Word: bessarabia
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Soviet Russia's first move, according to the best information correspondents could get, would not be to seize Bessarabia but to give Bulgaria strong support to demand from Rumania the return of Dobruja. Dobruja is a province that Bulgaria lost to Rumania in 1913. Bulgaria has undertaken to barter almost her whole exportable surplus of raw materials to Germany, thus is economically to a great extent under Adolf Hitler's thumb, and the Balkans feared that Russia and Germany would try a "pressure pincers" on Rumania. King Carol, alarmed, conferred with Rumanian political leaders of all parties...
...just returned from nearly a month of desultory negotiations in Moscow with Foreign Commissar Viacheslav M. Molotov, negotiations which finally collapsed. When he went to Moscow, Mr. Saracoglu was believed to be acting not only for Turkey but also as "honest broker" for Rumania in the touchy question of Bessarabia, the rich province which Rumania seized from Russia in 1918. Last week, after King Carol had received full particulars of what Ambassador Stoica had been able to learn from the Turkish Foreign Minister, Bucharest bigwigs gloomed and the New York Times's correspondent observed that "the news Stoica brought...
...demanded of M. Saracoglu was kept veiled in Oriental secrecy. A good guess was that the Soviet Union wanted Turkey to: 1) close and keep closed the Dardanelles to belligerent warships-an action which would prevent Allied aid to Rumania; 2) give active assent to Russia's snipping Bessarabia and Bulgaria's snipping Dobruja off Rumania...
Whether or not the Kremlin was preparing to take almost defenseless Bessarabia from Rumania like candy from a baby, and regardless of how much truth lay behind sensational reports of joint action in the Near East being contemplated by Russia and Turkey to overwhelm Syria, Palestine and Iraq, it remained an arresting fact that in Moscow the official tone was markedly anti-British, anti-French and pro-German...
...Kremlin contemplated trying to make a "Balkan Pact," partial purpose of which would be to freeze the Allies out of the Dardanelles while extending Soviet influence in the Balkan sphere. This, plus fear that A. Hitler might be about to give J. Stalin a free hand to take Bessarabia from Rumania, created such a sensation that both Rumanian Foreign Minister Grigore Gafencu and Bulgarian Premier George Kiosseivanov announced they were smarting on the morrow for Moscow, then abruptly canceled their visits and let it be known they would confer with the Turkish Foreign Minister as he passes through the Balkans...