lei from Günther's hands. The contributors to Seara and Libertatea were, in general, outspoken social and cultural critics, with diverse grievances against the establishment. Historian Lucian Boia argues that, even though Bogdan-Pitești was on the German payroll, his switch from the Francophiles could have been a genuine form of conservatism. Boia thus notes that Seara was supportive of the Central Powers from the 1914 build-up to the war, that is even before Cantacuzino had come to decide which side he liked best. The core group of Seara men included socialists of various hues: Arghezi, who claimed that Serbian nationalism was the spark of the war; Felix Aderca, who depicted the German Empire as the more progressive belligerent; and Rodion, who rendered the complains of Germanophile intellectuals from Moldavia. Others were left-wing refugees from the Russian Empire, who wanted Romania to join the Central Powers and help liberate Bessarabia: Alexis Nour, from the Poporanist faction, and the old anarchist Zamfir Arbore. Seara was also a platform for some disgruntled Romanians from Transylvania region, a Romanian irredenta under Austro-Hungarian rule. They included a mainstream Conservative commentator, Ilie Bărbulescu, who advised Romanians to not to focus on Transylvania, and prioritized action against the Russians. Two distinct voices were those of poet Dumitru Karnabatt, who identified the Entente Powers with Pan-Slavism or British imperialism; and Ion Gorun, the Transylvanian writer and Habsburg loyalist. Beyond politics, Seara came out with news on culture, selected for publishing by Ion Vinea and poet Jacques G. Costin. The left-wing preoccupations were also an important feature of Libertatea. Its opening manifesto called for a large-scale social reform, which it claimed was more important to Romanians than any National Liberal project to recover Transylvania from its Austro-Hungarian overlord. It enlisted contributions, generally less political than those at Seara, from literary figures such as Vinea, Demostene Botez, I. Dragoslav, Adrian Maniu and I. C. Vissarion. Bogdan-Pitești regularly published his own articles in the two newspapers he directed, signing them with the pseudonym Al. Dodan. The early texts express his Russophobia and commiseration over France's alliance with Tsarist autocracy, the world's "most savage, most ignorant and bloodiest oligarchy". By 1915, assessing that Romania's national interest rested with the Habsburgs and the Germans, and arguing that Romanian peasants were worse off than their counterparts in Transylvania, he was urging his countrymen to ponder the benefits of Bessarabia's annexation to Romania. Wartime, disgrace and