In 1884, the French efforts to conquer Vietnam led to war breaking out between France and China. The Sino-French War led to immediate revival of interest in Gobineau's anti-Asian writings in France. Several French newspapers reprinted the French original of Gobineau's 1881 article in the "Bayreuther Blätter", together with a translation of Wagner's introduction warning about the imminent Chinese threat to European civilization. Likewise, the Franco-Chinese war led to the "Essai sur l'inégalité des races humaines" becoming popular in France. The book had been published in four volumes (each about 1,000 pages long) in 1853–55, and remained out of print for decades. In 1884, just after the war with China began, the second and third editions of the "Essai sur l'inégalité des races humaines" were published in Paris. This was a direct result of the war, as many French people suddenly became interested in a book that portrayed such an unflattering picture of Asians. Gobineau's ideas were influential in a number of countries both during his lifetime and after his death. Gobineau's theories were a major influence on the Romanian radical anti-Semitic politician Professor A. C. Cuza, who embraced his biological racism as a way of "proving" the Jews were a "plague" upon modern Romanian life. Like most of Gobineau's followers, Cuza rejected his pessimism as too extreme, but he argued that Romanian people formed out of a fusion between the ancient Dacians and Romans had best preserved the Aryan blood, and that the Jews as a biologically different people simply did not belong in Romania. Cuza, who was deeply impressed with Gobineau, often used his theories and rhetoric of racial degeneration to frame his anti-Semitic arguments about the "Jewish race". Cuza frequently claimed the Jews were a "plague" upon Romania. He asserted the Romanian people were in the midst of the sort of racial degeneration described by Gobineau, which for Cuza was caused by the Jews. At various times Cuza had been a mentor to various figures on the Romanian radical right such as Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, the poet-politician Octavian Goga and Marshal Ion Antonescu; his influence was considerable in 1930s–40s Romania. Gobineau's theories had a profound influence on the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP).