The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2

Excerpt

With the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian army, the Serbs and Croats and Slovenes saw that one other obstacle to their long-hoped-for union had vanished. The dream of centuries was now a little nearer towards fulfilment. But many obstacles remained. There would presumably be opposition on the part of the Italian and Roumanian Governments, for it was too much to hope that these would waive the treaties they had wrung from the Entente, and would consent to have their boundaries regulated by the wishes of the people living in disputed lands. Some individual Italians and Roumanians might even be less reasonable than their Governments. If Austria and Hungary were in too great a chaos to have any attitude as nations, there would be doubtless local opposition to the Yugoslavs. And as soon as the Magyars had found their feet they would be sure to bombard the Entente with protestations, setting forth that subject nationalities were intended by the Creator to be subject nationalities. A large pamphlet, The Hungarian Nation, was issued at Buda-Pest in February 1920. It displayed a very touching solicitude for the Croats, whom the Serbs would be sure to tyrannize most horribly. If only Croatia would remain in the Hungarian State, says Mr. A. Kovács, Ministerial Councillor in the Hungarian Central Statistical Office, then the Magyars would instantly bestow on her both Bosnia (which belonged to the Empire as a whole) and Dalmatia (which belonged to Austria). That is the worst of being a Ministerial Statistical Councillor. Another gentleman, Professor Dr. Fodor, has the bright idea that "the race is the multitude of individuals who inhabit one uniform region." ... Passing to Yugoslavia's domestic obstacles, it was impossible to think that all the Serbs and Croats and Slovenes would forthwith subscribe to the Declaration of Corfu and become excellent Yugoslavs. Some would be honestly unable to throw off what centuries had done to them, and realize that if they had been made so different from their brothers, they were brothers still. For ten days there was a partly domestic, partly foreign obstacle, but as the King of Montenegro did not take his courage in both hands and descend on the shores of that country with an Italian army, he lost his chance for ever.

ROUMANIAN ACTIVITIES

There was indeed far less trouble from the Roumanian than from the Italian side. On October 29, 1918, one could say that all military power in the Banat was at an end. The Hungarian army took what food it wanted and made off, leaving everywhere, in barracks and in villages, guns, rifles, ammunition. Vainly did the officers attempt to keep their men together. And scenes like this were witnessed all over the Banat. Then suddenly, on Sunday, November 3, the Roumanians, that is the Roumanians living in the country, made attacks on many villages, and the Roumanians of Transylvania acted in a similar fashion. With the Hungarian equipment and with of their own they started out to terrorize. Among their targets were the village notaries, in whom was vested the administrative authority. At Old Moldava, on the Danube, they decapitated the notary, a man called Kungel, and threw his head into the river. At a village near Anina they buried the notary except for his head, which they proceeded to kick until he died. Nor did they spare the notaries of Roumanian origin, which made it seem as if this outbreak of lawlessness—directed from who knows where—had the high political end of making the country appear to the Entente in such a desperate condition that an army must be introduced, and as the Serbs were thought to be a long way off, with the railways and the roads before them ruined by the Austrians, it looked as if Roumania's army was the only one available. On the Monday and the Tuesday these Roumanian freebooters, who had all risen on the same day in regions extending over hundreds of square kilometres, started plundering the large estates. Near Bela Crkva, on the property of Count Bissingen-Nippenburg, a German, they did damage to the sum of eight and a half million crowns. At the monastery of Mešica, near Veršac, the Roumanians of a neighbouring village devastated the archimandrate's large library, sacked the chapel and smashed his bee-hives, so that they were not impelled by poverty and hunger. In the meantime there had been formed at Veršac a National Roumanian Military Council. The placard, printed of course in Roumanian, is dated Veršac, November 4, and is addressed to "The Roumanian Officers and Soldiers born in the Banat," and announces that they have formed the National Council. It is a Council, we are told, in which one can have every confidence; moreover, it is prepared to co-operate in every way with a view to maintaining order în lăuntra È™i în afară (both internal and external). The subjoined names of the committee are numerous; they range from Lieut.-Colonel Gavriil Mihailov and Major Petru Jucu downwards to a dozen privates. The archimandrate, who fortunately happened to be at his house in Veršac, begged his friend Captain Singler of the gendarmerie to take some steps. About twenty Hungarian officers undertook to go, with a machine gun, to the monastery on November 7; at eleven on the previous night Mihailov ordered the captain to come to see him; he wanted to know by whom this expedition had been authorized....