Nicolae Titulescu - outstanding Romanian statesman and diplomat

21 juillet 2012

Nicolae Titulescu - outstanding Romanian statesman and diplomat

"Destiny is the excuse of the weak and the work of the strong."

~ Nicolae Titulescu on democracy

(Photo source) Nicolae Titulescu was born in Craiova in 1882 to a family of lawyers. On graduating with honours in 1900 from the Carol I High School in Craiova, he went to study law himself in Paris from 1900 until 1904 when he returned to Romania and published his first works subsequently going on to write more than 30 published papers in Romanian, French, English, German and Italian on problems of common and international law as well as on economic, financial, social, political and diplomatic issues.

Once back in his native Romania in pursuit of an academic career, he became Professor of Law at Iasi University’s Law faculty in 1905 (and a member of the Democratic Conservative party the same year) and moved to hold the same position at the University of Bucharest in 1907. Long since interested in politics and international relations, he was voted into parliament in 1912 as an MP for Take Ionescu's Democratic Conservative party, taking his first cabinet post as Finance Minister five years later in Ion I.C. Bratianu's government. In 1918 he became a member of the Romanian National Council in Paris and two years later was appointed head of the Romanian delegation to the Paris Peace Conference where he signed the Treaty of Trianon. After the dissolution of his party in 1922, he never joined another.

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Moving to Paris at the close of World War I, he formed the International Romanian Committee, made up of prominent Romanian politicians and sympathisers, who lobbied for the unification of Transylvania with the rest of Romania.

Romania’s greatest diplomat, Nicolae Titulescu's excellent negotiating skills were much responsible for Romania more than doubling the size of its territory in the Treaty of Versailles after World War I, according to THIS site. Though they allegedly couldn’t stand each other, Titulescu formed a devastating partnership within Versailles with Romania’s English queen, Marie, the nominal leader of the Romanian delegation.

Following Romania’s success at Versailles, Titulescu became a major player on the international stage, and was appointed Romania’s Permanent Representative to the League of Nations in 1921, an organisation he would twice lead (1930 and 1931). Throughout this period he worked for the maintenance of international peace, insisting on the need to preserve national boundaries. He also urged the equality of all countries, both large and small, and advocated the preservation of international peace through collective security.

While Titulescu sought to use the machinery of the League of Nations to protect the interests of its smaller members, Mussolini meanwhile was planning to defy the international organisation entirely by launching an outright invasion of one of its member states: Ethiopia. THIS site describes one of Titulescu's many great historic moments:

"Addis Ababa fell to the invaders (fascist Italy) on 5 May 1935 and Emperor Haile Selassie, who had left the Ethiopian capital three days earlier, duly travelled to address the League of Nations in Geneva, on 30 June 1936.

Enter Nicolai Titulescu....

As the Emperor rose to deliver his internationally renowned address it was suddenly disrupted by the howls of half a dozen Italian journalists, Paolo Monelli, Giulio Caprini, Lino Cajani, Eugenio Morreale, Carlo Giunci and Alfredo Signoretti, who jumped around, and loudly booed – while the Emperor, to the admiration of many observers, stood in quiet and dignified silence.

On seeing and hearing the disturbance Nicolai Titulescu, who was the Chairman of that historic Session, at once leapt to his feet, and in a famous utterance, cried out, "A la Porte, les Sauvages!", i.e. “Out with the Savages!”." For more on Ethiopia-Italy war background, please see THIS fascinating post by Professor Richard Pankhurst.

In terms of domestic and foreign policy, according to THIS site, "Titulescu was a theorist. He was a firm advocate of internal reform; he advocated land reform through the partial expropriation of estates and the allotment of land to the peasants. He drafted a financial reform bill which provided for progressive taxation, and he supported the election reform introducing universal suffrage in Romania. He had the gift of intuiting the course of political events in the world. A. F. Frangulis, the president of the International Diplomatic Academy in Paris, wrote that "Titulescu could foresee the future just as Talleyrand could," and the Soviet diplomat Maxim Litvinov declared that Titulescu was "the most talented and intelligent diplomat of present-day Europe."

