Nicolae Titulescu
(born Oct. 4, 1883,
Craiova
, Romania?died March 17, 1941,
Cannes
, Fr.) was a Romanian statesman who, as foreign minister (1927; 1932?36) for his
country
, was one of the leading advocates of European
collective security
.
A professor of
civil law
, Titulescu entered politics in 1912 and was appointed minister of finance in 1917. After
World War I
, he attended the peace negotiations at
Paris
and signed the
Treaty of Trianon
(1920). He was again appointed finance minister in 1920, and his unpopular fiscal reforms helped topple the government in December 1921. From 1922 to 1926 and again from 1928 to 1932, he served as Romanian minister plenipotentiary in London. As foreign minister he championed
Romania’s
accession to the French-sponsored
Little Entente
of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, engineered its attachment to the
Balkan Entente
(1934), consisting of Greece, Yugoslavia, and Turkey, and pursued a policy of friendship with
France
and the U.S.S.R. His difficulties with the king,
Carol II
, and the impending breakdown of
collective
security, however, led eventually to his dismissal (August 1936). He was also Romanian delegate to the
League of Nations
and the author of several works on law and finance.