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The first important decision taken by our new Foreign Minister was of an administrative order. At the instigation of King Carol, who wished to mark his reign by the erection of magnificent palaces and public buildings in Bucarest, a new Foreign Ministry had been con structed close to the old one. It stood ready since the spring of that year. But, owing to some sort of a superstitious feel ing, Gafencu had not wanted to move us into the new quarters. The idea of quitting the Sturdza Palace, from whence so many illustrious forerunners had managed to guide 's ship through the shoals and storms of foreign affairs, seemed to him too much like stepping into the unknown of uncharted adventure. Gigurtu was hampered by no such superstitious sentimentality. A realist, as befitted an engineer and a captain of industry, the shades of , Bratianu, Maiorescu, Take lonescu, Duca, and Titulescu meant little to him. He decided that we should begin to work in the new Foreign Ministry as of June 27, 1940.

Chapter 10

THE SOVIET UL TIMA TUM (JUNE 26, 1940)

The telephone bell tore into mild air of the night with sharp, hyster- ical bursts. I was deeply asleep after a particularly difficult and tiring day at the Foreign Ministry. Struggling up through layer after layer of sleep, it took me some time to answer it. That bell still rings shrilly in my ears as I write these lines... "Yes, who is it?" Foreign Ministry, Code Division. At half-past-midnight our legation in Moscow began dictating a code message on the telephone. The connection was interrupted after the first ten groups, and it seems im- possible to re-establish it. We have decoded the groups that came through, and ..." The voice trailed off hesitantly. I spoke rather sharply. "Well, it is about an ultimatum." A motorcycle courier was immediately sent to me. I read the first sentence of the interrupted message for myself: "The following is the text of the ultimative note which has been handed to me this evening at twenty-two hours by Molotov." The message ended there. 121

Now we had to wait for the connection with Moscow to be re-estab- lished. The sinister meaning of the interruption added to our growing anxiety. It was pretty obvious: Moscow intended to give us the least possible delay for thinking and acting. I had already alerted the Foreign Minister. He seemed thunder- struck, to judge by his voice. Yet only a few hours before, he had wired our representative in Moscow to convey to the Kremlin that the preparations of the Red Army all along our borders were considered to be exceptionally threatening by our military experts. The twenty- four Soviet divisions, backed with armored brigades, which in the course of the past months had been massed on the Dniester and on the confines of Bucovina, had taken tactical dispositions prescribed for offensive action. Recently, too, Soviet aircraft had continually overflown our territory, coming ever deeper inland. Gigurtu requested to know what were the intentions of the Soviet government. The answer had come sooner than expected. I also established contact with our Chief of Staff and with the Minis- ter of National Defense to prepare them for instantly alerting our troops in the vicinity of the frontier. Throughout the rest of that uneasy night both called me back about every half-hour to ask anxiously whether the rest of the message had yet come through from Moscow. - It finally came through at six o'clock in the morning. ***

During that interminable and torturing wait I had ample time to re- view in my mind, point by sore point, the last phases of our relations with the Soviets, and to relive once more the ever-mounting anguish that had been our lot since the conclusion of the German-Russian pact, which we had every reason to believe to have been made at our expense, too. True enough, the Soviet aggression against Poland and Finland had not been followed up with any direct action against Romania. Neither had the ultimatum given the Baltic States done more than cock the gun aimed at us. But what of the Kremlin's sudden show of teeth at the time when the Polish government and troops had fled to our soil? And had not the Soviet threats at the time seemed omi- nously synchronized with those of ? Ever since we had had ample reason for anxiety, for an ever-growing wariness. Saraco6lu had been most coolly received in Moscow, in October 1939, when he had gone to try to conclude a Soviet-Turkish pact of some sort. He had been left to cool his heels for several days, while