Reminiscences of the King of Roumania. Mite Kremnitz
he possessed an inborn genius for the business of ruler. By nature he is a practical realist whose insatiable appetite for facts, faits politiques, crowds out most other interests. So he quickly profited by experience, which, added to an independence of judgment which he always possessed, has made him an opportunist whose opportunity always means the welfare of his country. In dealing with public questions he endeavours to start with the Gladstonian open mind: i.e., by having no fixed opinion of his own. He listens to all—forms his own opinion in doing so—and invariably finishes by impressing and influencing others. He even indirectly manipulates public opinion by constantly seeing and conversing with a vast number of people. For in Roumania there is no class favouritism so far as access to the monarch is concerned. Anybody may be presented at Court, and on any Sunday afternoon all are at liberty to call and see the King even without the formality of an audience paper to fix an appointment.
Personal favouritism has never existed under him. In fact, so thoroughly has he realised and carried into practice what he considers to be his duty of personal impartiality, that he once vouchsafed the following justification of an apparent harshness: that a ruler must take up one and drop another as the interests of the country require. In other words, he must not allow personal feeling to sway him—whereas in private life he should never forsake a friend. And yet withal King Charles is anxiously intent upon avoiding personal responsibility—not from timidity, but from an idea that it is irreconcilable with the dignity of a constitutional king to put himself forward in this way. Thus not "Le Roi le veut," but rather "I hold it to be in the public interest that such and such a thing should be done" is his habitual form of speech in council with his Ministers.
One of the King's favourite aphorisms is singularly suggestive in our talkative age: "It is not so much by what a prince does as by what he says that he makes enemies!" Like all men of true genius—or what the Germans call "geniale Naturen"—King Charles is of simple, unaffected nature;[3] without a taint of the histrionic in his composition, yet gifted with great reserve force of self-repression, and rare powers of discernment and well-balanced judgment.
With all the pride of a Hohenzoller, a sentiment which he never relinquishes, and which, indeed, is a constant spur to regulate his conduct by a high standard, he yet holds that nobody should let a servant do for him what he can do for himself. Also, he has ever felt an unaffected liking for people of humble station who lead useful lives, and have raised themselves honestly by their own merit. In fact, the man who works—however lowly his sphere of life—is nearer to his sympathies than one whose position gives him an excuse for laziness. He instinctively dislikes the "loafer," whatever his birth. He admits as little that exalted position is an excuse for a useless life as that it should be put forward to excuse deviation from the principles of traditional morality. And in this respect his own life, which has been singularly marked by what the German language terms "Sittenreinheit," "purity of morals," offers an impressive justification for his intolerance upon this one particular point.
V
It is said to be King Charles's earnest conviction that the maxims he has striven to put into practice are the only possible ones upon which a monarchy on a democratic basis can hope to exist in our time. But here he is obviously attempting to award to principle what, in this instance at least, must be largely due to the intuitive gifts of an extraordinary personality. Maxims are all very well so far as they go, but they did not go the whole length of the way. Did not even Immanuel Kant himself admit that, during a long experience as a tutor, he had never been able to put those precepts successfully into practice upon which his work on "Pädagogik" is founded? Also many of the difficulties successfully encountered by the King of Roumania have been of such a nature as cut-and-dry application of precepts or maxims would never have sufficed to vanquish. Among these may be cited the acute crises which from time to time have been the product of bitter party-warfare in Roumania. Thus, during the Franco-German War, when the sympathies of the Roumanian people were with the French to a man, his position was one of extreme difficulty. The spiteful enmity he encountered in those days taxed his endurance to its utmost limits, and even called forth a threat of abdication. A weaker man would have left his post. Again, in 1888, when a peasant rising brought about by party intrigues seemed to threaten the results of many years' labour, even experienced statesmen hinted that the Hohenzollern dynasty might not last another six months. The King was advised to use force and fire upon the rioters. This he declined to do. He simply dismissed the Ministry from office, and called the Opposition into power, and subsequent events proved that his decision was the right one. But by far the greatest crisis of his reign, and at the same time the greatest test of his nerve and political sagacity, was furnished by the singularly difficult situation of Roumania during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877: here, indeed, the very existence of Roumania was at stake. The situation may be read between the lines in the present volume.
The King, by virtue of a convention, had allowed the Russians to march through Roumania, but the latter had declined an acceptable alliance which the Roumanians wished for. When things in Bulgaria went badly with the Russians, they wanted to call upon some bodies of Roumanian troops which were stationed on the banks of the Danube. The King, or, as he was then, Prince Charles, with the instinct of the soldier—and in this case, moreover, of the far-sighted politician—was burning to let Roumania take her share in the struggle. But he was determined that she should only enter the fray—if at all—as an independent belligerent power. So he held back—and held back again, risking the grave danger which might accrue to Roumania, and above all to himself, from ultimate Russian resentment. In the meantime, the Russians were defeated in the battles round Plevna; still he held back; not with a point-blank refusal, but with a dilatory evasiveness which drove the Russians nearly frantic. For, during those terrible months of July and August 1877, in which their soldiers were dying like flies, they could see the whole Roumanian army standing ready mobilised, but motionless, a few hours away to the north, on the Danube—immovable in the face of all Muscovite appeals for assistance. At last the Russians were obliged to accept Prince Charles's conditions, to agree to allow him the independent command of all Roumanian troops, and to place a large corps of Russian troops besides under his orders. Then, indeed, the former Prussian lieutenant started within twenty-four hours, after playing the Russians at their own game for four months, and beating them at it to boot. Had Russia refused his demands, not a single Roumanian would have entered upon that struggle in the subsequent course of which their Sovereign covered himself with renown. It was no part of his business as the ruler of Roumania to seek military glory per se, although the instinct for such was strong within the Hohenzoller. Also on the 11th September, the battle of Grivitza—which was fought against his advice—saw him at his post, and sixteen thousand Russians and Roumanians[4] were killed and wounded under his command, probably a greater number slain in open battle in one day than England has lost in all her wars since the Crimea! Surely there was something of the heroic here; and yet it could hardly weigh as an achievement when compared with those Fabian tactics which preceded it, and the execution of which, until the psychological moment came, called for nerves of steel. Hardly ever has la politique dilatoire—of which Prince Bismarck was such a master in his dealings with Benedetti—had an apter exponent than King Charles on this eventful occasion. And its results, although afterwards curtailed by the decision of the Berlin Congress, secured the independence of Roumania and its creation as a kingdom.
VI
King Charles is peculiarly German in his passionate love of nature. At Sinaja—his summer residence—he looks after his trees with the same solicitude which filled his great countryman, Prince Bismarck. He spends his holidays by preference amid romantic scenery—at Abbazia, on the blue Adriatic, or in Switzerland. He visits Ragatz nearly every year, and thoroughly enjoys his stay among the bluff Swiss burghers. It is impossible for him to conceal his identity there; but he does his best to avoid the dreaded royalty-hunting tourist of certain nationalities, and finds an endless fund of amusement in the rough politeness