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 weapons 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 Me[vs]ica, near Ver[vs]ac,
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 Ver[vs]ac a National Roumanian Military Council. The placard,
printed of course in Roumanian, is dated Ver[vs]ac, 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 _in l[)a]untra [s,]i in afar[)a]_ (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 Ver[vs]ac, begged his friend Captain Singler of the
_gendarmerie_ to take some steps. About twenty Hungarian officers
undertook to go