Dogs & Broken Bone

Two of Hitler's puppet States were almost at war last week. They snarled at each other like angry dogs over a bone. The bone was Transylvania which the Allies snatched from Hungary and tossed to Rumania for fighting against Germany in the last war. At the Vienna Conference in 1940 Hitler broke the bone in two, gave half of it back to Hungary. Lately he has been telling both countries that the one which helps him the most in Russia will get the whole bone, for keeps. Now it looked as if neither Hungary nor Rumania cared to wait much longer.

In Budapest, Count Bela Teleki, spokesman for the Transylvanian Deputies in Hungary's Lower Chamber, cried: "We must take action to insure that the shameful conditions [in Rumanian Transylvania], under which Hungarian nationals are robbed of all their possessions and are oppressed, end immediately."

Rumania's loudest yelp came from Premier Ion ("Red Dog") Antonescu's nephew Mihai, who is Acting Foreign Minister. "During the last year," he said, "northern Transylvania [the part Hitler gave to Hungary], cradle of our country, was submitted to a regime of oppression and humiliation. . . . Its population has been jeered and tortured, its churches destroyed. Its land was taken away from the peasants. . . . We have the duty . . . to declare that such a state of affairs can no longer continue."

Rumania's peasant leader Juliu Maniu and famed elder statesman Constantin Bratianu did their barking in the form of a memorandum to Premier Antonescu. "We must take precautions," they said, "so that our frontiers are protected and see to it that we regain Transylvania, of which we have been robbed. . . . If you are not convinced that the German Army is able to defeat the frequently annihilated Russian Army without the few precious Rumanian divisions, then you cannot believe at all in the final victory of Germany." A few days later Maniu supplied Antonescu with "proof" of Hungary's hostile intentions, tried to persuade the Premier to quit the Axis.

Though Rumania's snarls were angrier, Hungary seemed more ready to bite. Thousands of troops were manning the Rumanian frontier. In Transylvania, Hungary was deliberately conscripting men of Rumanian ancestry to reduce Rumania's ethnic claim to the territory. In Ankara, it was reported that Hungary's Chief of Staff, Field Marshal Franz Szombathelyi, had recently been in Sofia trying to persuade Bulgaria to sign a joint ultimatum against Rumania.

Russia and Great Britain would love a Balkan dogfight this spring. If Hungary and Rumania fought each other instead of Russia, the second front against Germany would be ready-made by Adolf Hitler.

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