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National Geographic : 1916 Sep
Contents
ROUMANIA AND ITS RUBICON are not allowed to be bankers, druggists, tobacconists; they have no standing in court, no right to employ counsel, no right to send their children to school ex cept they pay for the privilege, which is free to all others. They cannot own farm land, are denied the right of holding government positions, and are prohibited from organizing or controlling stock companies or corporations. Further more, although some of them for forty generations have lived in Roumania, they are aliens still, under Roumanian law. THE LAND OF HER DESIRE When the Powers assented to the crea tion of Roumania, one of the terms of the agreement was that all of her subjects should stand equal before the law. But later Roumania decided that she would consider the Jew an alien, and so the agreement was nullified, with no hand raised in an effective protest. The persecution, however, is economic rather than religious, for the experience of all eastern Europe has been that the Jew, under a free competition, manages to prosper where others barely exist, and so the attempt is made to handicap him as an equalizing process. Yet in spite of all his tribulations, in spite of govern mental processes which would seem to leave nothing to the Jew but to emigrate, he manages to keep the noose from strangling him and to survive the fierce struggle. While Roumania thus makes the Jew an alien, she does not regard him so when she needs men for her army. Then he is Roumanian from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot, although even in the army he cannot become an officer or escape the menial jobs that military op erations always involve. Having thus far considered the Rou mania of today, let us now turn to the, Roumanian lands of a possible tomor row-Transylvania, Bessarabia, and Bu kowina (see also pages 185 and 186). Transylvania has a geographical rather than a political existence. It is a part of Hungary, although it is almost as much separated from geographical Hungary as the great plateau west of the Rockies is separated from the Mississippi Valley. It is the great highland region which forms the western slope of the Transyl vanian Alps and the southern slope of the southeastern Carpathians. "The mountains cradled and brought our race to the manhood of its existence," say the Roumanians, and this applies both to the gradual western slope of the eastern Alps as well as to the sharper eastern slope. In this territory one may find every form of scenic beauty from the idyllic pastoral picture to the majestically rugged mountain and the frenzy-churned waters of torrential rivers. The region's popular customs, language, and costumes are pre served in all their primitive originality, amid sharply defined boundaries created by nature and a sternly cold climate born of the high Alps. A POTPOURRI OF PEOPLES Those who travel through it look with bated breath upon the fabulous coloring of the bewitching pictures which water, rocks, forests, sheltered valleys, and white, glistening peaks, together with striking people, conspire to make. It is a veritable treasure-house of contrasting costumes: here those of the Wallachian, here those of the Moldavian, here those of the Saxon, here those of the Hunga rian, and here all of them in a gay pot pourri, with a sprinkling of Greek, Bul gar, and Serb, of Gypsy and of Slovak, thrown in. There are a million and a half Wallachians in Transylvania, 700,000 Hungarians, and 200,000 Saxons. In the heart of Transylvania there is a district known as the Kalateszag, which has been strikingly described as a Hun garian island in the sea of Transylvanian Wallachia. Banffy-Hunyad is its center, and it is a place famed for its beautiful women. With their steely black hair, their rainbow-hued ribbons, their pearl fillets, and their tight-fitting, art-embroi dered jackets, they present a picture that can never be forgotten. There are many salt mines in Transyl vania. The ones at Marosujvar produce a hundred million pounds of salt a year. In the one at Tordo there is a gallery known as the Joseph gallery, where one may hear his voice echoed and re-echoed sixteen times. 201
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