August 12 the Tsar agrees to all the Rumanian terms. The secret Treaty was signed on August 18, the Salonika advance to take place on August 20, and the entrance of Rumania on August 28.

This arrangement seems to be confirmed by the Report of General Polivanov, written after the retreat of the Rumanian armies, which appeared in the New Europe (December 27, 1917):

In August 1916 a military and political Agreement was signed with Rumania, which assigned to her such accessions of territory (Bukovina and all Transylvania) as quite obviously did not correspond to the measure of Rumania's share of military operations, since she had undertaken only to declare war on Austria-Hungary, and had confined herself to operations in Transylvania. . . . From the standpoint of Russian interests we must be guided by the following considerations in judging the present situation in Rumania. If things had developed in such a way that the military and political Agreement of 1916 with Rumania had been fully realized, then a very strong State would have arisen in the Balkans, consisting of Moldavia, Wallachia, the Dobrudja, and of Transylvania, the Banat, and Bukovina (acquisitions under the Treaty of 1916) with a population of about 13,000,000. In the future this State could hardly have been friendlily disposed towards Russia, and would scarcely have abandoned the design of realizing its national dreams in Bessarabia and the Balkans. Consequently, the collapse of Rumania's plans as a Great Power is not particularly opposed to Russia's interests. This circumstance must be exploited by us in order to strengthen for as long as possible those compulsory ties which link Russia with Rumania. Our successes on the Rumanian Front are for us of extraordinary importance, as the only possibility of deciding once for all in the sense we desire the question of Constantinople and the Straits. The events now occurring in Rumania have altered to their very foundation the conditions of the Treaty of 1916. Instead of the comparatively modest military support which Russia was pledged to provide in the Dobrudja, she had to assign the defence of the Rumanian territory on all sides almost exclusively to Russian troops. This military aid on the part of Russia has now assumed such dimensions that the promise of territorial compensations to Rumania prescribed in the Treaty in return for her entry into the war must undoubtedly be submitted to revision.

(Signed) POLIVANOV The telegram of the Manchester Guardian correspondent, Mr. Price, which we have already quoted, concludes as follows:

On September 10 General Alexeieff, replying to the Rumanian demands through the General Staff for military assistance after the loss of Turtukai, expresses doubt of the wisdom of the whole Rumanian campaign, which widens the Russian front by 500 versts and requires 200,000 more Russian troops. Russia, he says, with 1200 versts of front in Europe and over 1000 versts in Asia, can ill afford this extension of front from a strategic point of view. After the Russian Revolution M. Miliukoff, on May 8, 1917, records in a Memorandum that the Serbian Government desires the reconsideration of the question of the Banat on the basis of peace without annexation, but M. Miliukoff considers that since Russia has just declared her loyalty to the treaties with the Allies such a step is inadmissible.

On May 19 M. Poklefsky, from Jassy, informs M. Terestchenko that M. Bratiano had just returned from Petrograd; though somewhat disquieted by the internal situation in Russia, he is convinced that the Provisional Government is determined to carry on the war to a victorious end. M. Bratiano, in Petrograd, had energetically protested against the programme of the Petrograd Soviet for peace without annexations if this meant the abandonment by Rumania of Transylvania and the Banat, but he had obtained an official assurance that the programme of the Soviet did not bind the Provisional Government

L. J. MAXSE

THE PINK CRANE*

ROBERTSON, rodman of the P. S. Development Company's surveying party, came to a sudden halt on the trail to camp. Ahead of him the figures of his companions wound their way through the marsh brush and disappeared behind a clump of elders. Robertson looked after them with unseeing eyes, lips puckered. He drew from an inner pocket a small notebook and, studying a page therein, added some figures with a stubby pencil, tapping with forefinger on the edge of the book for emphasis as he did so. "One sixty-one sixty-two-Friday, sixty-three. One hundred and sixty-four days!

He drew breath in a grimace that parted his small full, withal firm, lips, and then, transferring the surveying-rod clutched under one arm to his hand, tapped it up and down on the toe of his boot.

"One hundred and sixty-four days in this hell of a country, and it looks like we'd be one hundred and sixty-four more."

With a grunt of disgust he returned the book to his pocket, standing for a moment to sneer at the passionless landscape about him-the grey brush and the grey sky between the rugged bulk of grey mountains.

He frowned at the tangled maze of marsh brush through which their line was still to go As "Babe," the youngster axeman of the party, had expressed the views of all that morning, the country was "getting on his nerves."

Getting on his nerves!" Robertson shrugged fretfully and plodded on.

How different it all had been five months before, when the party had set out, leaving the haunts of men behind them. What pranks they had played then, bubbling over as they were with animal spirits! How they had laughed at their own and one another's misfortunes! How joked over a delayed meal or a broken cot! Friendships had formed and deepened between them: Gerhardt, chief of party; the rodman, Robertson; " Babe," the axeman; and Brooks, the silent transit-man. But all that was long ago, before the country had " got them, before they * Copyright in U.S.A. by the Century Magazine.

realized the meaning of " nerves or experienced the hell of a home-haunted night. Now the cords of friendship, still remaining, chafed; a man's peculiarities were an affront; a tone of voice could madden or a twist of feature fan a growing hate. Even the chief, Gerhardt, by nature genial to the point of heartiness, had in these latter days acquired a certain edge to his ready smile.

While Robertson, scowling, pursued his solitary way to camp, the men of the party, a few minutes before him in reaching that haven after a heavy day, filed silently into the mess-tent and took their places on the benches down each side of the long oilclothcovered table. Gerhardt, last to enter, lowered himself with a drawn-out sigh of content into his seat at the head. His full, red cheeks shone from their recent encounter with soap and water, and his dark hair, wet and glistening above his low brow, showed in tiny ridges the imprint of a comb.