Titulescu's concept of international relations was based on promoting agreement and cooperation among nations to achieve peaceful coexistence. He believed that every state enjoyed the right to national independence and territorial integrity. Civilized relations among states implied, in Titulescu's opinion, the principle of international friendships rather than the division of states into hostile blocs. He held that opposed social doctrines and different religious beliefs did not prevent the peaceful coexistence of peoples and states. Rejecting the idea that wars are inevitable, he formulated and promoted the principle of the indivisibility of peace, which calls for the union of all peaceful states against any aggression.

In order to create a climate of understanding among peoples, Titulescu advocated means such as economic agreements, collective financial assistance, protection of national minorities, contacts among political leaders and scientists of various countries, and disarmament or reduction of arms accompanied by the strengthening of the defense power of the states menaced by aggression. He worked for a union of nations in a system of collective security based on bilateral and regional treaties of mutual assistance. He believed that such a system would secure peace against the revisionist tendencies of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Opposing every tendency of the Western powers to make concessions to the aggressors, Titulescu carried on a vast diplomatic activity against Nazism and Fascism. He denounced Nazi Germany's violation of the Treaty of Versailles and condemned the invasion of Abyssinia by Fascist Italian troops.

Animated by the desire to set up a system of collective security, Titulescu gave his support to any and all diplomatic initiatives aimed at concluding non-aggression pacts, especially the Kellogg-Briand, and mutual assistance treaties, such as the French-Soviet and the Czech-Soviet Pacts of 1935. He took part in the Disarmament Conference in 1932, backing the disarmament plans of the United States, France, and England. After the failure of this conference, he supported the definition of aggression put forward by Litvinov and in July 1933 signed the London agreements on the definition of aggression. Titulescu made use of his international prestige to strengthen friendly relations between Romania and France and to create a climate of confidence and peace in the Balkans, thus greatly contributing to the establishment of the Little Balkan Entente (1934)."

Titulescu, an Anglophile, served as Romania’s ambassador to London from 1921-27, before returning home to take the post of Foreign Minister, a job he held on and off until 1936. It is in this capacity that he is best remembered, revered by many and regarded a traitor by others. Titulescu was one of nature’s liberals and apparently 'betrayed' leftist sympathies on a number of occasions, including support for the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War. It is said – though the details are sketchy – that it was this support for the Spanish left (which went against the prevailing right-wing Romanian politics of the day) which led to his exile in 1936 on the orders of Carol II. (source)

Professor Pankhurst gives another reason for Titulescu's exclusion. He writes that Titulescu's protection for the Emperor of Ethiopia, though much appreciated in Democratic and Liberal circles, won him far more influential enemies than friends. He was immediately dismissed from all official positions, and ordered by Carol II into exile forthwith. Professor Pankhurst goes on to explain that, though Titulescu succeeded in returning to Romania the following year (1937), his official position had come to an end. "He subsequently protested when the Iron Guard, the local Romanian Fascist organisation, took over the country in 1941 and went back into exile a second time".

(Photo: Sarah In Romania) Titulescu died in Cannes, southern France, later that same year on 17 March 1941. His remains were not returned to his native land as he had wished for another fifty years. Finally, on 14 March 1992, Nicolae Titulescu, probably Romania's greatest statesman and diplomat, was laid to rest in the Sfânta Ecaterina cemetery in Şcheii Braşovului, next to St. Nicholas Church, Braşov after a difficult legal procedure organised by Jean-Paul Carteron, Attorney at Law in Paris.

They sure don't make 'em like that anymore...

For more on Nicolae Titulescu, please see works by Ion M. Oprea, Nicolae Titulescu (Bucharest, 1966) - summaries in English and French; Oprea's Nicolae Titulescu's Diplomatic Activity (Bucharest, 1968); Vasile Netea, Nicolae Titulescu (Bucharest, 1969). He is discussed in Mircea Malita's, Romanian Diplomacy: A Historical Survey (Bucharest, 1970). For general background on inter-bellum Romania see Henry L. Roberts, Rumania: Political Problems of an Agrarian State (1951), and for diplomatic background, John A. Lukacs, The Great Powers and Eastern Europe (1953). Also consult Hamilton Fish Armstrong's memoirs, Peace and Counterpeace: From Wilson to Hitler(1971). (source)

Should any of the above information be incorrect, please don't hesitate to let me know in a comment below - there are many conflicting statements made on the various sites I have visited this evening and I have tried to go with the majority opinion, presuming that it is likely to be the most accurate.

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