THE STATE OF THE WORLD

...Guerrilla invasions...

...Cavendish W. Cannon, retiring U.S...

...prices of coffee, textiles, and fuel also have been subsidized...

...production is 14% higher...

...II Following a brief excursion into world affairs last spring, when Norway and Denmark rather hurriedly decided to join the Atlantic Union and Sweden to stay outside (after conferences aimed at forming an independent Scandinavian defense pact had failed), public debate in the three countries has settled down on the more congenial ground of domestic politics...

...The strangely lenient Soviet treatment of Finland, compared with other Eastern European countries, may be explainable, at least in part, by the wish to keep Sweden out of the Western orbit...

...But merely to keep Tito and his ragged, footsore, and ill-armed partisans from cutting their communications with Greece forced the Germans to immobilize 15 to 20 divisions for four years...

...He had, of course, agreed to see me, but he knew nothing of me except that I was the correspondent of the British Labor paper, the Herald...

...The Rajk "trial" ended, the scared Muscovites lashed about with fury in Prague...

...Succeeding a Government of the "Left Party," a rightist farmer party that embraces "liberal" economics of the purest Manchester school and that had abolished import controls with rather disastrous results for Denmark's sterling balances (they were converted almost overnight into a huge debt), the Social Democrats have sought to maintain a controlled economy, reimposing some restrictions at first and relaxing them again as conditions improve...

...Having less power, they have been less successful than their colleagues in Norway, and social policy has tended to stagnate...

...His sup-porters claim that his "Independent Communism" leaves Yugoslavia free to trade with all countries who seek neither to impose political changes on her, nor to secure "concessions" which would mean the reintroduc-tion of exploitation by foreign capital...

...Even Britain has been mentioned as an ultimate beneficiary...

...the other is South Schleswig...

...Important progress has been made in social policy...

...Elmer Thomas, arrived in Stockholm...

...Evidence of panic is mounting behind the Iron Curtain...

...Even Bulgaria, where discontent with Russian bullying is particularly evident, has had to produce her Rajk in the person of Rostov, until recently Deputy Premier, whose trial, along with 10 other leaders', is now underway...

...While the rich and the middle classes have had to pay bigger taxes, the real wages of male workers have risen by some 14% compared with 1939, those of women workers rather more...

...The Swedes retorted, inter alia, that they had received no gifts from America but only loans on commercial terms...

...a family allowance of 180 kroner ($25) a year is paid for each child after the first...

...All employes have had the annual fortnight vacation granted by a Labor Government before the war increased to three weeks...

...Then the armed forces sub-committee of the U. S. Senate Appropriation Committee, under the chairmanship of Sen...

...For myself, I do not believe that any capitalist pressure will induce Tito to abandon Marxist-Leninism...

...During September and October, thousands of sincere Communists, including hundreds of leading officials, were thrown into jail...

...The problem of inflation has been tackled by rigid control of consumer prices, buttressed by Government subsidies for basic foodstuffs...

...In the satellite states, partially isolated for only a couple of years, there are very few like that...

...The difficulties of a customs union are felt most strongly by Norway...

...Thus is Communism, panicked by the revolt of Communist Tito, devouring all her children who have ever breathed the free air of Western Europe...

...equipment withheld from them...

...16 Roumanska Street, Belgrade...

...Unlike Russia, they say, little Yugoslavia could not attempt to impose her system on the rest of the world...

...There have been 300 frontier incidents in the last year, with Russian divisions maneuvering along Yugoslavia's frontiers while Moscow radio poured out daily incitements to revolt...

...But Prime Minister Gerhardsen has said that the question of nationalizing the joint-stock banks and the insurance companies will be examined and proposals put before the people at the 1953 election...

...the working population has increased by 200,000, and there is full employment...

...And, as in the other satellite states, they are mostly men who have risked or sacrificed all for the Communist cause...

...Though it came in with a clear majority of seats, the Government has the backing of only 45.6% of the electors...

...On the negative side, plant replacements required to supplant wartime damage and wear-and-tear are not yet complete, and individual productivity lags behind the 1939 rate...

...There is, in fact, little to suggest that the idea had made much progress yet...

...His 17 years in the Central Committee and Polit-bureau of the Party will do no more to save him than the 10 years he spent in prison because of his devotion to Communism...

...Several Communist leaders have since been expelled for "Titoism," and the party is split wide open...

...Today the Socialists and the peasantry are against them as well as the bourgeoisie and the religious...

