Christmas 1917 - In Rumania.

This report comes from the “War Illustrated” by Lord Northcliffe who was a War Correspondent in Rumania.

"Not a word, of course, could be sent to England or to France about the turn events were taking. Censorship at each end took care that no hint of the true state of Russia should reach the peoples who were her Allies.

This has been the bitter lot of the war correspondent all through, to see dangers ahead and not be allowed to warn his countrymen. Just about that time I made the eight days' journey to England and returned after staying only a week, for the purpose of telling responsible men that it was useless to look to Russia for further sustained effort. I even hinted at this in an article which I called "Our War." If only I could have made people understand.

In Rumania, where I was at Christmas 1917, we were muzzled again. I tried in the early autumn to warn England. that disaster threatened our latest ally. The Censor, who was also Minister of Education, said in a tone of wounded pride, "I cannot allow that to be said of my country." Two months later the larger part of his country was in enemy hands.

By Christmas the Rumanian Army had been reduced from twenty-three divisions to six. I had seen the tragedy begin and develop and culminate. There was nothing left to do. Jassy, the temporary capital after the fall of Bukarest, was a detestable little place, very dirty, grotesquely dear. I suggested that I should leave. On December 23rd I got a cable saying "Yes." On Christmas Eve, therefore, I left, in a Red Cross train, which agreed to take me to the frontier.

Next morning, Christmas Day, I woke up in the buffet of the frontier station, Ungeni, rather stiff from sleeping on my trunk and thirsting for coffee, which had all been drunk by earlier risers than I. The Red Cross train had dumped me on to the platform about midnight. There was no train in until 8 a.m. It did not actually start until about eleven, and then it was only by hard talking that I got a place aboard it. I was acting as King's Messenger, and I combined with a French officer and a Rumanian, who were also carrying diplomatic letter-bags, to force the stationmaster to allot us a compartment. There we ate our Christmas meal, pooling the contents of our haversacks.

Christmas Queues a Year Ago

Just six days we took to reach Petrograd, a journey which in ordinary times was finished in forty- eight hours. But delays are sometimes useful. At Moghileff, the Tsar's Headquarters, I learned that the Army leaders had decided to support the Revolution, and that plans were made for changing the autocracy into a constitutional monarchy. In Petrograd, half an hour after I arrived, I heard of Rasputin's removal.

Last Christmas I spent in London, on short leave between returning from the United States and going to the British front. What sticks in my memory most persistently from that period is queues. I had seen the approach of hunger from the first. In Warsaw it was only the poor who had difficulty in getting food. In Petrograd a year later scarcity had just become noticeable. In Rumania at Christmas, 1916, everyone was going short, not excepting the Queen and her children, who would have been ashamed to store up supplies as the German Imperial Family meanly did, while their "subjects" were in sore straits. Now, at last, in 1917, England was feeling the pinch. But measures were soon adopted which made the queues unnecessary.

As I look back over the past four and a half years I see how little of the hardships of war people in this country have had to endure. I shall never forget a Rumanian Minister saying to me plaintively, "How lucky you English are to live on an island !"

"And to have a Navy to protect our island," I added. Without that we should have a very different tale to tell. "