ars ourselves," they said. All of them
speak Serbian, many of them write it; and on winter evenings they have
for years received instruction in reading, writing, arithmetic and
singing, which compares favourably with Roumania's army, in which, as I
was told at Bucharest, the plan of starting any education had to be
postponed in consequence of the outbreak of the Great War. Together with
the unwillingness of these people to acknowledge their origin, one
observes a general vagueness as to the home of their forefathers.
Apparently these came over from southern Hungary, whence the name
Ungureani,[114] or from Tara Rumaneasca, _i.e._ the Roumanian land,
whence the name Tarani. Others again are descended from Roumanized Serbs
who came from Kossovo and other Serb regions of the south, lived in the
Banat and Transylvania among the Roumanian villages, acquired the
Roumanian language and then crossed over to Serbia. These three classes
have all come to Serbia in recent times. Any attempt on the part of Dr.
Athanasius and his friends to drag in the Romans can be answered by the
undoubted fact that the ancient Roman colonists had completely
disappeared from Serbia as far back as the fifteenth century, leaving no
trace at all, and there is no connection between them and the present
Roumanian population of Serbia. No memories remain of the old Roman
colonists, save certain place-names which, as Professor Georgevi['c]
remarks, strike one as surprising in the midst of a purely Serbian
population. It is interesting to note that these ancient Roman
place-names are very rare in the regions inhabited to-day by men of
Roumanian origin.

It would not have been worth whole devoting so much space to the
activities of Dr. Athanasius and his adherents but for the fact that
European public opinion, which has concerned itself extremely little
with the Roumanians of Serbia, might possibly imagine that their
advocate deserves to be taken seriously.

2. THE BANAT

Anyone who looks at an ethnological map of the Banat will recognize how
difficult it is to partition that province among two or three claimants.
No matter by whom the map is painted, it must have the appearance of
mosaic, with few solid masses of colour. This fact was quickly used by
the Roumanians, who argued that as the Banat had never been divided,
neither politically nor economically, it should still remain one
whole--of course under the Roumanian flag. The Magyars haughtily pointe