1938: Rumania

New Government.

The year 1938 brought a sequence of dramatic events for Rumania. The anti-Semitic Government of Octavian Goga, which had come into power at the end of 1937, dissolved the Parliament in which it could count upon the support of only a small minority, and the campaign for the new elections promised to throw the country into further confusion and even into civil war. Under these conditions King Carol II felt himself authorized on Feb. 10, 1938, to suspend Parliament, to halt the elections, to dismiss the Cabinet, and to name a new Cabinet under the Presidency of Miron Cristea, a Transylvanian Orthodox priest, who had been since 1925 Rumanian Patriarch. George Tatarescu, a member of the former Liberal Party, who for many years had been Prime Minister before Goga came to power, became Deputy Prime Minister. The formation of the new government was a blow directed at Julius Maniu, the leader of the Democratic opposition in Rumania, and at Codreanu, the leader of the extreme Fascist group.

New Constitution.

A new Constitution confirming the results of the royal coup d'état was promulgated by King Carol II on Feb. 20; and within four days the Rumanian people were asked to accept or to reject this new Constitution without any possibility of closer study and under the abolition of freedom of meeting, discussion, and the press. Naturally, the people accepted the new Constitution with an overwhelming majority, 99.87 per cent of the population voting for this new instrument which established an unlimited dictatorship by the King. All existing parties were dissolved, and Codreanu dissolved his Fascist party, 'Totul Pentru Tara' ('Everything for the fatherland'). All the executive and legislative powers passed into the hands of the King, who entrusted the administration and the supervision of the country to the army. All constitutional liberties were completely abrogated. In her foreign policy, Rumania maintained a friendly attitude toward all countries and strict and loyal adherence to her alliances with France, the Little Entente, and the Balkan Entente.

Imprisonment of the Terrorist Codreanu.

In April, the King struck a decisive blow at Codreanu, whose Fascist legions were preparing an armed rising against the Government. Codreanu had founded, in 1927, when he was a young lawyer of 28 years, a nationalistic legion for the racial and Christian renovation of Rumania under the name Legion of the Archangel Michael. His group, later called the Iron Guard, managed to win, in 1932, four seats in the Rumanian Parliament. From that time on, the Iron Guard launched a violent terrorist campaign in Rumania. In 1924, Codreanu himself had been accused of killing the prefect of the police of Jassy. Now, in a quick succession, prominent members of the Government and of the Administration were murdered by Codreanu's bands. Prime Minister Ion Duca was killed on Dec. 30, 1933. By his unceasing propaganda, by his terrorist methods, and by his complete devotion to his ideals, Codreanu exercised a growing influence upon a large part of the Rumanian youth, especially at the universities, and won also many adherents from among the clergy and the army officers. In the elections of December 1937, Codreanu's party gained third place among the parties. His program included a war of extermination against democracy, against the minorities, especially the Jews, and a complete reorientation of Rumania's foreign policy in the sons of a close alliance with Italy and Germany and an abandonment of the agreements with France and Czechoslovakia. The Government of King Carol anticipated Codreanu's planned armed march upon Bucharest, arrested him and some fellow leaders, and on May 27 sentenced him to 10 years imprisonment.

King Carol's Foreign Undertakings.

These energetic measures on the part of the Government assured Rumania some peaceful months, during which the main attention of King Carol was directed to foreign affairs. The growing tension between Czechoslovakia and Germany was of the utmost importance for Rumania, Czechoslovakia being Rumania's ally and at the same time a bulwark for the protection of Rumania against German penetration. During the crisis King Carol remained faithful to his country's obligations under the Pact of the Little Entente. The partition of Czechoslovakia and the growing influence of Germany and Hungary in Central Europe made Rumania's position more difficult, especially since Hungary was ambitious to recover the Transylvanian territory which she had had to cede to Rumania after the World War, in spite of the large Hungarian minority in Transylvania. King Carol maintained friendly relations with Poland during 1938. The Polish Foreign Minister, Colonel Beck, visited him in October in an effort to make him agree to a complete cession of Carpatho-Russia to Hungary, but King Carol objected, fearing aggrandizement of Hungary. After the partition of Czechoslovakia, King Carol undertook a trip to London, Paris, and Germany. He tried to win the cooperation of the Western Powers for the protection of Rumania's political and economic independence against Germany, but he found very little encouragement. In Germany, he agreed to far-reaching economic cooperation with that country, to which he promised the whole supply of Rumanian wheat and oil, the latter to be conducted by pipe-lines to be built from Rumania through Czechoslovakia.

Suppression of Fascist Terrorism.

This new situation and the growing influence of Germany inspired the large youthful following of Codreanu to renewed activity and filled them with assurance that the day of their victory in Rumania was approaching. This Rumanian Hitlerist movement, which had adopted the symbol of a blue swastika on a yellow field, and whose followers were dressed in green shirts and wore Sam Browne belts, imitated all the Nazi slogans and added to them a mystical belief in the sacred soul of Rumania and in Greek Orthodoxy. Now the terrorist campaign was revived, and at the end of November three members of the Iron Guard dangerously wounded the Rector of the Cluj University, Professor Florian Stefanescu-Goanga. The Government decided to transfer Codreanu and thirteen other Iron Guard leaders who were serving prison sentences to a military prison. During this transfer the fourteen terrorists were shot by the police, who maintained that an effort had been made to rescue them. All fourteen had committed murder, Codreanu himself as a student having killed, or been accused of killing, the police prefect of Jassy, three others having been convicted of assassinating Prime Minister Duca, and the ten remaining having been convicted of the assassination of a former Iron Guard leader, Mihail Stilescu. The stern suppression of Fascist terrorism in Rumania evoked the wrath of German Nazi circles. But the Rumanian Government proceeded with the round-up of Iron Guard members throughout the country — most of them students — convinced that a wide-spread movement had been in preparation for the overthrow of the régime by coordinated terrorist action, probably supported by outside sympathies.

The 'Front of National Renaissance.'

As a consequence of the situation created by the forceful suppression of the Iron Guard and its leaders, King Carol established on Dec. 15 a new united party of all Rumanians, to be called the Front of National Renaissance. It will be the only political organization legally recognized in the Rumanian Kingdom. It will nominate all the candidates for election to the Rumanian Parliament and to the provincial and municipal councils, so that there will be no opposition in the coming elections. People participating in any other organization will be sentenced to a loss of citizenship and its rights for a period of years. All Rumanian citizens of more than twenty-one years of age may become members of the new organization, the task of which will be to strengthen the national conscience and to work for the consolidation and integration of the Rumanian state. See also JEWS.