everybody is tired, 
 and this house is not a place to rest in ; doors 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 131 
 
 open and shnt, and people stumble in with- 
 out knocking and take off their boots before 
 they start to talk. We have given up trying 
 to sweep mud off the floors. 
 
 Later. — Investigation has elicited the fact 
 that the Red Cross stores which we so calmly 
 appropriated are, in very truth, our own 
 property. So now we can sit down with a 
 clear conscience, and make of the contents of 
 the cases and the stray English doctors and 
 nurses who turn up at intervals an efficient 
 and well-organised unit for the front. In- 
 superable difficulties spring up at every step 
 of the road towards accomplishment ; not the 
 least of these was the absolute and desperate 
 lack of any form of bed-linen. I have bought 
 up all the peasant-women's winter scarves of 
 wool, which rival any coat immortalised by 
 Joseph, and these are destined for blankets. 
 Jassy and its environs are deep in snow, and 
 the cold at the front must be dreadful. Our 
 own quarters are surprisingly warm, and for 
 this we are devoutly thankful, because Rou- 
 manian stoves, which look more like organs 
 than anything else, are designed more to suit 
 Balkan schemes of decoration than solid 
 British aspirations towards comfort and 
 
132 A EOUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 warmth. They have big organ pipes which 
 reach to the ceiling, round which the hot air 
 curls, and they achieve every known shape 
 and colour. They are by no means ugly, but 
 one feels that one owns a lot of family tombs, 
 and contemplation of their outlines does not 
 make for cheer. The few rooms which our 
 house boasts are enormous, and all have pale 
 parquet floors where one slides about on imi- 
 tation Aubusson carpets. 
 
 As far as any news is concerned, we hear 
 only the fantastic stories told by arriving 
 refugees. And most of them are disinclined 
 to talk of anything but their own immediate 
 physical discomfort and fright. The only 
 thing that we definitely know is that the 
 Germans are in Bucarest, and that knowl- 
 edge, when one takes a look at the map, is 
 enough to be depressing. One thing is satis- 
 factory, and that is that there is no longer 
 any possibility of further influx into this 
 town. All that can happen now is for it to 
 empty again slowly. Train-loads leave daily 
 for Russia, and we have got to the stage 
 where we do not much mind whether they no 
 longer arrive so long as they steam away 
 from Jassy. 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 133 
 
 There is a good deal of friction between 
 the Roumanian and the Russian "Tommies," 
 and this is unavoidable, for a strange army 
 seldom receives a whole-hearted welcome. 
 Russians are so big, and the one thing that 
 is obviously tactless at present is to take up 
 even the smallest amount of space. I never 
 realised a million in visible numbers before. 
 Were the units which go to make H nere 
 bottles of anaesthetic, or blankets, or loaves 
 of bread, or something useful, one would 
 be able to admire, but one actively resents a 
 surplus when it consists of people. 
 
 In a funny way, however, we have settled 
 down to being permanently unsettled, and it 
 is a daily surprise to find how comfortably 
 one can manage to exist without anything at 
 all. The banks have opened, because the 
 bullion from Bucarest got through; it would 
 be interesting to know how that was managed, 
 but there is no one to tell us. We take it 
 for granted that we are being governed and 
 fought for, because there is nothing to prove 
 definitely that this is not the case. Still, this 
 condition cannot be permanent, and it is 
 obvious that some effort will have to be made 
 either to organise a settled resting-place, or 
 
134 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 a second flight to a spot so distant that con- 
 fusion can turn to order by a process of 
 natural evolution. 
 
 Later. — I skipped Xmas Day; it was too 
 horrible. Not a flower, not a gift, not a 
 change of any description from the clay be- 
 fore or the day that followed. We worked 
 hard in the morning classifying assets and 
 packing cases in a dark cellar ; the unit is tak- 
 ing shape, and arrangements have even been 
 made for it to start for the front next week. 
 Visitors and officers rushed in and out all day, 
 and the Englishmen amongst them whispered, 
 "Plum pudding/ ' I had some raisins in a 
 tin, and the cook made a mixture with maize 
 and suet and dried grapes which we all 
 shared solemnly at dinner "for auld lang 
 syne." Then I went to bed and cried myself 
 to sleep. 
 
 I had not thought that we could possibly 
 enter into a new phase of horror, but it was 
 born on Boxing Day, when the first whispers 
 reached us of the destruction of the oil-fields. 
 Frankly, we had, each and every one of us, 
 completely forgotten the oil! A man, a 
 friend of ours, drove up in a motor, streaked 
 with grime, weary and dead to the world. 
 
A EOUMANIAN DIARY 135 
 
 After lunch he started to tell his story, forti- 
 fied by a big cigar. 
 
 He had been one of a party who went out 
 alone to the petrol city to destroy. No one 
 would give them help, and he told us wonder- 
 ful accounts of the scenes which he had wit- 
 nessed. The first step had been to capture 
 every single man and boy who knew anything 
 about the petrol plants and deport them 
 bodily to Moldavia, so that the Germans 
 should find no skilled workmen to brutalise 
 to their own profit. And then a few pairs of 
 hands sufficed to crumble and lay in ashes 
 what many hundred brains had worked to 
 build. First they broke up all the machinery 
 — the how of the happening is immaterial; 
 the most primitive and brutal weapons served 
 them best. Then they poured benzine from 
 the roofs of factories down their walls and 
 set them alight, they dug trenches round the 
 vats and started blazing channels of flame 
 towards the reservoirs. These blew up each 
 in turn, and soot and fumes made of what 
 had been sunlight an eternal night where the 
 Fire King went mad. Town by town saw the 
 destroyers come to let hell loose, and factory 
 after factory writhed in a death agony of 
 
136 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 twisted iron to send jets of poison fumes 
 after the four small flying motor-cars. The 
 devastation left by a retreating army lay 
 before them, turmoil of an enemy drunk with 
 success stirred in the wind-gusts that fed the 
 flames from the south. Twice did the de- 
 stroyers miscalculate the time at their dis- 
 posal, and they were badly hurried in one 
 place. The enemy arrived sooner than was 
 expected, and there was no time to dig the 
 trenches — just one little match sufficed to 
 start a burning inundation from unskilfully 
 burst vats. Some one shouted, ii RunV y just 
 before the explosions began. 
 
 The man who told us the story ended each 
 sentence with the words: "It was the fact 
 that it was daylight — and nevertheless dark, 
 which made everything so much worse.' ' 
 
 One can hardly credit the fact that those 
 few little men have so effectually accom- 
 plished what they set out to do that it will 
 be six months before the Germans can squeeze 
 a drop of petrol from the saturated earth, 
 and yet that is what they affirm so quietly 
 that one can but accept the statement — and 
 be grateful. We are told to-day that a Ger- 
 man wireless message has been intercepted 
 
A EOUMANIAN DIARY 137 
 
 from Berlin which sends the conquerors 
 orders to send at once to Germany all the 
 petrol that they can manage to expedite. And 
 this has reconciled us to the despair which 
 imagination taught us to catch in the evening 
 breeze to-night when we motored back a little 
 way with the teller of the story along the road 
 that he had travelled. 
 
 It is part of the general contradiction of 
 things that this destruction of the oil-fields, 
 which is the most important happening of our 
 corner of the war, should remain the one 
 which has, locally, at least, made the smallest 
 stir. 
 
 Later. — We have suddenly realised to-day 
 that we have got back to the frame of mind 
 in which we spent our last weeks in Bucarest. 
 And this is discouraging. In other words, we 
 are back in a sort of cul-de-sac which has, 
 nevertheless, one small outlet, wofully in- 
 adequate, in the shape of that blessed single 
 line to Russia. According to all the various 
 contradictory information we get, the Ger- 
 mans are not going to sit still and are moving 
 forward rapidly. 
 
 The only defence that lies between us and 
 them is the famous Sereth line, which the 
 
138 A EOUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 Roumanians and Russians alike believe to be 
 impregnable. But one cannot tell if it is 
 going to hold until it has been tested — and if 
 it is tested and gives way — why, they will be 
 here. That's all!! 
 
 The slightest thing that looks like a plan 
 hangs fire. One cannot even settle a hospital. 
 A Roumanian one which went to the front at 
 Roman a short while ago has been recalled to 
 Jassy, as the line is too thin on that spot and 
 there is no point in risking one of the few 
 working units we have got. The authorities 
 tell us nothing except that "the situation is 
 very serious,' ' and that much, we flatter our- 
 selves without conceit, we are quite com- 
 petent to understand for ourselves. Galatz 
 has been evacuated, but that in itself means 
 little, except that they expect a bombardment 
 there; but if the line is so thin at Roman, 
 there is no reason why it should not melt 
 away altogether, and then it will be a ques- 
 tion of another little run wouldn't do us any 
 harm. The thing that seems fantastic is that 
 it should be taken as such a matter of course 
 that "the line should be thin" anywhere. 
 The Russians are here, there and everywhere 
 in thousands, and all the German prisoners 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 139 
 
 we have seen are old men and babies, worn 
 out, wretched, ill-clad, and worse fed. Such 
 tired troops could be held, turned round and 
 chased by anything. 
 
 One likes to feel that there is a solid and 
 settled base between oneself and an advanc- 
 ing enemy. At present we in Jassy form the 
 base, and it is altogether too close for com- 
 fort. 
 
