Meanwhile, of all the lands which the Yugoslavs were inheriting from
Austro-Hungary, that which was passing through the period of transition
with the least disturbance was the Banat. Those Magyars who stayed were
saying wistfully that it had been Hungarian for a thousand years, but
considering what they had done they could not have brought forward a
worse reason for their reinstatement. Here and there at places near the
frontier, such as Subotica, they waylaid and murdered lonely Serbian
soldiers; after which, with the complicity of Magyar officials whom the
Serbs had not removed, they managed to escape to Hungary. But as a rule
they thought it wiser to stay peacefully in the Banat than seek their
fortunes in a land so insecure as Hungary was then. While Count Michael
Karolyi's Government was doing its utmost to cultivate good relations
with France, England and America--printing in the newspapers cordial
articles in French and English, surrounding the Entente officers even in
their despite with the old, barbaric hypnotizing Magyar hospitality,
assuming in a long wireless message to President Wilson that the
Hungarians were among those happy people who at last had been liberated
from the yoke of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire--("I beg you, Mr.
President, to use your influence that no acts of inhumanity or abuses of
authority may threaten our new-born democracy and freedom from any
quarter. They would cruelly wound the soul of our people and hinder the
maturing of that pure pacifism and that mutual understanding between the
peoples without which there will never be peace and rest on earth.... We
will not discredit or delay with acts of violence the new-born freedom
of the peoples of Hungary or the triumph of your ideas....")--at a place
called Nagylak the free Hungarian people requested the authorities to
give them an official document permitting them to plunder for
twenty-four hours; at a place called Szentes there was a car which had
been stolen from a man at Arad, sixty miles away; hearing where it was
he telegraphed to the authorities and nothing happened; so he hired
another car and went himself to Szentes where the Magyar Commissary
confiscated this one also. It was better to remain in the Banat if one
had anything to lose. The treatment which the Magyars received was such
that Mr. Rapp, Commissary of the Buda-Pest Government, published a
proclamation on the generous conduct of the Serbian troops occupying
southern Hungary: "Our nationals," he declared, "though vanquished and
in a minority, are safe. The Serbian officers in command treat them in a
most humane and chivalrous fashion."[32] At Pan[vc]evo, for example,
the Magyar officials were placed, for their protection, on board a boat
by the Serbian authorities and kept there, provided with food and
cigars, for twelve hours, after which, as the danger was past, they were
set at liberty. In the same town, forty years earlier, the language used
in the law courts had been Serbian; no one, in fact, spoke Magyar,
except the cab-drivers--if you spoke it people said you must have been
in prison. Yet, although the Magyar judges had, to put it mildly, not
been too considerate towards the Serbs, they were retained in office on
the understanding that they would learn Serbian within a year; nor were
they asked, as yet, to administer the law in the name of King Peter, but
in the name of Justice. This magnanimity was not displayed because, as
with the railway employees, the Serbs were short of people for those
posts, since they had barristers well qualified to be employed, as they
were, for example, at Sombor, in the position of temporary judges. Even
the town advocate was not dismissed, although this healthy gentleman had
superseded a Serb forty-two years of age, considerably older than
himself, who had been compelled to join the army. Not alone were all
these functionaries left in office, but the papers sent to them were in
their own language, Magyar or German. And in return they generally were
loyal to the Yugoslavs.