ectives were
therefore put to bed in one or two of the wards of the military
hospital; and the upshot of it was that three other doctors--all of
them Magyars--who had given way to these practices, committed suicide;
the chief of the hospital poisoned himself, one of the staff shot
himself, and the third culprit hanged himself in prison. Dr.
Mileti['c] had previously been kept for three and a half months under
the shadow of a conviction for high treason: one Bonchocat, a
Roumanian who did not understand the Serbian language, asserted that
the doctor, at a meeting held two weeks before the Archduke's
assassination, must have known that war was brewing, since--so said
Bonchocat--he had not confined himself to Serbian ecclesiastical
affairs, which was the object of the meeting, but had uttered the
remark that if the Austrians had bayonets the Serbs had axes. Although
Bonchocat was a man condemned to nine years' penal servitude for
murder, and although the doctor only called on his own behalf two
witnesses who were not Serbs, but the head of the frontier police and
the head of the town police, he was nevertheless kept in suspense for
three and a half months. Afterwards, owing to the lack of Magyar
doctors, he was begged to be the State doctor for the town. Similarly
the Orthodox priest, Radulovi['c], of Pan[vc]evo, was transported to
Arad and interned there for no other reason than his nationality,
whereas his son, a first lieutenant of the Hungarian Honved, was
expected to be very loyal. When certain rumours came to the son's
ears--he was then serving on the Russian front--he inquired, and was
told that his father had merely been warned. Presently he learned the
truth, and in consequence deserted to the Russians and became a member
of the Yugoslav brigade. Thus it will be seen that the Magyar unwisdom
was on a par with that which they had shown in days of peace.
Unfortunately for their State the Magyar politicians were less honest
than the Magyar peasants, so that the de-nationalizing process met
with pretty firm resistance. What can be said for the honesty of a
legal decision which laid it down that as two Serbian philanthropists,
Barajevac and Sandulovi['c], at Pan[vc]evo had not specially mentioned
that the funds they had bequeathed for a school were to be for a
Serbian school--(this the benefactors had assumed as a matter of
course)--they must be used for a Magyar establishment? Save for the
officials there were practic