...If this policy were reversed, Sweden's greatest fears would be realized, and she might have no more inhibitions about "going West...

...When Moscow hears the words, "A Communist who has worked for the cause in the West," it reacts like Goering...

...Until last autumn, Yugoslavia hesitated to denounce—openly— Russia and her tactics, contenting herself with ripostes against the Cominform...

...GEDYE is the distinguished Central European correspondent of the London Herald...

...III In Sweden, where Parliament takes a vacation for half the year, the political placidity which followed the Atlantic Pact discussions has been ruffled by a large-size local storm which led to the resignation of the Social Democratic Minister of Finance after only a few weeks in office...

...Half the merchants and whaling fleet, which before the war provided 35% of Norway's national revenue, and nearly half of the fishing fleet, had been lost...

...Since the campaign mainly revolved around economic policy (controlled economy versus free enterprise), the outcome was a clear vote of confidence in the Labor Government...

...factory legislation has been extended to seamen, farm workers, and domestic servants...

...Since then the world has heard little of the terror in Hungary, but it continues unabated...

...Hungary was the first to show she had lost her nerve in the farcical "trial" of the once all-powerful Minister of the Interior Rajk and other leading Communists...

...He has also promised to elaborate a fairer electoral system...

...All efforts of the Western world to stop Russia's postwar expansion have failed...

...and I was admitted to spend nearly an hour quite alone with this allegedly trembling tyrant...

...The Danish political field is littered with the bodies of politicians laid low by a territorial issue too involved for this report...

...Norway wishes the cooperation extended to Western European countries, rather than confined to Scandinavia, and thinks that the required investments, to quote Harvard Lange, "are of such a size that it is not easy to conceive that they can be financed by the Scandinavian countries alone...

...They have included Government building of a large iron works near the Arctic Circle...

...60,000 new homes have been built and another 15,000 started, leaving another 100.000 still needed...

...This suggests the support of the United States...

...The storm which followed was violent indeed, and some very harsh words were said about Sen...

...The argument is that a non-democratic regime like Tito's (which may one day form the basis of a new International of Communist Parties out to set up dictatorships of the proletariat and one-party states) is not worth the bones of a grenadier...

...The Bank of Norway has been nationalized...

...Whatever the danger, there is no fear of assassination among Yugoslavia's leaders...

...At the gates of his villa—except for its high wall, much like many others in the street—an officer merely asked: "Are you Gedye, to see Tito...

...Thomas from Oklahoma and his wounded vanity...

...In the West the revolt has been welcomed by fellow travelers—and is beginning to attract full Party members...

...The difference cost the state in subsidies, in the fiscal year 1948-49, some 2,-125 million kroner (at the devalued rate, about $300 million...

...In an industrial sense a young country, Norway fears that her industries would suffer in unrestricted competition with the more highly developed industries of Sweden and, to some extent, Denmark...

...He is only one of a long list of Ministers and leading Party officials to have been hurled from office into prison by nervous Stalinists...

...Smith" who had asked to see him— and was interviewed by the wrong Mr...

...The only factor that has prevented its overthrow and a new election is the disagreement among the Opposition parties...

...Where Tito lives is no secret...

...Two issues have been outstanding in Danish politics since the war...

...Few have vanished because of any real suspicions of complicity in a "spy plot...

...In Norway it culminated in the fall general election at which the Labor Government confounded the pundits by increasing its majority...

...One of Moscow's most closely guarded secrets when I was there in 1939-40 was just where in the vast complex of buildings in the walled city of the Kremlin Stalin lived, and in which of the half-dozen datchyas at his disposal around Moscow he slept in summer...

...As an alternative, she proposes what she considers to be more positive forms of cooperation, in particular a division of labor through specialization in production, and coordination of investments...

...Norway possesses immense reserves of water power, and one of the proposed channels of investment is its development of hydro-electric current for Denmark and Sweden...

...Speculation includes large scale partisan invasions by Yugoslavia's neighbors, coinciding with the attempted assassination of Tito...

...Foreign policy was not an issue for any party except the Communists, who have harped monotonously on the schemings of Wall Street and the wickedness of the Marshall Plan...

...Many people here believe that Moscow will open military aggression in the spring...

...Tito is at pains to make it clear that such a conflict would not be localized and is trying to win for Yugoslavia the support of every shade of democratic opinion throughout the world, to offset the slavish obedience of the disciplined Stalinists on whom Moscow can count...