 Things have looked brighter for the last 
 three or four days, because we have been able 
 to get some butter from a family that was 
 anxious to exchange for sugar. Sugar we 
 obtained from some Roumanian women who 
 wanted soap. So my last boxes of English 
 soap have vanished, but we have all got to 
 the stage where we prefer to be dirty than 
 start the day without some pretence at a 
 breakfast. We have learnt many lessons out 
 here, but first and foremost amongst them 
 stands the one that one can stand anything 
 if one's body is comfortable, even sorrow 
 born from humiliation of the soul. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 January 1917. — Letters from England ar- 
 rived on New Year's Day, and have done 
 much towards restoring us to a normal state 
 of British phlegm. I must honestly confess 
 that these letters, written just at the moment 
 of our worst plight when we were flying from 
 Bucarest with all known things unpleasant, 
 and all things unknown subject for serious 
 dread, seem to show an apparent indifference 
 to our possible sufferings which has brought 
 acute annoyance to us. I think that one 
 amongst fifteen newspapers mentioned Rou- 
 mania — just that and no more. It made us 
 all rather angry at first to realise that we 
 must appear so utterly unimportant, but 
 afterwards we lost ourselves to all actuality 
 in reading the stories of fighting in France. 
 People at home are ' i in a war. ' ' Here we can 
 only produce a sanguinary melee. 
 
 The situation grows daily more compli- 
 cated and there is every element of trouble. 
 
 140 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 141 
 
 There is some friction between the Rou- 
 manians and the Russians on every possible 
 point, from fighting* policy to military eti- 
 quette. The last question, which has bubbled 
 over, is the one as to which of the two nation- 
 alities are to run the hospitals, the few there 
 are. The Russians say that, as they have 
 taken over the whole of the front lines and 
 allowed the Roumanian army to retire for a 
 well-earned spell of rest, there will be no Rou- 
 manian wounded, and they want all the hos- 
 pitals emptied of their Roumanian staffs and 
 turned over, together with all available sup- 
 plies, to the Russian Red Cross. The Rou- 
 manians, one and all, are naturally wild at 
 the idea and definitely decline to comply. So 
 either they must be forcibly commandeered 
 or stand empty all winter. It is a complete 
 deadlock, and one can only hope that feelings 
 of humanity will bring them to a compromise. 
 Meanwhile we have even been allowed to 
 receive reliable news from Bucarest. The 
 German administration is apparently allow- 
 ing individuals to leave for Jassy without the 
 formality of a passport. This is such a sur- 
 prising fact that we credit them with all sorts 
 of evil and mysterious motives for what is 
 
142 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 probably only an oversight soon to be recti- 
 fied. The fact remains that a Roumanian 
 officer arrived in Jassy to-day after spending 
 three days in Bucarest wearing mufti quite 
 unmolested. Apparently he just got on his 
 bicycle when he was bored and rode away 
 from the town! 
 
 He tells us that the new king is proclaimed 
 and that all is quiet and well ordered. A 
 small army of pro-Germans — we have known 
 them well by name and sight for over a year 
 — met the German General Staff at the gates 
 of the city, and tendered bouquets. It is hard 
 not to be instantly furnished with an obvious 
 adjective, but it is only fair to insist upon 
 the fact that individuals who hold system- 
 atically to one idea and to one party cannot 
 be termed traitors for the simple reason that 
 that party may not be one 's own. The bearer 
 of these tidings travelled on his bicycle all 
 the way to Jassy. His descriptions of scenes 
 on the road are terrible. So many people 
 who left Bucarest on foot during the exodus 
 have not yet begun to arrive here, and, ac- 
 cording to what he told us, few of them ever 
 will. He rode through the devastation of the 
 petrol cities, and spoilt the quietening infor- 
 
A KOUMANIAN DIARY 143 
 
 mation that few casualties had resulted there 
 from the wholesale destruction by adding: 
 "But all the poor, poor people have in their 
 eyes the look that lingers from a murdered 
 soul." He drew for us one word-picture of 
 a little country cart, where a starving donkey 
 tried to cry his need for succour and pleaded 
 mutely to be released from the burden of two 
 dead women and three children which he 
 continued to drag quite slowly because he had 
 been "gee'd up" some while before, and had 
 not been given leave to rest before they died. 
 After that we begged to hear no further 
 stories of the road. 
 
 It is possible that the end of this country, 
 as far as the Allies are concerned, is very 
 near, and we are no longer terrified, only 
 horribly depressed. 
 
 As to the things that have happened with 
 our own English Red Cross unit, they parry 
 description and one can only sit and laugh. 
 Insuperable difficulty after insuperable diffi- 
 culty rose with the relentless climb of sand- 
 hills towards snow mountains. A compatriot 
 wants to go home. I cannot say that I blame 
 him, but I am extraordinarily sorry for him 
 if he tries, because he will not have a nice 
 
144 A EOUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 time getting there. I only ask one thing of 
 life now — and that not to be obliged to leave 
 Jassy and travel along the only route that 
 remains until the war is over or things have 
 settled down. 
 
 Later. — A Grand Duchess has been to 
 Jassy, and has done much, by her charming 
 personality and her sympathy, to bring har- 
 mony into Russo-Roumanian relations. The 
 storm-clouds were so very easily dispelled 
 that one begins to think that one had exag- 
 gerated the racial differences. In fact, she 
 was received with almost more enthusiasm 
 by the Roumanian populace than by her own 
 troops. 
 
 Less important people like ourselves were 
 given practical proof of her presence by the 
 complete stoppage of all our little luxuries, 
 such as firewood and dairy produce. Last 
 night for dinner we had soup tablets, boiled 
 potatoes and black bread, and there was noth- 
 ing in the house to-clay but white beans. At 
 this instant, however, we have had untold luck, 
 because a friend asked us for a little tea. 
 We sent it, and she returned a grateful effu- 
 sion and a pot of jam. I gave an old lady 
 who lives opposite some cakes of Pears' soap, 
 
A EOUMANIAN DIARY 145 
 
 some aspirine and some pyramidon, which 
 things came in the last letter post from home, 
 and she returned butter and a plate of ham. 
 Ten minutes ago our British soldier visitors 
 drove in from a reconnaissance, and unloaded 
 a huge dried fish from the Danube and a 
 whole uncooked ham brought from the Rus- 
 sian frontier. They themselves had eaten 
 nothing for thirty hours, and we are all going 
 to sit down at six o'clock and give ourselves 
 up to greed. 
 
 They also had stories to tell which have 
 thrown those of the Roumanian officer into 
 gloomy shade. In the train which brought 
 them to the frontier a soldier had died of 
 cholera and lain two days side by side with 
 living fellow-travellers. It was nobody's busi- 
 ness to remove the corpse, and so it was left 
 to lie and jolt with the train. Carts are so 
 firmly stuck into the motoring roads that the 
 way is blocked, and the only means of passing 
 is to overturn the mass and burn the wreck- 
 age. Two feet of snow cover the whole 
 brown earth and make a shroud for victims 
 of exposure. Both men arrived drowned in 
 water, unrecognisable from mud. 
 
 People have begun to speak quite openly of 
 
146 A EOUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 the evacuation of Jassy. But this time the 
 flight would be organised by Russians, as it 
 would be into Russia that we would have to 
 go. Rostofr*, on the Sea of Azoff, is men- 
 tioned as our final haven — and really we 
 might do worse. It is quite a nice place. I 
 remember it vaguely as a big place with long 
 untidy buildings and a broad waterway some- 
 where near. The surroundings have only left 
 me with the impression that it was one of the 
 few "not quite flat" places that I saw in 
 Russia. At least we should be certain of get- 
 ting food there — good food; what's more, 
 caviare galore! and we should be within 
 sighting distance of the Further East, which 
 I love. I have been advised to prepare my 
 heavy boxes into light ones, if I have any. 
 I am saying that I haven't — I really cannot 
 subdivide again ! A sort of "specialist evacu- 
 ator" has been sent here in the shape of a 
 general who has done it before — in Russia. 
 So we shall be done slowly this time and 
 systematically, and perhaps the results will 
 be better. Besides, even the individual learns 
 by force of habit, and I am collecting a big 
 suitcase full of food, for Azoff sounds very 
 far away to me. 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 147 
 
 Our latest disturbance is that the owner of 
 our house has become restive and is trying to 
 turn us out of it. He says that his wife is 
 dying from grief at our having it, but I refuse 
 to accept the nasty imputation that we are 
 doing it any permanent injury. Besides, it 
 would take a very long time to dislodge all 
 the various sorts and classes of people who 
 have made of it a permanent private hotel. 
 They are all solid and British, and it will take 
 physical force to move us — a great deal of it. 
 We really are full up now. One man spent 
 the night on the kitchen stove, which is made 
 of mud and flat bricks. He was late in getting 
 to bed, because he was worried lest the fire 
 should not be quite out. Sheets gave out 
 three days ago, and we all lie in strange relics 
 of night attire covered to the necks with 
 coloured cotton cloths in which peasants were 
 wont to carry home market produce. They 
 are quite warming, really, considering the 
 gossamer of which they are made. We laugh 
 all the time, despite the tragedy on every 
 side. But it is sympathetic laughter, first 
 cousin to real tears. 
 
 Later. — We have been living a wilder rush 
 than usual, because all the officers who come 
 
148 A EOUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 and spend a night or two here at alternate 
 intervals, having gone off definitely in dif- 
 ferent directions for a "long time," chose 
 last night in which to turn up, all together, 
 from various points of the compass. I had 
 had no idea of what a lot of people had really 
 slept in this house at intervals until I saw 
 them like that all together, and remembered 
 that there was literally less than nothing in 
 the kitchen. They all wanted baths; it was 
 obvious that each one needed it worse than 
 the last, and our most triumphant effort up to 
 the present has been three baths in twenty- 
 four hours. They wanted soap — and medi- 
 cine — and towels — and, somehow, they all got 
 them and were so nice and grateful. Each 
 one produced a different sort of odd contribu- 
 tion to the communal commissariat, and then, 
 after dinner, one of them played music-hall 
 songs, and we all felt quite extraordinarily 
 homesick. 
 
