PARLAMENTUL ȘI POLITICA EXTERNĂ A ROMÂNIEI ÎN AJUNUL PRIMULUI RĂZBOI MONDIAL (FEBRUARIE-IUNIE 1914)
ROMANIA’S PARLIAMENT AND FOREIGN POLICY IN THE EVE OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR (FEBRUARY-JUNE 1914)

Summary/Abstract: The Government leadership by Ionel Brătianu in 1914 changed Romania’s foreign policy. A symbol of this shift was the visit of Tsar Nicholas II in Constanta in June 1914. The Parliament sessions between February and June 1914 included discussions regarding the agrarian and electoral reforms. Conservatives like P. P. Car countered, arguing that it would divide the country, when it was actually necessary for Romania to strengthen its institutions, and exercise the preponderant role it had just won in the Balkan Peninsula. Liberals, like D. Șuculescu, argued that in order to do their duty, soldiers had to be ensured that in case of their death, their children would have means to live, underlying the necessity of reforms. After the Tsar’s visit in Constanta, Nicolae Iorga said that it was the sign of abandonment of the foreign policy of "masked vassalage" to date in favor of freedom of action that "may bring us hundredfold political benefit." The assassination in Sarajevo echoed in Parliament, the Conservative C. I. Argetoianu saying that after this even, in the Senate meeting he felt "a breath of highest patriotism" and all the senators seemed willing to forget what had divided them to unite them instead ”all around the higher idea of patriotism and nation”.

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