...Scandinavia Puts Its House In Order By Reginald Spink Oslo THE IDEA of a Northern Customs Union "is still alive and will not be abandoned," according to a committee which has been studying the question...

...Meanwhile, industries producing for the home market have had REGINALD SPINK, a British journalist, has written for numerous American and foreign journals and is currently covering Scandinavia for the Worldover Press . . . G.E.R...

...Political crises have followed one another in quick succession since the Government was returned in October 1947...

...Staunch Communists continue to vanish into the limbo of Andrassy Ut 60, the dreaded block of palatial villas where the Communist secret police put their victims to the question...

...A responsible Western diplomat told me: "I can only compare the 10 days ahead of us to the 10 days which followed the 1941 national revolt against Prince Paul's sell-out to the Nazis...

...Whatever view the democratic West may take of these arguments, would it look on impassively while the Red Army established itself permanently where it has never set foot—on the shores of the Adriatic, in position for a possible move into Italy, Austria, and France...

...The blockade, though hampering and serious, like the campaign of vituperation, has failed...

...Thomas did not like Sweden and said so, complaining he had been neglected by "a country into which the United Stated had poured money" and which had done nothing to help her distressed neighbors...

...More war-ravaged than either of her proposed partners, she has devoted her main economic effort since the war to building up export industries —shipping, fisheries, the iron industry, and timber and paper industries...

...This problem, which everyone thought buried forever by the plebiscite of 1920, popped up again after the German capitulation...

...There was nothing to stop any Cominform agent worth his salt from impersonating me and riddling the genial Marshall with bullets— nobody could possibly have prevented me from doing so unless, as is quite possible, Tito had proved quicker on the draw...

...Like most of Europe, Norway remains dependent on the Marshall Plan to fill the "dollar gap" by the supply of essential materials...

...II In all the satellite countries overrun by the Red Army at the end of the war, the Communists have always been a small minority...

...His predecessor...

...I am as convinced of the sincerity of his Communism as I am that no nation with firmly rooted democratic traditions—such as the Yugoslavs never had—would tolerate his system under any conditions...

...But Continental Europeans—not even Scandinavians—refuse to accept a thesis so Anglo-Saxon and illogical...

...This no doubt means the adoption of the mathematical exactitude of proportional representation, which in Continental Europe (west of the Iron Curtain, of course) is considered the ultimate in political democracy —despite abundant evidence (in France, Weimar Germany, and on a smaller scale in Denmark) to show that its result is frequently to transform strong Government and a responsible Opposition into irresponsible splinter groups, preventing one another from governing...

...But to put pressure on Tito to change it is folly, since on his loyal-ty to it his life depends...

...However many divisions Russia decided to send in, to succeed—in the opinion of non-Yugoslav military experts here—would take Russia at least a year...

...Vice-Premier Pijade's offices are watched over by only a couple of young policemen...

...Dividends are limited to 5% and rents are pegged...

...But it would be a serious mistake to believe that Moscow can afford to swallow this worst diplomatic affront since the war...

...The Government was given a mandate to put through a policy of reconstruction to which all political parties had subscribed...

...The Russian octopus knows that it is far from having digested all it has swallowed so voraciously...

...In Russia, many Communists— cut off for 30 years from all contact with the outside world—sincerely try to reconcile Russian imperialism with Marxist-Leninism...

...ambassador to Yugoslavia, calls Tito's break with the Cominform "the heaviest blow that has been struck against Moscow since the establishment of communism in Soviet Russia.'' Yet, what can Moscow do...

...The Government's instrument has been a system of rationing and controls similar to that of Britain's Labor Government...

...German "scorched earth" in northern Norway had made 70.000 people homeless (in a population of 3,000,000...

...One is the common European question, "to control or not to control...

...Big investments have been made in new industrial enterprises to exploit Norway's largely untapped resources of mineral and water power...

...Until some of their plant needs have been met, and the industries placed on a more equal footing with the corresponding industries in Sweden and Denmark, Norway is unlikely to risk a union...

...The 10 days—and many more— passed without anything so dramatic...

...It has been left to Tito to call a halt...

...The elite of the Communists are those who looked to Russia to help them establish in each country the dictatorship of the proletariat...

...In an attempt to keep Sweden on the straight and narrow path of neutrality, Soviet propaganda organs occasionally come out with fresh allegations about attempts to entice Sweden into joining the "imperialistic war bloc" represented by the Atlantic Union...

...for a few weeks in summer he is in Bled, otherwise in the comfortable villa where I have just seen him— No...