 This morning another post arrived from 
 England and brought countless small pack- 
 ages of tinned food. It came just in time. 
 We had had no butter for a week and there 
 was hardly any sugar left. Not that any 
 came, but we unpacked some jam and remem- 
 
A EOUMANIAN DIARY 149 
 
 bered the pleasant taste of sweetened things. 
 To-night we are going to broach a bottle of 
 champagne — one of the original three re- 
 mains. A woman — just an ordinary woman 
 — is a very useful thing to have about! I 
 have learnt how to mend socks and to make 
 wooden buttons, and to pull out the fluff of 
 the selvage from stuffs and call it cotton. All 
 kinds of people who don't " belong' ' to us at 
 all leave their clothes and their bags in the 
 front hall, and every bracket is used for dry- 
 ing linen. It's the funniest-looking house I 
 ever pictured, even when I was a child and 
 built them under the nursery table. Every- 
 body leaves messages for everybody else with 
 whoever happens to be there. I have learnt 
 to keep a little book with: "Tell So-and-so to 
 communicate with General Staff regarding 
 the horse-power of such and such a car." 
 "Tell his room is No. 15 at the Conti- 
 nental Hotel when he arrives to-morrow." 
 "Here's a key for So-and-so — he'll know 
 what it is — and see that he gets this sword 
 and returns mine to you." "When a Rus- 
 sian officer comes to see me, say this and 
 that and the following." 
 
 To-day at 9 a.m. we delivered bandages to 
 
150 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 the British unit, which still survives despite 
 vicissitudes ; at 9.30 a new stock of supplies 
 had got to be packed and prepared for the 
 returning Roman unit; at eleven an agent 
 turned up from Russia to take large orders 
 for linen for the hospitals; at 12.30 we 
 lunched; at two a party of French doctors 
 came to find out whether we could give them 
 any spare surgical instruments ; at 2.30 there 
 was a general meeting of the Russian Red 
 Cross. At three we all went to the station to 
 make sure that the arrangements were all in 
 order for the arrival of the Roumanian hos- 
 pital unit from Roman; at four we super- 
 intended the delivery of a gift of British 
 stores to the working Roumanian hospital 
 which has been lately born at the doors of our 
 own depot; at five we had a farewell tea- 
 party to some half-dozen British officers go- 
 ing to Bacau; at six I interviewed three 
 stranded English governesses who needed 
 clothes and money and information about the 
 Russian journey. At 7.30 we dined. And 
 this was only an average day. I have not 
 even mentioned the round dozen or so of stray 
 people who wandered in between whiles ask- 
 ing for things and making suggestions, bang- 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 151 
 
 ing doors, and talking every language under 
 the sun ! ! One thing never happens here, and 
 that is to be bored. 
 
 Later.— Not the wildest flights of imagina- 
 tion can picture the things that can happen 
 in a country when force of circumstances de- 
 moralises the bulk of the population and 
 there has not yet been time for the figure- 
 heads to find their feet. It is so hard to 
 tabulate them without seeming to throw 
 blame on just those people who have really 
 earned our undying respect because they are 
 most loyally trying to do their best. After 
 all, if London had to entrain for Norwich at 
 twenty-four hours' notice, I cannot conceive 
 that the transfer would be a tidy one ! ! ! 
 
 Nevertheless, the stories told by our own 
 officers and by Russian officials who inces- 
 santly pass through this house are quite fan- 
 tastic. The " skilled evacuator," otherwise 
 a newly arrived Russian general, waited 
 eight hours for his train at the frontier, 
 which used to be at a bare two hours' train 
 journey from Jassy. It subsequently took 
 five, when started, to cover the distance. At 
 the station, but outside it, where the train 
 finally came to a complete standstill, they 
 
152 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 waited another ninety minutes, and then 
 walked, together with the crowd of six hun- 
 dred less important travellers, along a free 
 line to the empty Jassy platform. It was 
 not even worth while inquiring as to the 
 wherefore of the stoppage, because no answer 
 could have been given. The station-master, 
 as a matter of fact, volunteered that he had 
 not known that there were any passengers in 
 that train ! Apparently forty cars of explos- 
 ives are resting in Jassy station — enough to 
 destroy half the town if they blew up 
 sideways. I don't know enough about ex- 
 plosives to understand whether this is pos- 
 sible, and the uncertainty is rather worrying 
 when one sees hundreds of unemployed 
 lounging there, incessantly smoking cigar- 
 ettes. Another Russian officer told me that 
 he had passed, between Jassy and Bacau, a 
 train-load of warm clothes heading towards 
 the front. The soldiers in charge were sit- 
 ting in a dejected row along the embankment 
 chewing roots of beetroots which they had 
 found piled there in a field. From the look 
 of the ground my informant gathered that 
 the party had been there a considerable time, 
 and took the trouble to stop his own train and 
 
A EOUMANIAN DIARY 153 
 
 inquire why there was no engine at either 
 end of the other, or, for that matter, in sight. 
 "We have slept here for ten days," replied 
 one of the soldiers vaguely — the rest did not 
 even trouble to listen — "and we have had no 
 food since one hundred hours.' ' He added 
 that, presumably, they had been forgotten, 
 and that one or two of the party had died. 
 
 One of our own officers arrived from Galatz 
 on a train which brought wounded to be 
 cared for. They had no food for forty-eight 
 hours, and many died. At Berlade he had 
 ventured away to forage for supplies and 
 actually unearthed some tinned nourishment, 
 with which he returned in triumph to the 
 train only to find that it had steamed off, five 
 minutes before, backwards along the road to 
 Galatz which he had just travelled. 
 
 My doctor arrived from Roman, distant an 
 hour's normal train journey. It took him 
 twelve, hanging on to an engine together with 
 fifty other men. Some dropped off quite 
 quietly into the snow-drifts when they grew 
 tired. On every skyline, he added, and in 
 every valley, they saw horses with broken 
 legs, left to die, turning and turning in end- 
 less circles of pain, and he heard them 
 
154 A KOUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 screaming despite the uproar of machinery 
 which drowned most hearing. 
 
 In our English hospital there is a man who 
 has had his foot amputated. He lay pinned 
 under a burning car. A hatchet was brought 
 by a doctor to a French officer standing near, 
 and the doctor said: "Do it if you can; I 
 have no instruments and feel paralysed.' ' 
 The Frenchman did the thing in the whole 
 horror of the sunlight, whilst the Russian pri- 
 vates who were his charge took advantage of 
 the opportunity and pillaged private passen- 
 ger luggage on the train. It did not strike 
 them as unworthy; one must remember that 
 there are whole people in the world who have 
 never been taught that there is, in theft, dis- 
 honour. 
 
 All this time no attempt whatsoever has 
 been made to clear away from off the main 
 railway line to Bucarest the wreckage of the 
 terrible train accident which happened there 
 in days which have faded into the darkest 
 ages. But yesterday the idea occurred to a 
 party of our British officers to clear it in 
 passing, and so they went to the authorities 
 and said: "Give us men and engine chains, 
 and we will do the rest." These were easily 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 155 
 
 procured — -human material here is cheap, 
 only forethought stands at a premium — and 
 the squad set off in the middle of the night. 
 At two o'clock to-day we remembered that 
 they had no food, and so I started off after 
 them in my motor laden with tea and a few 
 pork-chops and bread. How we reached them, 
 I don't know. The going would have been 
 better had the road frankly abandoned any 
 effort to live up to its pretensions. But when 
 we finally arrived, not only did we see a 
 cleared track stretching away into the dis- 
 tance, but a whole set of new lines was al- 
 ready half laid over the ruined gap. Hap- 
 penings like this prove how temptingly easy 
 would be the restoration of order into the 
 chaos in which we live, which at present 
 seems to grow from day to day, just because 
 human nature meets failure with easy resig- 
 nation and requires a pointing finger to indi- 
 cate endurance, which in warfare stands for 
 the sublime. 
 
 Later. — I think that it can be definitely 
 assumed now that all danger of our being 
 obliged to leave Jassy in the immediate 
 future is over. Russians and Roumanians 
 alike are standing on the Sereth, and the Ger- 
 
156 A EOUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 mans do not seem to be particularly anxious 
 to cross. A little success does much to re- 
 store balance, and we have already voiced the 
 somewhat ambitious dream of seeing the 
 enemy driven back in the spring. I ask for 
 only one reward for all that we are going 
 through, and that to drive down behind them 
 in my motor! It would be worth anything 
 to go back like that — into our own house. 
 
 Quietly, slowly, nevertheless perceptibly, a 
 good deal is being done here to restore order. 
 A better feeling has been established be- 
 tween the Roumanians and the Russians, and 
 all have, at last, realised that they have a 
 common enemy and that the personal equation 
 must go to the wall. There is splendid stuff in 
 both races, but both require more time than 
 is conceivable to accomplish anything at all. 
 Now, for the first time since war's out- 
 break, we have time to breathe in our little 
 corner of the world. 
 
 But disease is coming, and that was a hor- 
 ror which we had forgotten. There is a ter- 
 rible shortage of wood, and, in the absence of 
 all other material, fire is the only reliable dis- 
 infectant. Lice overrun the hospitals and we 
 are unable to combat them, for we have no 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 157 
 
 serums and no disinfectants. Petrol, which 
 might serve our purpose at a pinch, is also 
 lacking now. The doctors are reduced to 
 vinegar. I personally still have a small sup- 
 ply of regulation stuff left over from amongst 
 the things that came out from home, and I 
 have hidden it in case of emergency. The 
 state of affairs could not declare itself as dan- 
 gerous until the spring, and in two months 
 much could be done to combat it. The work 
 has been begun, in the only possible way, by 
 ordering supplies from home in stupendous 
 quantities. But we are met by the same old 
 uncertainty as to whether they can ever 
 arrive. 
 
