Chapter 216: Rising Nationalism (Part I)

At a time when the situation in Europe was changing dramatically, Romania's economy continued to develop rapidly because of the European war.

In fact, the economic development of other European countries that still did not participate in the war is not bad, but Romania is too prominent in it. While the 6%-15% growth rate is common in other neutral countries in Europe, Romania's growth rate of more than 20% is unusually impressive. However, the main reason for this is that Romania is able to provide enough necessities for the military and livelihood of the surrounding countries. Food, oil, vehicles, etc., which are needed by Germany and Austria, and daily necessities, vehicles, fuel, etc., which are needed by Russia.

Even after Russia seized Russian Poland this year, Russian Ambassador Feralovsky visited Prime Minister Blettianu with British and French ambassadors, and when talking to the prime minister, the Russian ambassador strongly hinted that he wanted Romania to sell a batch of arms and was willing to increase the current price by another 20 percent. However, Prime Minister Bretianu did not dare to make a hasty decision, and he postponed it for the time being, citing the need for careful consideration of Romania's neutral arms exports to Russia, and the matter ultimately had to be dealt with by Eder.

However, from here, the Russians' military supplies are almost at the bottom, and even Romania, which is neutral and rarely exports arms, is also noted. In fact, several successive defeats cost Russia heavy losses, and a large number of soldiers were captured. Along with the soldiers, a large amount of weapons and ammunition were captured, which made the situation even worse for the Russian army, which was inherently ill-prepared, and now the Russian government could not even guarantee the supply of rifles to the soldiers. A large number of reinforcements on the front line do not have weapons until now, and they need to share the same weapons with their comrades.

What's even more terrifying is that the Russian government has shortened the training period for newly recruited soldiers from the already short limit of six weeks to four weeks. Recruits who have been compressed during the training period cannot even shoot a rifle very well, let alone simple tactical training. So the odds of these recruits surviving on the battlefield can be imagined.

However, who made Russia lose too much on the battlefield, Russia has lost more than a million people in the war for a year. Now the Russian government can only compensate for the losses suffered by the army by compressing the training period.

Now Eder had no intention of abandoning neutrality, even if he was ready to allow Romania to join the Entente. It will not affect the Allies' sense of Romania now, you must know that Romania is now surrounded by the Allies on three sides.

At the same time, he was not interested in the Russian proposal at the moment, and now there was a real trouble in Romania that was bothering him.

In recent years, Romania has developed well, there is a voice in Romanian society, and now the Kingdom of Romania has become strong, so the kingdom needs to protect every Romanian from harm, simply put, Romania is strong, and nationalist sentiment has a tendency to expand.

However, the organization that makes this voice is called the Patriotic YMCA, which was originally founded on campus by a few enthusiastic patriotic students. However, with its radical slogans (Romania needs Austria-Hungary in Transylvania and Russia in Bessarabia), it also attracted a lot of radical nationalists, although the mainstream of society was not satisfied with such radical ideas, and most Romanians did not agree with them. For most people were sensible to Austria-Hungary and Russia, which occupied the Romanian populated areas, and knew that Romania's national strength could not provoke either.

It's just that now the acceleration of Romania's economic development, most importantly the great war between neighboring Austria-Hungary and Russia, has made the idea of this Patriotic YMCA new attractive, and more and more people are slowly beginning to accept the views of this small organization. Gradually, this small party became more and more prominent in Romania, and finally caught Eder's attention.

Eder was wary of the radical party's slogans, because no one but him would know that Austria-Hungary would disintegrate, Russia would change color, and that both European powers would fall in the war. The prevailing view now is that one of them will be defeated and the other will be won. So in this case, Eder thinks that the slogan of this patriotic YMCA is very suspicious and needs to be sent to investigate.

Soon the chief of the guard, Calust, placed the preliminary investigation of the information of the YMCA's in front of Edel's desk. In this report, Caluster gives a detailed account of the situation of the YMCA, from the initial development in the middle to the current big development.

The YMA was originally founded at the University of Iasi, which was founded in 1832, although not the most famous university in Romania, but it has produced a number of famous personalities. Now the Patriotic YMCA, several major backbones, the president of the YMCA; Jan Uskov, Chairman of the Board; Bostromi, etc., are all characters who graduated from this school.

According to the data from the survey, the YMCA's efforts have been focusing on local development since the establishment of the University of Iasi, and only a small part of the efforts have been devoted to recruiting members in the school. It seems that the YMCA has a clear mindset and knows that students are a double-edged sword that can easily hurt themselves, and this situation continued until the outbreak of World War I.

Since the outbreak of World War I, the YMCA has grown from more than 10,000 to 30,000 before the war, but at this time the development of the YMCA was still within the scope of Eder's approval. It was only at the beginning of this year that the YMCA became very strange in Romania, as they published their ideas in large numbers in the newspapers, and began to hold rallies in various cities to promote their views, and the YMCA leaders also frequently visited the cities to give speeches.

Eder could see at a glance that this was a master of propaganda building momentum for the YMCA. Moreover, this year's Al-Shabaab activities are frequent, and its expenses are no longer within the reach of al-Shabaab, which only needs to collect membership fees. That's what worries Eder the most, and how terrible a radical group that is funded by outside forces is beyond the imagination of these people right now.

Therefore, Eder asked Calust to find out who was behind the scenes, and whether he was a domestic person or a foreign organization, he could not let Edel relax his investigation.

After several days of investigation, Calust placed it in front of his desk to report that Eder was a little dumbfounded. The YMCA was not financed by a foreign power, but by people on both the Entente and the Central Powers. Edel thought about it and knew why the group was so popular with both parties.

The slogan put forward by the YMCA was that the Kingdom of Romania needed to protect every Romanian from persecution. There are still large numbers of Romanians living in Austro-Hungarian Transylvania and Russian Bessarabia, and Romanians are in the majority in both regions. When al-Shabaab is enlarged, it will have to meet the demands of its members, and Romania will have to choose between two camps, which is why both sides will finance a radical party, and they will stir up the national sentiment in Romania so that the Kingdom of Romania will have to choose sides.