...The bursting of Russia's atom bomb, for some reason, also has tended to strengthen the feeling that Sweden did well to maintain her "alliance-free" policy...

...Vishinsky's violent language at Lake Success was not followed by a blitzkrieg in September...

...I believe that the West, however reluctantly, will finally decide that luckless Czechoslovakia must be for Stalin as it proved to be for Hitler, the last territorial acquisition to be obtained without a major armed conflict...

...New hydroelectric stations have been erected and chemical plants built or enlarged by Government aid...

...State of the World Reports from Belgrade and Oslo Tito Fights Back By G. E. R. Gedye Belgrade YUGOSLAVIA'S election to the UN Security Council in defiance of frenzied Russian threats heightened the tense atmosphere in Belgrade more than any event since Tito's break with the Cominform...

...Regretting a most unfortunate incident, the Norwegian and Danish press intervened to point out that, in fact, Sweden had been running her own Marshall aid program, no less generous than America's...

...The Norwegian Government took office in 1945 in a distressed and partly devastated country...

...In no other of the Eastern European countries overrun by Russia has there been a genuine revolt of a Communist proletariat, or a national revolution of any kind, as there unquestionably was in Yugoslavia...

...That is why so many Yugoslavs and foreigners in Belgrade believe that Russia must try everything to extinguish the beacon which Tito has lighted for Communists throughout the world...

...Indeed, no European government has so closely followed the British pattern—this is the chief ground for Opposition complaint...

...These are duly reported in the Swedish press and no doubt have the desired effect of bolstering the isolationist convictions most Swedes hold...

...Smith, who was amazed and delighted when Tito's car called for him before he had been in Belgrade long enough to ask to see Tito...

...As a result of all this, prices have been practically stabilized at the 1945 level, and industrial strikes have been.negligible...

...Actually there was a case of innocent impersonation recently when Tito sent for a journalistic "Mr...

...So striking has been the economic progress that the shipping and fishing fleets now exceed the pre-war tonnage...

...It has all failed to produce the confidently expected internal disorder...

...stocks of goods were depleted, the people undernourished...

...In consequence they are desperate men...

...Wigforss, had held the post for 17 years...

...They lost half their votes (in a substantially increased poll) and all 11 Communist seats in the Storting...

...the Government retorted that it had stuck to the program...

...Goering once said: "When I hear the word culture, I reach for my gun...

...The events leading up to it—an internal party quarrel—made a fine story for the Opposition press...

...And the survival of an independent Yugoslavia threatens to stem the so far irresistible Russian tide...

...The whiff of the disastrous Com-munist showing in Norway, wafted southward to Denmark, fell pleasantly on the nostrils of a minority Social Democratic Government, under Premier Hedtoft, laboring to govern despite a troublesome Communist group and a few other Opposition parties...

...Another factor which encourages Swedish neutrality is the withholding of Russian support for the Communist wild men of Finland...

...Stalin's G. E. R. Gedye answer may well be the same as Hitler's—a formal ultimatum followed by a hail of bombs...

...A state housing bank advances loans on easy terms to municipalities, building societies, and individuals...

...Thus, consumers have paid only two-thirds the actual cost of their milk and half that of bread, butter, and sugar...

...Both social and economic policy, in truth, have been bedeviled by that bete noire of Danish politics, the Schleswig question...

...What next...

...Not only does Belgrade radio now defend itself, but it attacks Russian tyranny in all the languages of her Cominform neighbors and in German...

...production was down to 56% of pre-war and agriculture had declined by 20...

...No one asked me to identify myself...

...In this field there has been less opposition than in economic policy...

...Then the daily vituperations of Moscow radio—which, spluttering with ineffectual rage, has applied to Tito such silly epithets as "bandit, traitor, greedy ape, chattering parrot, deserter, coward, comedian, and insolent dwarf"— convinced her that Russia had inscribed "Yugoslavia delenda est" on her banners and that it was necessary to counter-attack...

...too late they realize that dictatorial powers are reserved for the Kremlin...

...thus it feels that it has no mandate for socialization during its present term...

...So Moscow is forced to rely on a new "lackey class" and to exterminate the idealists whose "dangerous thoughts" led them to sacrifice everything to help build Communism in their respective countries...

...But neither Bulgaria, Hungary, nor Rumania is equipped nor in a mood for such serious operations...

...The Opposition accused it of going beyond the mandate to slip in Socialist measures...

...Britain especially, and in a lesser degree America, seem to want to convince Tito that he could expect no help save military supplies...