 The need will most certainly be very ur- 
 gent, according to the stories we hear already. 
 A Roumanian nurse came to me straight 
 from the firing line at Tekutch and said: 
 "Can you tell me where to go for help? The 
 living where I come from refuse to bury the 
 dead for fear of contagion, and the dogs are 
 eating the bodies. I've seen a room where 
 forty men die of typhus and scarlet fever 
 together, and no one will go near them. The 
 day I left, I managed to get a Roumanian 
 
158 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 officer to bring some straw and I spread it 
 near them with my own hands." 
 
 She did not exaggerate. My friend the 
 surgeon tells we that we are in for a terrible 
 time if something is not done at once. And 
 the head of the bacteriological hospital has 
 submitted the following: "If one quarter of 
 the new army is not at once sent out of the 
 country into cleanliness, that army will be 
 gone before the autumn." 
 
 Our own hospital already has over three 
 hundred infectious cases, all different dis- 
 eases. Yet we cannot refuse to take in dying 
 men. Our nurses are being simply splendid. 
 I refer to the original party that came out 
 with the first hospital unit from home. All 
 this time they have not had so much as a 
 chair to sit in, or a sofa, only a bed apiece 
 and a Red Cross case for a table. And they 
 never told. One of them has recently come 
 back from Roman, where she worked with the 
 Roumanian hospital. She brought a photo of 
 the morgue, where seventy dead bodies had 
 lain for a fortnight, unattended. She counted 
 over fifty disabled engines stranded on the 
 line between Roman and Jassy; it is impos- 
 sible to mend them, because they were orig- 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 159 
 
 inally German. The wounded, who are sent 
 down in parties of twenty and thirty to be at- 
 tended to here, are forced to wait for days 
 at every siding, to leave the road clear for 
 train-loads of petrol-plant machinery needed 
 urgently at Bacau. They arrive dazed and 
 nearly dying, and go to sleep in our hospital 
 and don't wake up for two days sometimes. 
 One man to whom I gave a whole loaf of 
 bread hugged it to his chest as a precious 
 thing. That fact he could still recognise, but 
 he seemed to have forgotten how to eat. A 
 great many of our cases are typhoid, and we 
 have little or no milk to give, so they just 
 die. 
 
 The suffering which is endured so uncom- 
 plainingly seems so utterly out of proportion 
 to what these splendid fellows have deserved. 
 I said to one the other day, a man who had 
 lost two legs and an arm and only kept his 
 reason by a miracle : "What Roumania needs 
 is just one victory to give you courage"; and 
 he answered me very low: "What my coun- 
 try needs, madame, is quicklime in quantities, 
 so as to bury her dead decently and clean.' ' 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 February 1917. — The house has been really 
 quiet for ten days — all our visitors are away, 
 most of them at the front. And for this we 
 have cause to be devoutly thankful, as the 
 food shortage has become acute and we are 
 told that, unless the railways tumble into 
 working order within the very near future, 
 starvation is certain. Nowadays we only get 
 meat, in very small quantities, twice a week, 
 officially distributed by the Government. 
 Apart from that, we eat bread and the few 
 little luxuries which come to us as a sign of 
 Heaven's special favour every now and then. 
 The small quantities of milk, butter and eggs 
 available are naturally reserved for the hos- 
 pitals. The situation is undoubtedly very 
 serious. We are still plunged in mid-winter, 
 with feet of snow on the ground, and all are 
 suffering from a very virulent form of in- 
 fluenza ushered in with incredible tempera- 
 tures. 
 
 160 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 161 
 
 German propaganda is making itself felt in 
 the town, and their spies abound. Some 
 Roumanian military prisoners were recently 
 liberated, and returned to their base fur- 
 nished with illuminated leaflets advertising 
 German supremacy and Roumania's ruin. 
 These were, however, loyally handed over to 
 their officers. 
 
 The deaths from starvation amongst the 
 peasant population of the country are ter- 
 rible. Men crawl in to the outskirts of Jassy, 
 having staggered for twenty or thirty miles 
 in the hope of dragging themselves home 
 again with a little food for their babies. 
 
 Travelling conditions are indescribable. 
 One of our newspaper correspondents had to 
 get to the front. He started off in a motor 
 with one friend, with a second motor follow- 
 ing — nowadays one never tries to reach any- 
 thing in one. The cars had orders not to 
 lose sight of each other, but a blizzard came 
 between them. The front one was snowed 
 up at midnight, and the two men gave them- 
 selves up for lost, as they had eaten all their 
 food and drunk the brandy. But, fortunately, 
 a regiment of Cossacks passed and lent them 
 horses. They foraged about in the snow for 
 
162 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 two hours and then had the luck to find the 
 other motor. They restarted and reached a 
 village outside their destination, where their 
 engine froze. Undaunted, they commandeered 
 six oxen and hitched them to a sled, 
 in which conveyance they finally rolled tri- 
 umphantly into Bacau, after having spent six- 
 teen hours in covering the remaining eight 
 miles. These are the conditions under which 
 we have to keep the few hospitals running 
 near the front lines supplied with everything 
 which we have not, as a preliminary diffi- 
 culty, got!!!! 
 
 Now we have been told that, as soon as the 
 weather grows warm again, we shall have 
 air raids. One came to Berlade last week, 
 and the French brought down two machines, 
 one with anti-aircraft guns and the other with 
 one of their own aeroplanes. Here we have 
 no defences at all, and these houses of packed 
 humanity will crumble into a bloody pool at 
 the base of the hills. They have neither cellar 
 nor second storey, so one will have no choice 
 of action, except to stand still in whatever 
 place one may happen to be and trust to 
 luck. 
 
 These are the little reflections which are 
 
A. Village Chapel 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 163 
 
 born during moments of rest and quiet con- 
 templation of the situation. But they come 
 seldom. Apart from them so much is visibly 
 being done to restore a semblance of order 
 that we have become quite cheerful. There 
 is a whisper of spring in the air, though it is 
 still very cold, and we have begun to work in 
 the garden. Hitherto we had not had time 
 to appreciate its possibilities. After all, we 
 have" been in Jassy barely two months, and, 
 although it is easy to paint a picture of in- 
 describable confusion, it is, in another way, 
 marvellous to realise how comparatively com- 
 fortable we have managed to settle down. 
 By this time most of our friends are installed 
 with some pretence at permanency, and a 
 half-hearted attempt at sociability is begin- 
 ning to make itself felt. They are amusing 
 to the point of pathos, these little lunches 
 and dinners where we scrape the inadequate 
 coverings of the plates set before us, and con- 
 verse volubly and in an interminable circle 
 about our own unimportant little affairs. 
 There is danger of becoming entirely self-cen- 
 tred and of boiling everything down to the 
 personal equation, because we get no books 
 
164 A EOUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 and hardly any papers, and the few mails 
 that reach ns from Russia are ages old. 
 
 Clothes have become a serious considera- 
 tion. I have often, in the past, spoken of my 
 belongings as "worn out," but I never knew 
 before how odd things could look when they 
 are in actual fact worn through. Things like 
 powder and nail-cleaners are myths only. 
 For the former I use ground rice and for the 
 latter hairpins, and I see myself, in the near 
 future, reduced to wearing soldiers' military 
 boots. It has been brought home to us 
 women how utterly absurd is fashion. The 
 pretty ones look the lovelier for the fact that 
 they can manage to look nice at all, but all 
 these attributes fade to nothing before the 
 quality of usefulness. 
 
 Later. — The military lull has brought op- 
 portunities for airing political squabbles dor- 
 mant in all small countries. Something is in 
 the air, and it has affected, curiously enough, 
 chiefly the Russian soldiers. They appear 
 restive, and talk in groups with an excite- 
 ment disproportionate to the quiet of this 
 interval. We hear the most fantastic ru- 
 mours, but have learnt, from bitter experi- 
 ence, to discredit anything that savours of 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 165 
 
 on dit. Nothing can be very seriously wrong, 
 because order has come to the railways and 
 the danger of starvation has been reduced to 
 minimum. Most of our supplies come from 
 Odessa nowadays, and our staple diet is based 
 on the big pale pink Russian hams which we 
 used to consider so delicious in far-off 
 Bucarest days. Now we view the insipid con- 
 tours with acute loathing and merely eat to 
 live. 
 
 Now that the trains are running slowly 
 but regularly, we have received some Red 
 Cross stores and consignments of disinfec- 
 tant. The first step was to purge the hospi- 
 tals, and this has been most thoroughly ac- 
 complished. Some of the buildings had to be 
 burnt ; it was the only way to exterminate the 
 lice. Most of the minor diseases have been 
 appreciably checked, and cholera and typhus 
 are our worst enemies. There is still time to 
 accomplish a good deal before the summer, 
 but the danger will not be over, for I believe 
 that typhus lies dormant in hot weather and 
 wakes to life when winter comes. 
 
 Our papers make rather depressing read- 
 ing. We realise that we cannot hope to hold 
 the world-stage— but still, the limelight of the 
 
166 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 times avoids our little corner most conspicu- 
 ously, and it is rather irritating. One does 
 not mind labelling one's own self as the least 
 of little things, but one hates having the fact 
 rubbed in by being completely ignored. 
 
 March 1917. — The Russian coup d'etat has 
 come and the Government here is having 
 some anxious moments. It is unlikely, how- 
 ever, that anything serious will transpire. 
 The Royal Family is very popular and is 
 faithfully served by the administration. All 
 Russians, of course, are in a ferment, but it 
 is reassuring to notice that they have not lost 
 sight of the common ideals of the war. 
 
