Besides which he very correctly estimated that a change in certain political relations would effect a closer alliance between Roumania and ourselves.

He felt, rather than knew, that the Transylvanian question lay like a huge obstacle between Vienna and Bucharest, and that this obstacle once removed would alter the entire situation.
To find out the real condition of the alliance was my first task, and it was not difficult, as the first lengthy conferences I had with King Carol left no doubt in my mind that the old King himself considered the alliance very unsafe.

King Carol was an exceptionally clever man, very cautious and deliberate, and it was not easy to make him talk if he intended to be silent.

The question of the vitality of the alliance was settled by my suggesting to the King that the alliance should receive pragmatic sanction, i.e.be ratified by the Parliaments at Vienna, Budapest, and Bucharest.

The alarm evinced by the King at the suggestion, the very idea that the carefully guarded secret of the existence of an alliance should be divulged, proved to me how totally impossible it would be, in the circumstances, to infuse fresh life into such dead matter.
My reports sent to the Ballplatz leave no doubt that I answered this first question by declaring in categorical fashion that the alliance with Roumania was, under the existing conditions, nothing but a scrap of paper.
The second question, as to whether there were ways and means of restoring vitality to the alliance, and what they were, was theoretically just as easy to answer as difficult to carry out in practice.