"Where's Robertson?" he asked, looking down the table.

As if in answer to his name, Robertson entered the tent and silently stepped over and into his place. An air of suppressed excitement hung about him.

"I say, boys, what do you think I just saw on my way in?" He looked about the table almost gloatingly. The men, arrested thus in the business of eating, held knives and forks suspended.

Well, shoot!" growled one, scraping a hobnailed boot across the floor.

Robertson leaned out over the table and spoke, a note of triumph in his voice:

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"A pink crane !

Silence, subtly portentous, greeted this announcement. Robertson, waiting, full of pleased expectancy, felt his triumph oozing from him. With an almost shrinking movement of effacement he sat back in his chair, his lips tightly compressed. Gerhardt's laughter boomed down along the table to him.

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Ha ha! that's good, boys! Saw a pink crane! ha ha!"

Ha

A flash of eyes under lowered lids showed Gerhardt to Robertson-head thrown back, mouth wide open, his cachinnations pealing forth.

What a fool I was!" he thought. "The way the boys are guying lately, I might have known they wouldn't stand for a pink crane.

Impassively he lowered his eyes to his plate, but before him the image of Gerhardt persisted, derisive, jeering. His fingers closed; in imagination they grasped the catchup-bottle before him and thrust it down into Gerhardt's red and gaping throat. With expressionless face, lips close together, he carefully helped

himself to the corn and beans from the heavy dishes at his elbow.

"You've got to make allowances for him, boys”—the voice next him lowered in mock sympathy. "It's this country making him see things you or I can't see.'

"I thought he'd been acting kind o' queer lately"-Gerhardt's voice, muffled through its hardly controlled merriment, told of wistful solicitude. "We must bear with him, boys."

The boom of his laugh that followed flayed Robertson's face to a yellowish pallor. With painstaking care he lifted a forkful of beans and fell to masticating.

"Do you think," said one, leaning confidentially across the table, nodding a sad head in the direction of Robertson, “ he'll get over it? I knew a fellow once"-the man raised the catchupbottle in his hand to his lips and winked as he drew an imaginary draught" that was always seeing snakes."

Robertson with an effort managed to beat back the impulse to wince as the storm of ridicule closed once more about him; but his hand, reaching for a biscuit, trembled.

The youthful" Babe," blue eyes beaming, raised a gleeful

voice above the others.

"He's harmless, fellows; it's just his way of entertaining us." Wal, I don't know," a heretofore silent axeman drawled in affected nasal tones, "I seen a red cow oncet."

Back and forth, over and around, their gibes and jeers assailed the silent Robertson. Outwardly impassive, he met the waves of ridicule, eating, drinking, lifting now his fork now his glass, to whitened lips. As he ate quietly, painstakingly, he whispered to himself: Don't play the fool, don't answer the poor boobs. They'll soon get tired of this."

And so it followed. The men, their flow of wit at length exhausted, returned to eating, Gerhardt alone breaking now and again into deep subterranean chuckles, wagging his head at Robertson and crying sotto voce, "O Lordy! a pink crane! a pink crane! O Lordy! Lordy!"

That night in the tent they shared together Robertson listened non-committally to Gerhardt's tales of past hunting exploits as the latter cleaned a favourite rifle.

Say, Robertson, we ought to be in the goat country pretty soon." Gerhardt, holding the rifle toward the lantern's light, squinted through its gleaming barrel. "Lord! wouldn't I like a shot at one of 'em!" He lowered the gun and, holding it between his knees as he sat on the edge of his cot, inserted a wisp of blackened rag at the end of a ramrod and worked it up and down within the gun-barrel.

"Ever shoot big game, Robertson?"

Robertson, unlacing his heavy boots, head bent, grunted unintelligibly. With a kick he freed his feet and, rising, bent over his cot, pulling back the blankets.

With a glance in his direction Gerhardt chuckled.

"Only pink cranes in your line, eh, Robertson?" he said, and rolled backward on his cot, shaking silently.

up

Robertson, stretched out full length, drew the blankets close about his neck, and turned his face to the wall.

It was some days after that Gerhardt, late one evening in coming into camp, hurried through his nightly ablutions and walked with swinging stride into the mess-tent. After looking about the table with a certain air of mystery and importance, he seated himself in his place at the head. His eyes sparkled, and his ruddy cheeks glowed like a girl's. He looked slowly up and down as if to see that all were there, and then leaned toward Robertson, quietly eating at the farther end.

"Robertson," said Gerhardt in clear, heavy tones that held an unwonted note of gravity. He paused as the men instinctively raised their heads and listened. Robertson, I owe you an apology." Again he paused. Robertson, coolly listening, turned his head and waited with the rest.

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What do you think I saw to-day?" His voice lowered. "A pink crane!"

Robertson smiled faintly, and lifting his cup of black coffee spoke over its lip to Gerhardt.

"You did? Well, I didn't."

There was a moment of silence. Gerhardt's mouth opened childishly. He stared at Robertson, who calmly tipped the cup of coffee at his lip and drank with even gulps.

Delighted squeals and howls greeted this return of Robertson's. Poor old Gerhardt!" the men chortled, the nearest slapping him affectionately upon the back.

"He's got 'em too."

"A pink crane, eh? And Robertson admits he never saw one. Haw haw haw!"

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Says he, I owe you an apology, Robertson,' just like that. O mother!'

"Did you lend him those rose specs of yours, Robertson?" "He must have been dreaming of pink cranes since Robertson told us that yarn."

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He'll get over it; Robertson did," Babe" shouted ecstatically.

Gerhardt, his cheeks turning from red to white and red again, stared down the table at Robertson, who stared coolly and as silently back.

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Robertson," said Gerhardt with slow distinctness, you