 Telegraphic news from America is palpi- 
 tating, and brings the end of the war within 
 sight, at any rate, of our own generation. 
 Unfortunately everything worth doing takes 
 an immense amount of time in this world, 
 and one cannot hope for things to begin to 
 happen for a long time. It is rather dis- 
 couraging that the crisis in Russia should 
 have come to a head at this moment, speak- 
 ing, naturally, from our own point of view, 
 which is the only one that appears, through 
 force of circumstances, important. The Rou- 
 manians and Russians were just learning to 
 
A EOUMANIAN DIARY 167 
 
 stand up to their three-legged race, and now 
 all the knots have had to be loosened to give 
 the latter a chance to stretch cramped knees. 
 We had begun to talk of a big spring offen- 
 sive, and now the only thing that is obvious 
 is that waiting will be our indefinite lot. 
 
 Our biggest social function lately has been 
 a triple funeral of society victims to typhus. 
 The toll amongst the French doctors is 
 heavy, and there are deaths every day. I 
 went yesterday to inspect a new barrack at 
 the station which has been recently built to 
 replace our hospital, which was one of the 
 many to be burnt so as to attain purifica- 
 tion. I had never seen lice close by before, 
 and was surprised to find them so small. The 
 horror of the word had made me think they 
 were big things. All that I saw were dead, and 
 the fact that they obtrude themselves upon my 
 notice is sufficient proof of the quantity I 
 saw. The new patients were lying, one hun- 
 dred and fifty in number, on the ground near 
 the building. They were waiting for a bath 
 and a shave, and will lie there, some of them, 
 for a day or two until they can be attended 
 to. The head of the hospital is preparing a 
 bathing train for them, but it will not be 
 
168 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 ready for another ten days. The actual 
 number of typhus cases is abating, but the 
 disease — what there is of it — has taken a 
 highly virulent form, and few of the tainted 
 recover. People one knows go down with it 
 every day, and whether one will succumb 
 oneself is purely a matter of chance. 
 
 As I write, a little black lamb which was 
 sold to us two days ago, and which has been 
 put into the garden to fatten, has begun to 
 "ma-a-a-a-a" most miserably. It's fantastic 
 how anything young that won't stay alone 
 because it's bored can make life unpleasant 
 to much bigger things around it! I never 
 knew that lambs had intelligence, character 
 and personality. This one just wants com- 
 pany, and its "ma-a-a-s" are in every tone 
 till they reach an angry squeal, more like the 
 voice of a child than anything animal I ever 
 heard. I have had to have it taken away. It 
 planted its forefeet against the wall of the 
 house when it discovered my window above 
 its head, and bleated up. I ask any one: Is 
 that the universal idea of a lamb? The serv- 
 ants had put a pink ribbon round its neck, 
 and are now completely staggered because I 
 have just informed them that I, at any rate, 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 169 
 
 decline to eat it. We were adopted, about 
 two months ago, by a wretched, sneaky-look- 
 ing little cur, now a magnificent long-haired 
 sheep-dog. He is a capital watchman, who 
 lords himself all over the place and has a 
 nasty, overbearing nature. A second small 
 starved dog adopted us yesterday and was 
 fed. Now it has betaken itself to the farthest 
 corner of the property and is cringing in fear 
 by the watch-dog, too hungry to leave and 
 yet too frightened to move. It lies in the sun 
 with one eye open, having had several seri- 
 ous bites, but remembers "good dinner' ' and 
 won't go. I fear, however, that it will give 
 up and crawl away and die. 
 
 Later. — The war situation has come to a 
 complete standstill : it is hard to believe that 
 anything more can ever happen here. 
 
 Seven hundred thousand Russians are said 
 to be on our front, who could, undoubtedly, 
 just sweep across the country, driving all 
 before them, and lead us back into Bucarest. 
 But their very numbers make them a difficult 
 army to equip and feed. At present they 
 lack munitions, fodder, guns and railways, so 
 it all looks pretty hopeless, and one can but 
 be thankful for them as a definite solid buffer 
 
170 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 which will require a lot of moving. There 
 are very few enemy divisions in front of 
 them, and we are told that these consist 
 principally of Turks and Bulgarians. It 
 makes one rather ill to think how easy com- 
 plete victory could be and how unlikely it is. 
 Social events in the shape of funerals fol- 
 low one another with depressing rapidity. 
 To-morrow six victims are to be buried at 
 once. They comprise the best Roumanian 
 typhus expert, the nurse who looked after the 
 last French doctor to die, a sister of charity, 
 a colonel and two young officers. Amidst 
 these sunny, warm surroundings it is hard 
 to realise death. I went to the station bar- 
 rack again to-day. More than a fortnight 
 had passed since my last visit, but the sick 
 and wounded still lay in the open awaiting 
 their turn. All the hospitals are overcrowded 
 with sickness ; there are few wounds, because 
 there has been stagnation on all fronts. We 
 have divorced one of the big English doctors 
 from his regulation work for a month, and 
 asked him to take responsible steps to combat 
 disease. He has started by composing a train 
 of oil-tanks for disinfecting clothes, and is 
 completing the half-finished train for giving 
 
-/. 
 
 CO 
 O 
 
 W 
 
 Q 
 H 
 
 ft 
 O 
 
 P 
 
 c 
 
 3 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 171 
 
 the soldiers baths and a shave. He tells me 
 that, at present, nearly all the infected die 
 simply for want of the necessary foodstuffs 
 and serums. It will be the purest luck if 
 none of us get it, because we have, naturally, 
 no more efficacious safeguards than any one 
 else. The little we did have was distributed 
 centuries ago. Bordering as we do upon the 
 East, we are subject to Eastern meteorology 
 and have had no spring. The big thaw came 
 quite suddenly, and hot dust winds from the 
 south did much to dry the resulting quag- 
 mire. Whether the dust is preferable to mud 
 remains to be seen : mud breeds disease and 
 dust is a reliable carrier. With both follow- 
 ing so close on one another's heels, we should 
 do well ! 
 
 What is so desperately depressing is this 
 gradual fading away of an army which has 
 had little or no fighting to make death worth 
 while. 
 
 All through this time of waiting our 
 thoughts turn sentimentally towards England 
 with such abandon that we are deserving of 
 ridicule. Newspapers reach us now, and they 
 are not too old. I suppose that it is only we 
 exiles who can properly appreciate the con- 
 
172 A EOUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 tradiction of the entertainment column side 
 by side with the one that records the toll of 
 the trenches. I saw a fashion sheet the other 
 day, and realised that there was still charm 
 in clothes. And all the women in the picture 
 papers look like angels paying a visit to the 
 earth. One does hope that England will 
 make an effort not to change too much before 
 we see her again. This sounds selfish, but it 
 is the truest expression of patriotism of 
 which this particular little band of exiles is 
 capable. We read in the papers that many 
 women go on out to dine in day clothes after 
 their work. To us this appears incredible — 
 that there should be human beings in the 
 world who have the chance to put on different 
 clothes and who do not realise the wonderful 
 blessing of being able to feel clean. We have 
 forgotten what it was like. We have even 
 forgotten what it felt like to eat food that 
 tasted clean and had a flavour of anything at 
 all. One welcomes the curious "tinny" taste 
 of preserved stuffs simply because one knows 
 that they were packed in pleasant surround- 
 ings and grew in healthy earth. All the 
 things one frankly hated before taste good, 
 like tomato soup tablets or tinned sardines. 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 173 
 
 Besides this we have macaroni and occasional 
 snipe. These are very fishy in odour and 
 taste, but quite remarkably delicious. 
 
 In the Roumanian typhus hospital, which 
 we were invited to inspect a few days ago, 
 they are allowed four bottles of milk per day 
 for a hundred cases which can be nourished 
 on nothing else. In the first ward men and 
 women sleep together, separated by screens. 
 Two officers had been very bad, but the 
 hospital was proud of them and showed 
 them off because they were recovering. Op- 
 posite them lay two infirmieres; one was dead 
 and the other dying. There they would lie 
 until their turn came round for a funeral. 
 Up to the present not an English person has 
 gone down with a disease. We take a lot of 
 care of ourselves — wash our teeth several 
 times a day with brandy and rub our nostrils 
 with the stuff — and we have the luck to be 
 able to superintend our own cooking and 
 washing. Now that the weather is fine, this 
 kind of thing happens in the garden for the 
 sake of safety, and it is funny to see damp 
 strings of macaroni and the family under- 
 clothes suspended from the same rope, 
 stretched across the branches of pine trees 
 
174 A EOUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 at whose roots bloom lilies-of-the-valley. 
 
 Curious how one grows accustomed to 
 things. Conditions here are fundamentally 
 unchanged since the first fortnight of our 
 arrival, and one and all have come to consider 
 them as perfectly natural. 
 
 Next month we are going to be lucky 
 enough to be allowed to visit the Russian 
 front. Nominally we shall be called "an in- 
 spection of the hospitals," but I fancy that 
 the Russian and Roumanian authorities alike 
 are rather proud of what they have done, and 
 are anxious for outsiders to see and judge for 
 themselves. The trip will take two or three 
 days; we shall go by motor, of course, and 
 shall arrive, like Father Christmas, grown 
 scornful of the calendar, laden with every 
 form of luxury. I think that cigarettes, mag- 
 azines, cheap Russian sweets and cotton-wool 
 can, without exaggeration, be termed luxury 
 nowadays. We are told that the road which 
 we shall travel is like a fairy pathway of 
 spring scents and flowers. It is splendid to 
 have something to look forward to at last, 
 because certainly all that we find in memory 
 to feed upon steeps us in gloom. Nor is the 
 present particularly exhilarating! 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 April 1917. — We have returned from our 
 expedition, and into no three days of any one 
 of our separate existences have we crammed 
 such interest. 
 
