k of evidence does not appear to have weighed very strongly with
the Magyar judges. "It is quite true," said one of them in 1915 in the
town of Bela Crkva, during the trial of a young priest, Voyn
Voynovi['c], "that there are witnesses who say he did not utter
certain words in 1913, and no witnesses who say that he did; but I am
convinced that he uttered them." The ferocity of the punishments may
be seen from the example of Alexa Petkovi['c] of Pan[vc]evo, the
father of nine, who was condemned to hard labour for nine years
because his twelve-year-old son, during the War, is alleged to have
said to him: "Father, don't accept German money; it won't have any
value." At the same place, in 1914, the Serbian peasants were brought
in from the village of Bort[vs]a; there was no proof that they were
traitors, but they had been denounced and they were sentenced to be
shot. With a military escort they were promenaded through the town,
each one of them having to hold a Hungarian flag. At the scene of
execution the Hungarian elite, together with their wives and
daughters, were assembled. And after the bodies had been thrown on to
a cart they were flogged, for some unknown reason, by one Blajek, a
detective, while the audience cried "Eljen!" ["Hurrah!"]. But the War
brought to an end the bad old days of a tyrannous minority. It will be
shown, in a year or two, when a proper census is taken, that the
Magyars were always much more in a minority than they ever admitted.
Instead of nine millions out of the eighteen millions--which was the
pre-war population of Hungary--it will be found that the Magyars
themselves numbered barely six millions, though in their efforts to
obtain recruits they charged only one crown and afterwards nothing at
all for a naturalization paper. The day has gone by when a father
could be interned for being a Serb, while his son, an assistant
notary, was reckoned a Magyar--only Magyars being eligible for that
office. The day has gone when the Buda-Pest Government could order its
officials while taking a census to swell the Magyars' numbers as much
as possible: the officials at Subotica confessed on oath, after the
War, that they had received orders to this effect. One of their
practices was to put down as "uncertain" those Serbian children who
were too young to speak. Even those who were most willing to be
absorbed into magyardom were often indigested: one finds in the
statistics cases of converted Jews who, being a