ia if they were asked to vote as to Yugoslav or Roumanian
citizenship. _Adeverul_, which is one of the least chauvinist of
Bucharest newspapers, claimed for Roumania at least the railway line:
Teme[vs]var, Ver[vs]ac, Bela Crkva, Bazias--an argument thought to be
conclusive being that the two central towns are neither Roumanian nor
Serbian but German. This railway line was, as a matter of fact, bestowed
by the Peace Conference on Roumania, and it required some strenuous
work before this decision was modified. The French were suspected in
Yugoslavia of leaning unduly towards the Roumanians, through sympathy
with the Latin strain in their blood; yet it was the French who were for
giving to Yugoslavia not only Bazias but the villages on the Danube down
to Old Moldava, seeing that in those districts the Slavs are certainly
in a majority. The Roumanian case was not assisted by Professor
Candrea's ethnographical map, for in the debated country around Bela
Crkva that gentleman, who told me that he had omitted every place whose
population was less than a hundred, has unfortunately forgotten to
include Zlatica, a village of 1346 inhabitants, which was founded at the
gate of a monastery six hundred and sixty years ago. The population is
according to the Hungarian census of 1910, at which time all the 1346
were Serbs, with the exception of 220 Czechs and a few gipsies.
Professor Candrea has forgotten Sokolavac, a nourishing place about two
hundred and fifty years old with 1800 inhabitants and practically all of
them Serbs, as the Transylvanian Minister of Education admitted. Palanka
with 1400 inhabitants, most Serbs; Fabian with about 1000, mostly
Czechs; Duplaja with 1204, all Serbs but for 10 Slovenes; Crvena Crkva
with 1108 (1048 Serbs, 34 Slovaks, 17 Germans and 9 Magyars), are every
one omitted. Lescovac, with 977 inhabitants, the Professor marks as
Roumanian. When I was at this picturesquely situated place I was
received in the mayor's office by half a dozen burly peasants in the
Serbian national costume who asserted that, with the exception of the
tailor (a Roumanian emigrant) and one or two other persons, the village
was wholly Serb. But Lescovac was then within the Serbian sphere of
occupation, and possibly if I were to go there now I would be told an
appropriate story by other, or the same, peasants in Roumanian attire.
One must try to find some surer indication of nationality, and Professor
Candrea told me that twenty-five