 We started by averaging forty kilometres 
 an hour for seven hours over things deserv- 
 ing of any name but roads. The two cars 
 were seventy-five horse-power, and at times 
 we ran ten or twenty miles at eighty. I per- 
 sonally was obliged to double up and cling to 
 the seat in front of me, having had the mis- 
 fortune to grow only small and light. Quite 
 frankly, I was terrified of bumping out. It 
 was a jaw-shattering experience into which 
 nerves could not even enter, for they died 
 before they were born. The road of tree- 
 branches looked like corduroy at times, at 
 others like the board for a game played at 
 Early Victorian charity bazaars where one 
 pulled a trigger and a little wooden ball 
 made for a field of smooth cup-like holes. 
 
 175 
 
176 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 These were the mud ponds that marked the 
 passage of munition wagons in the winter, 
 and which had not had time to dry. The 
 filth which splashed when we took them at 
 full speed obliterated the sunlight and mixed 
 a. curious colour with the blueness of the sky. 
 The road grew better as we neared Roman. 
 Roumanians and Russians have rebuilt it 
 entirely, and done their work extraordinarily 
 well. All the bridges were new, and damp 
 mortar oozed from the brick spaces. The 
 country there is almost the loveliest in Rou- 
 mania, like Sinaia, but unspoilt by Swiss 
 cottage decoration. After we had been skat- 
 ing round the horrible curves for an hour or 
 so, I began to be able to see things, and felt 
 as if I were in a high-class cinema at home. 
 We met all the things pictured in illustrated 
 papers like the Graphic or the London News. 
 We must have passed 10,000 tethered horses 
 camped under trees, with their supply 
 wagons all interlaced with branches so as to 
 hide them from enemy observers. And all 
 the photographs which one remembered of 
 wisps of smoke, resting men, and rifles lean- 
 ing three-legged against one another sud- 
 denly took shape, threw shadows, and had 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 177 
 
 meaning. As we neared the front the piles 
 of munitions grew to mountains and we 
 passed miles and miles of wire entanglements, 
 up and down hills with loopholed crests. We 
 saw trenches where we expected to find cow- 
 sheds, and cowsheds in the places where 
 trenches obviously ought to have been. Great 
 stationary kitchens, where stained canvas 
 tents sent forth surprisingly appetising 
 whiffs spread themselves straight across the 
 road at regular intervals, and streams of 
 carts laden with bread headed away from 
 them in all directions of the compass. We 
 got mixed up at times with the stragglers 
 of regiments on the march, and we 
 watched the field kitchens actually dis- 
 tributing soup and picking up bread as 
 they moved forwards so as not to waste time 
 whilst soldiers fed. Most of the things that 
 happened took place in peaceful meadows 
 near streams which cuddled into wild flow- 
 ered nooks to cool the almost summer heat. 
 We pushed forward to within two miles of 
 the front-line trenches, and watched shells 
 bursting in the air over a ridge of hills that 
 split two wooded valleys. And then, towards 
 sunset, we met double pony stretchers bring- 
 
178 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 ing back the wounded from the first field- 
 dressing station, and at this point distin- 
 guished the rattle of the muskets when we 
 left the car to climb a little way up the hillside 
 on foot. 
 
 A Russian aide-de-camp met us to point 
 out our quarters, which turned out to be pre- 
 pared for us in one of the little white rest- 
 houses, lately built, which had fronted the 
 last mile of roadway. Russian Easter-time 
 was just over, and each was festooned inside 
 under the rafters with branches of pine wood, 
 and clusters of fresh golden cones that hung 
 like chandeliers. Those which sheltered the 
 General and Medical Staffs were marked with 
 flags and red crosses respectively; the others, 
 where soldiers were billeted, had the num- 
 bers of the units picked out in black relief 
 over the wooden doors. The beds in these 
 rest-houses were as clean and white as those 
 in a country house in England, and we found 
 the luxury of a clean towel hanging from a 
 nail at the foot of each. Original tree-stumps 
 had been left to pierce the floor as tables, and 
 roughly baked ovens made of mud formed 
 queer-shaped stoves. Everything inside wax 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 179 
 
 permeated with the clean fresh smell of newly 
 felled pines. 
 
 I never saw anything so simple, clean and 
 business-like in all my life. A capital little 
 hospital bnilt of white planks stands at a 
 turning of the main street of this emergency 
 village. It is hemmed in by a graveyard, 
 where white crosses mark the last sleeping- 
 place of those Russian soldiers who can never 
 return except in spirit to their homes. Rus- 
 sian Red Cross nurses work here, ladies all. 
 The one who cooked our meals, a girl of 
 eighteen, was the daughter of the Chief of 
 the Staff of one of the big generals, taking 
 her month's duty in the kitchen, as must all 
 in turn. The others were mostly wives of 
 generals. The hospital sends out light am- 
 bulances and horse stretchers to the front- 
 line trenches in the hills at regular intervals 
 and to appointed places. A nurse and a doc- 
 tor invariably accompany them on foot. The 
 work is very light just now, as there has been 
 no heavy fighting, only occasional firing. The 
 hospital was practically empty, but the five 
 men who lay there were all dying, three of 
 tetanus and two of meningitis. A train serv- 
 ice has been instituted between these base 
 
180 A EOUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 hospitals and the big convalescent camps at 
 Odessa, and seems to be running marvellously 
 well. 
 
 We received a cheerful welcome from all : 
 from the sun-burned nurses dressed in white 
 to the wild-looking soldiers in smoke-coloured 
 cloth who sported love-locks and great 
 shaggy beards. Little tossing trout streams 
 freshened the air, and the black smoke-clouds 
 of bursting shells added to the artistic effects. 
 Only the wounded seemed out of place, and 
 there were very few of those. 
 
 We feasted royally in the officers' mess, and 
 toasted one another in purple vodka which 
 was pure alcohol; there is nothing else left. 
 A doctor arrived from Odessa just in time 
 for dessert, and brought a box of sweets and 
 the latest French books. Afterwards we 
 turned in and slept most royally, more care- 
 free than we had lain for many weeks. 
 
 At sunrise we were accompanied on a tour 
 of inspection, and not even a hidden garbage- 
 heap obtruded to spoil the wonderful atmo- 
 sphere of a clean sunlit world. Even the 
 pony stretchers managed to look cheerful, 
 because the beasts are covered with white 
 sheepskins, and all the sheets, blankets 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 181 
 
 and pillow-cases were not only white, but 
 clean. All harness gleamed and jingled, the 
 carts were solid, and the canvas coverings 
 new. Those soldiers who filed away past us 
 towards the distance and the firing line sang 
 harmoniously in cadences, and their officers 
 drove with them in shining little victorias 
 where even the varnish was undimmed. A 
 priest accompanies all units, and inarches 
 either with the men, or leads the head of the 
 column on horseback side by side with the 
 general or chief commanding officer. 
 
 I felt almost shy of distributing the little 
 presents which had been prepared with such 
 infinite care far away in the turmoil of Jassy, 
 but those nice men gave uncouth shouts, 
 which were much more expressive than 
 mumbled thanks when I gave the cigarettes. 
 They are, one and all, just like overgrown 
 children, and have the smile of little babies 
 at the lined corners of their eyes. Rou- 
 mania will certainly be left with a legacy of 
 fair, blue-eyecl children; the idylls obtruded 
 pleasantly wherever we had the indiscretion 
 to wander. But the Russians are a splendid 
 race, and their blood can but strengthen and 
 invigorate a Latin and often gipsy strain. 
 
182 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 Alas ! the return journey, which traced for 
 us yet another road, cast some shadows over 
 the brightness of all we had found to praise. 
 There has been time enough to trim and 
 polish only the fringes of such an army, and, 
 gradually, things turned from white to grey, 
 then back to brown. We passed through 
 deserted villages where decayed carcasses of 
 beasts had stained the road. Their streets 
 were piled in pyramids where the snow had 
 but half melted from the mud-heaps, and 
 refuse strewed the whole country-side. Those 
 troops we met aped travelling gipsies; their 
 creaking carts dangled pots and pans from 
 harness ropes and torn canvas covers. All 
 uniforms were rain-washed and tattered 
 brown and blue. Then would come a 
 cluster of hovels, heralded by a sign-post: 
 "No troops are to be billeted here"; some 
 one would whisper: "Typhus — infection/' 
 and we would whirl onwards, leaving in the 
 dust clouds a sad loneliness of mud, lean 
 beasts, and children aged before their time 
 who never raised their sunken eyes to stare. 
 
 The trip had lasted just seventy hours, yet 
 we felt that all the surroundings of Jassy 
 ought by rights to have changed completely 
 
A EOUMANIAN DIARY 183 
 
 for our return. We were completely disil- 
 lusioned. 
 
 Later. — There has been a mild Cabinet 
 crisis while we were away, on the questions 
 of private and Government property and the 
 future of Roumanian peasants after the war. 
 But the Government still stands firm. 
 
 A good deal of revolutionary disaffection is 
 making itself felt amongst the Russian troops 
 in Jassy, who have nothing to do. The 
 officers are rather in awe of their men, who 
 seem to have a gentle upper hand in the 
 management of their own affairs. Every 
 division, battalion, company, etc., has its own 
 committee of soldiers, which cuts it off from 
 all pretence of military discipline as we know 
 it, but which manages, nevertheless, to keep 
 admirable order. Unfortunately it is rather 
 obvious that the only thing which they ac- 
 tively desire is a peace that would allow 
 them to return to their own homes and put 
 their own country in order. Red flags wave 
 all over the town, and there have been mass 
 meetings advertised with pamphlets an- 
 nouncing that : "We want peace without con- 
 fiscation of territories and without war in- 
 demnities.' ' All this is disturbing; not that 
 
184 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 it in any way alters the course of the war, but 
 it cannot help lengthening the struggle. I 
 am afraid that there is little hope now of a 
 big spring offensive. Of course the optimists 
 amongst us maintain that this is nothing but 
 froth at the top of the bottle and that there 
 is good wine underneath. Certainly the men, 
 who, after all, could do as they liked with 
 this town, are very tractable. They sang 
 hymns as they marched towards the public 
 square where the meetings were held, and 
 were not even a little drunk. We hear that 
 they invited the French soldiers to come, and 
 that a non-commissioned officer who was "all 
 there" replied: "We should be delighted to 
 attend, but, unless you get us leave from our 
 officers, shall not be able to do so, as it would 
 be against the regulations. We hope, how- 
 ever, that you will make the request. ' ' Need- 
 less to say, the Russians took the hint and 
 didn't. The Russian privates took a red 
 cockade to their general in command, and 
 said: "We know you won't wear it, but we 
 bring it as a sign of our friendship. ' ' He re- 
 plied : ' l You are quite wrong. I will wear it 
 on the day when we can speak of Victory." 
 Oh dear ! If I were a Russian general now, 
 
A EOUMANIAN DIARY 185 
 
 what a big man I should be. I'd pin a red 
 cockade to every officer 's tunic and tie a scar- 
 let sash round my own, and say to my men: 
 "You are in the right. We join you — now 
 lead on and fight to win." They are such 
 children, these big, gentle, hairy men, easily 
 led and most impossibly driven. 
 
 The shadow of disease is lifting a little. 
 Practical advantage has been taken of this 
 interval of inanition, and large quantities of 
 necessary stores arrive daily from Russia. 
 And the food difficulty has become insignifi- 
 cant. The town is no longer trebly over- 
 crowded — just very full. A great number of 
 private enterprises for the relief of the coun- 
 try population have sprung into being. These 
 work along orderly systems, and are not too 
 exaggeratedly lacking in funds. All things 
 official are naturally reserved for the Red 
 Cross, which is now efficiently organised. All 
 that the country needs is time and material : 
 capabilities and a moderate enthusiasm are 
 decidedly here, but have not had a fair chance 
 of demonstrating hitherto. Every eye is fixed 
 on Russia, because the only thing that we 
 know for certain is, that whatever waves 
 flood our northern ally will engulf us too. I 
 
186 A KOUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 personally have such a profound confidence 
 in all things Russian, now that I have seen 
 with my own eyes what they are capable of 
 accomplishing, that I refuse to entertain the 
 supposition that they can diverge towards 
 wrong channels. But they are not made of 
 stuff that can be influenced by harrying. 
 
 Later. — We have had another unexpected 
 treat in the shape of a second visit of inspec- 
 tion — this time to the British and French 
 Red Cross Hospitals near the firing line. Our 
 own was simply splendid. It is the unit 
 which has received the largest amount of 
 English stores, and a great many of the ap- 
 pendages were of stereotyped pattern. 
 Nevertheless, we marvelled at the ingenuity 
 displayed in supplementing those things 
 which were unavoidably lacking. We saw the 
 whole system at work in low wooden build- 
 ings painted white. All the furniture was 
 home-made and enamelled; there were even 
 screens which folded tidily and sported a big 
 Maltese Cross on the opening panel. White 
 walls were finished with a dado of Roumanian 
 colours, and matched benches and beds of 
 smooth white wood. The blankets of soft 
 British wool were folded so as to leave upper- 
 
A EOUMANIAN DIARY 187 
 
 most the quiet Red Cross of St. John. The 
 whole staff is English, and is worshipped by 
 the men. At Eastertime the latter bribed the 
 night watchman to smuggle in Easter greens, 
 and the nurses woke to find their dining- 
 room wreathed on Easter morning and a tree 
 on the breakfast-table, where swung a heart- 
 shaped pendant of fresh violets. The sur- 
 geons received a telegram of " Heartfelt 
 gratitude for the kindness shown to us Rou- 
 manian soldiers." 
 
 We saw the convalescents planting seeds of 
 flowers and vegetables out of doors, and 
 noticed that all wore wooden sandals made 
 by their own artisans. In every other hos- 
 pital the men go barefoot. They have built 
 a pigsty and a cowshed, because one of the 
 nurses is a farmer's daughter and competent 
 to care for livestock. The staff goes out and 
 raids the country at intervals in the St. 
 John's ambulance car for food that runs. I 
 never met a nicer, happier spirit in any place 
 where people have suffered. The two English 
 surgeons live in a big private house belong- 
 ing to an old lady, who feels that Heaven 
 has sent her two nice big sons and who adores 
 them both. They are very good to her, and 
 
188 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 take it in turns to sit up late at night and 
 talk to her, as they have discovered that she 
 loves it. She is very rich, and has developed 
 a proprietary interest in the whole hospital, 
 and keeps it supplied with little luxuries. 
 
 The country on every side was pasture-land, 
 and the background of all we saw was 
 emerald green. 
 
 Later. — We are going through another 
 local crisis, this time a violent attack on the 
 Government. It is idle to speculate upon 
 what would happen here if it went out. That 
 the control should be forcibly upset again, 
 just when it has really taken hold and is 
 doing well, would be a disastrous pity. After 
 all, what does it matter who governs a coun- 
 try so long as the country improves and 
 thrives more visibly every day! The restora- 
 tion of order that has come to pass has been 
 so imperceptibly born that it is only in quiet 
 moments, when one has an opportunity to 
 visualise things as they were a few short 
 weeks ago, that one can appreciate the stu- 
 pendous amount that has been accomplished. 
 When solid foundations have been laid it 
 would appear sheer lunacy to hunt out a new 
 building site. Patriotism has always existed 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 189 
 
 here, and self-confidence is just coming. Suc- 
 cessful action will be the fruit of both if 
 things are left to work out their own salva- 
 tion. At a big military review the other day, 
 a small boy of six, dressed in full military 
 uniform, was hoisted on to a table and deliv- 
 ered a patriotic speech to the assembled 
 crowd of soldiers, officers and generals. The 
 finish was curiously Eastern: one remembers 
 how a slight boyish figure, drowned in blood, 
 wails a falsetto introduction to the Passion 
 Plays of Persia and Turkey before the 
 martyrdom of Hussein and Hassan is por- 
 trayed on the stage. The enthusiasm here 
 was quite as flaming as one had ever felt it in 
 the countries of Mohammed, and some of the 
 soldiers cried. The idea is but the crudest 
 principle of nature. Man has ever been 
 stirred by woman, and nothing can move a 
 woman so spontaneously as a child. 
 
 This whole city gives the impression of 
 having started now to work in earnest. We 
 are quietly, reasonably and systematically 
 preparing for war. And it is dull work. 
 These political agitations are purely the re- 
 sult of inaction upon awakened minds. Had 
 we ammunition now and the original enthusi- 
 
190 A EOUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 asm for conquest, I am certain that 
 the Germans would be scattered out of 
 Wallachia like chaff before the wind. Exist- 
 ing circumstances are so wonderfully com- 
 fortable compared to all that we survived in 
 the winter that we stand in great danger of 
 becoming too contented to move again before 
 the war is over. Individuals feel it them- 
 selves. We women have no work to do, and 
 the inaction is paralysing. I laze all day in 
 a spring-time garden where birds twitter and 
 crickets sing. Then I go to bed and sleep 
 badly because I overslept all day. Every now 
 and then a busy morning threatens when 
 trains of Red Cross material steam in from 
 Russia. But an organising presence has be- 
 come almost superfluous. There is transport 
 galore, and all the subordinates know their 
 business. 
 
 We indulge in occasional motor picnics 
 outside the town, and have noticed that the 
 peasants are gradually losing their hunted 
 look and are beginning to fill their rags of 
 clothes. This is thanks to the good and effi- 
 cient work done quietly by the relief commis- 
 sions. 
 
 It is hard to decide whether it is the 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 191 
 
 warmth and sunshine which has given us such 
 semblance of settled peace, or whether only a 
 little order, a little time and a few skilled 
 workmen would have assured it to us straight 
 on from the beginning. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 May 1917. — We are told that we stand 
 upon the brink of action. Certain it is that 
 at no time since she entered the war has 
 Roumania stood to the fight so well prepared 
 as now. In retrospect, it is wonderful to 
 realise all that has been accomplished despite 
 inexperience and shortage of material. The 
 word "starvation" makes us smile nowadays, 
 for we are almost surfeited by the luxury of 
 supplies brought by regular transport sys- 
 tems from Russia. Further, the whole un- 
 dulating surroundings of Jassy are cloaked 
 green with growing corn. A peaceful surety of 
 general well-being envelops us. My little de- 
 serted garden is pushing up all sorts of 
 flowers whose impetus was their own, for they 
 sowed themselves, blown hither by winds 
 from the woods. Roses are budding regard- 
 less of horticultural rules, for wistaria has 
 only just begun to uncurl its tendrils and 
 promises no flower. I think that it must have 
 
 192 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 193 
 
 got discouraged at finding no spring to 
 glorify. We missed that season altogether this 
 year and leapt from winter into summer, so 
 I take it that the wistaria is sulking now. The 
 dust lies ankle-deep on the roads, but some- 
 how it feels quite different from the disease- 
 laden powder of autumn. So much disinfec- 
 tant has been strewn just lately that the very 
 air brings whiffs of it to strengthen 
 the contrast with perfume of flowers and 
 herbs. We have been able to make a little 
 jam with cherries and gooseberries brought 
 from outlying gardens. Also some mar- 
 malade as a result of a gift of oranges from 
 Odessa. I sacrificed at least two future win- 
 ter breakfasts by succumbing to the tempta- 
 tion of eating one when they arrived. It was 
 the best thing that I ever tasted. 
 
 It seems hard lines on the new Roumanian 
 army that their Russian allies should be in 
 trouble now, as it is difficult to believe that a 
 country like Russia can get under way again 
 quickly. The evolution must surely take 
 years. It is curious to contrast the present 
 attitude of mind in Russia with the one that 
 has gradually crept over the Roumanian pop- 
 ulation. When they first went forth to fight, 
 
194 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 I doubt whether one man out of ten knew the 
 real reason of his going. In general their 
 enthusiasm was at that time merely for war, 
 for the desire to kill had blown over their 
 country. But now they have formed their 
 ideal of a fight for Peace, and seeing their 
 country tortured has made them understand 
 that they love the soil and want to make it 
 well. They love their English allies, and it 
 has been a pleasant discovery to find in them 
 only augmentation of loyalty and trust. The 
 army is well fed now, and well clothed; the 
 men have had time to rest, to look back- 
 wards, and to remember where they went 
 wrong. They have had a chance to learn 
 which of their officers to follow and those 
 amongst their comrades who require to be 
 led. One has only to watch them march by 
 nowadays to mark the difference in their car- 
 riage and the concerted drumming of their 
 hobnailed boots. And they have borrowed 
 cadenced songs from the Russians, who sing 
 no longer now that they no longer march. 
 
 Needless to say, there is much that still 
 remains to be done. The army no longer 
 starves for the necessities, such as ammuni- 
 tion and sanitary supplies, but it hungers for 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 195 
 
 delicacies and details. These will all come, 
 in time, I suppose, just as the other and more 
 immediate requirements came; but it would 
 be a tragic mistake to launch forth again 
 without them. The Roumanians, luckily, 
 realise the danger of such action, and their 
 leaders are too clever to stumble into the 
 pitfall of foolhardiness which always lurks 
 for those who have lately escaped from dan- 
 ger. But the army, as a whole, is straining 
 to take the offensive, and it is so wonderful 
 that the men should feel thus after all that 
 they have suffered that it seems almost cruel 
 to tie their hands. English and French offi- 
 cers alike agree that a capital fighting force 
 has grown up, no one quite knows how, out 
 of the demoralisation of the last few months, 
 and it is impossible to give a sufficiency 
 of credit to the leaders who have built it 
 up. 
 
 The King has undoubtedly proved himself 
 a great man in this war. Few could have 
 sunk all personal interest and sympathies 
 before pure patriotism of the most altruistic 
 kind as he has done, and I think that the 
 power of the throne, even in this century of 
 socialistic tendencies, makes itself felt here 
 
196 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 now as would have seemed impossible a bare 
 two years ago. Be it also remembered that 
 he has had to help him a woman who is 
 beautiful and brilliant, and who is, besides, 
 his Queen. 
 
 It is a disconcerting testimony to the 
 pettiness of human nature to be obliged to 
 record that now, after all the sufferings that 
 we have witnessed and which we, ourselves, 
 escaped by just a miracle, the only thing that 
 actively disturbs our tranquillity should be a 
 plague of flies ! I simply cannot begin to 
 describe the extent to which they worry us. 
 A few fly-papers saved from amongst our 
 original stores from home have saved our 
 reason. I bought yards and yards of the 
 wedding veiling which peasant women use 
 and nailed it outside all the windows, but 
 even so, after two or three hours, my papers 
 were black. People come and beg most 
 piteously for "Just one paper.' 9 And when 
 I feel generous I give it to them, and then 
 wake up in the night and regret my action. 
 Now that my stock is low, I have invented a 
 substitute of melted resin and corrosive sub- 
 limate, mixed with a little oil to prevent the 
 mixture hardening. However, I was only able 
 
196 A EOUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 now as would have seemed impossible a bare 
 two years ago. Be it also remembered that 
 he has had to help him a woman who is 
 beautiful and brilliant, and who is, besides, 
 his Queen. 
 
 It is a disconcerting testimony to the 
 pettiness of human nature to be obliged to 
 record that now, after all the sufferings that 
 we have witnessed and which we, ourselves, 
 escaped by just a miracle, the only thing that 
 actively disturbs our tranquillity should be a 
 plague of flies ! I simply cannot begin to 
 describe the extent to which they worry us. 
 A few fly-papers saved from amongst our 
 original stores from home have saved our 
 reason. I bought yards and yards of the 
 wedding veiling which peasant women use 
 and nailed it outside all the windows, but 
 even so, after two or three hours, my papers 
 were black. People come and beg most 
 piteously for "Just one paper.' ' And when 
 I feel generous I give it to them, and then 
 wake up in the night and regret my action. 
 Now that my stock is low, I have invented a 
 substitute of melted resin and corrosive sub- 
 limate, mixed with a little oil to prevent the 
 mixture hardening. However, I was only able 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 197 
 
 to obtain two kilos of resin, and had to send 
 to Russia for that. We had one small result- 
 ing tragedy from my ingenuity: for a little 
 while we have owned two baby jackdaws, who 
 hop about all over the house, and one of them 
 stuck to a fly-paper. Such a turmoil as rose 
 was never heard before. They are huge 
 little birds, very amusing, affectionate and 
 friendly, who cannot yet eat alone. They 
 fell out of their nest and adopted us, to be- 
 come our constant delight. I never believed 
 that the tale of the Jackdaw of Rheims was 
 anything but a fairy story before, but I must 
 confess that these little beasts steal every- 
 thing that shines. 
 
 It has been interesting to discover what 
 solace can be found in days of the most 
 anxious uncertainty by contact with things 
 young and care-free. All the English chil- 
 dren were sent home months ago, and we miss 
 their atmosphere so horribly that anything 
 small and happy finds welcome here. I have 
 noticed that Roumanians who took but the 
 most cursory interest in a nursery world 
 before they went to war have become almost 
 ostentatiously parental lately. The whole 
 aspect of Jassy has lost the impression it 
 
198 A ROUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 used to give of having been a most ill-chosen 
 picnic site where it had very lately and 
 copiously rained. We can almost flatter our- 
 selves that we live in a flourishing military 
 centre. French blue and grey and English 
 khaki almost predominate about the streets 
 now that the Rusolan units have moved into 
 scattered canvas cities. For it is significant 
 of new and extremely salutary military disci- 
 pline to note that it is only the officers who 
 wander except when actually off duty. I 
 never could have credited the possibility of 
 Roumania boasting a town that did not an- 
 nounce itself as primarily built for pleasure, 
 yet, nowadays, not even a Bosche caserne 
 could look more business-like. It gives an 
 overwhelming sense of satisfaction to drive 
 past the big buildings lately built for storage, 
 and to recall the wastage lying on their sites 
 some bare weeks ago. One or two restau- 
 rants have opened and do a roaring trade, 
 and the shops have begun to sport tentative 
 wares in their windows. 
 
 Our own house is no longer the "English 
 Hotel.' ' We only have as guests those 
 strangers we want to see. Because the hotels 
 have become more or less normal, and have 
 
A EOUMANIAN DIARY 199 
 
 been known to promise a room for a certain 
 date, and offer it, all prepared when that date 
 came, with linen, hot water and a bed. Local 
 papers make their appearance daily on our 
 breakfast-tables, and tell the news of the 
 world in the same fashion as do their big- 
 brothers in England— that is to say, they keep 
 us interested and teach ns just nothing at all. 
 A theatre has opened in the centre of the 
 town, and onr charity matinees have tried to 
 rival the accounts of London. Proportion- 
 ately astonishing was the financial profit. It 
 appears that, even in Eoumania, there are 
 still a few rich men. Naturally those land- 
 owners whose property lies in Moldavia have 
 accrued to themselves worldly goods which 
 their Wallachian brothers lost, and the credit 
 of the country is as good as is possible when 
 the whole machinery has been disorganised. 
 
 Further, for the first time in history there 
 is real understanding between the peasant 
 and his landlord— still embryonic, naturally, 
 but nevertheless latent and productive of a 
 sympathetic atmosphere. I have come across 
 hundreds of cases of unostentatious charity 
 just lately, and the Roumanian peasant is a 
 
200 A EOUMANIAN DIARY 
 
 very loyal, grateful soul, who, like all of us, 
 finds it pleasant to be spoilt. 
 
 Life became so monotonous when passed in 
 a continual state of tension which never knew 
 the satisfaction of an actual happening to 
 give it raison d'etre, that we have become 
 rather sociable and have begun to give little 
 dinner parties. Luckily we can listen to good 
 music, because there is genius in the race, 
 and I have garnered many pleasant memories 
 of temporary oblivion to the crude realities 
 of life brought by cadences which seem, in 
 retrospect, to echo from a half-forgotten 
 world. Foretaste of a peace that shall be 
 lasting comes in the golden evenings, which 
 see us motor southwards through pine woods 
 and along roads of transfigured dust towards 
 the little villages which only a miracle has 
 saved from ruin. Almost invariably we find 
 some tunester whose instinct has made him 
 wander home, where once, before he went to 
 war, his music taught all young things to 
 dance. Joie de vivre dies hard, and he usu- 
 ally only requires to be found before he starts 
 to play. And youth, which cannot die, col- 
 lects and catches rhythm which we are not 
 allowed to know, because it lies in a future 
 
A ROUMANIAN DIARY 201 
 
 which is not ours. Just to watch, however, 
 brings us sufficiency of contentment. 
 
 June 1917. — I have been wondering 
 whether any one would care to read this 
 diary. Roumania is deserving of notice and 
 appreciation. She has proved herself, and in 
 the greatest manner which does not savour 
 of ostentation. All that has been lately ac- 
 complished spells silent work and no small 
 devotion to what has grown in this our cen- 
 tury to be the greatest cause. Strangers who 
 had knowledge and experience, who came to 
 put machinery in motion, remain here, it is 
 true. But they stay to work, and are no 
 longer required to lead. The army trusts 
 its officers, the nation appreciates its King. 
 And we outsiders feel that we want to go 
 home and tell the family of Allies that our 
 little brother Roumania has grown into a man 
 of whom we have reason to be very proud. 
 
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