TIME BOMB IN THE BALKANS
Markham, R. H.
Time Bomb In The Balkans By R. H. MARKKAM YUGOSLAVIA is the strongest state in southeast Europe and occupies the most vital position in that vital area. Its present regime has definitely...
...Such "People's Courts" are ipso facto prejudiced...
...But the past is passed...
...They know wolves always do that when they want to catch innocent little girls...
...6The Communists exercise almost as complete con...
...The foreign editor of the internationally-minded New York paper...
...Rarely has there been such a blissful conspiracy of story tellers and listeners, ardently insisting that the wolf is grandma...
...Thus claims clash, and the Bulgarians as avidly and furiously as during past decades clamor for all of Macedonia...
...Yugoslavia is now dominated by fanatical, passionate autocrats, who call all opponents fascists and criminals...
...In times past the Bulgarians had the best claims...
...Who's Fooling Whom...
...2Tito's territorial claims implicitly include Greek ? areas...
...12 A careful study of Tito's military commnnica- tions will show that his "vast army of a third of a million soldiers" for 18 months made no significant progress anywhere against German forces—usually third or fourth rate—except when the enemy withdrew or outside forces drove him back...
...Now Tito tells the world what the Yugoslavs want, what he is going to see that they want...
...Both Tito and Foreign Minister Ivan Subashich have refused to exempt the Greek provinces inhabited by these Slavs from Yugoslavia's claims...
...Yet a self-imposed, autocratic Yugoslav government announces from Moscow how it plans to cut up European states...
...He has just signed 2 pacts with Russia and feels that the mightiest power on earth is behind him...
...3Influential Partisans openly say that Yugoslavia ? cannot establish cordial relations with Greece until Greece is given a "People's Government," meaning a Communist one...
...Do Americans believe that there have been free elections under Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin...
...i A Grim Signpost Finally, Tito and his followers are extremely nationalistic...
...4Tito has said in Moscow that Yugoslavia will be a ? republic...
...ternationally, in Yugoslavia...
...Tito is as much a Communist as was Nieolai Lenin...
...Since some Americans like to be fooled and it is in the interest of the Yugoslav Communists to fool them, they gladly do it...
...Most of the cities in Serbia which it said it took, the Red Army later had to capture...
...Two of the Allies, which freed Yugoslavia, are not permitted to see and tell what is going on there...
...Americans have been told for generations that Red Riding Hood's wolf dressed up like grandma...
...Also, Yugoslavia was liberated and restored as a result of Allied activity...
...The much vaunted Partisan educational pro- gram is Communist indoctrination of the narrowest sort, directed by Commissars...
...It is exactly the same kind of stuff that is written about quack medicines...
...The United States and Great Britain have made enormous contributions in resources and in lives...
...Sad to say, many people the world over like quacks...
...Its present regime has definitely established itself and shows the direction Yugoslav politics will take...
...And the world organization we are forming will be told to like it or lump it...
...It has usually left Germans largely unmolested as long as the Germans left it undisturbed...
...In addition, Russia is ultimately responsible for events there, so we may consider Yugoslavia as a fair test of Russia's political cooperation with its Allies...
...Likewise, the whole army is directed by Communists...
...This is a sample of the new world which San Francisco is being asked to guarantee...
...And are there still normal, conscientious Americans who believe that Tito will permit the people to vote any way except as he requires...
...They know they are Communists, have long been Communists, are proud of being Communists, live and would willingly die for Communism...
...In theory that is the best possible solution...
...Franco to go to the place where inmates are reported to suffer eternal inconveniences...
...Everything connected with Partisan Yugoslavia is so densely enshrouded with rosy artificial fog that despotism appears as Lincoln ian democracy and we are asked to imitate it...
...A, vast majority of the people it killed were Yugoslavs...
...Yet some love to be told that Communists are not Communists and even if they are, that Communists are really Abe Lincolns and George Wash-ingtons at heart...
...It is also noteworthy that many of the Greek inhabitants of Macedonia occupy lands that were until 20 years ago held by Bulgarians...
...Not one shred or shadow of oppositional public opinion is permitted...
...Without the exaggerated histrionics and exhibitionism of my esteemed colleague, I heartily agree with him...
...The bloodiest Macedonian Slav revolutionists for 40 years have been Bulgarians...
...How much would it comfort you if I said that for the present I wouldn't kidnap your child...
...And if it could embrace Bulgaria, that would be desirable...
...Let it be remembered that the furthest Tito has consented to go toward conciliation is to say that "for the present" he will not press claims on Greece...
...This is a purely unilateral action in one of the most disputed spots on earth, taken at a moment when the nations of the world are talking of international cooperation...
...I wonder how many ecstatic Americans believe Earl Browder brought literacy to Kansas...
...But such a state organization requires calm, reasonable, moderate, conciliatory people, as in Switzerland...
...Four states are immediately affected...
...8Tito's Federalization of Yugoslavia is a deception...
...9The elections about which Partisans and their ? rhapsodic American laureates so rapturously sing are almost without exception open one-party meetings, conducted by armed men, who have been killing opponents in the zeal of the cause, who call every dissenter a Mikhailovitchist and every Mikhailovitchist a devil...
...The test indicates that Russian cooperation is negligible and that the new eastern European set-up is a local disaster as we'll as an international misfortune...
...munist Josip Broz-Tito, during a recent visit to Moscow, and after a conversation with Marshal Stalin, stated that Yugoslavia is to annex extensive areas in northeast Italy and Austria...
...In fact he is the government...
...If such elections are democratic, then every Negro in South Carolina has a chance to become governor next week...
...In other words, Tito himself, backed by Soviet Russia, has set out to shift territories, change boundaries, and make the new Balkan map...
...It is restless and aggressive, ambitious and resentful, the negation of democracy, an oppressor of common men, a distorter of truth, a defier of international cooperation, a favored instrument of Soviet aggression...
...10.The Partisan Courts in Yugoslavia are Hitler- ian imitations, designed to enable Partisans to attain political and personal aims...
...If the Bulgarians and Yugoslavs now begin a Macedonian crusade, they will provoke war among 3 states...
...Do they believe the Hudson River flows with maple syrup and that all the inhabitants of Chicago are Indians...
...Yugoslavia is the highest, most striking signpost on the crossway of current Southeastern traffic and on that signpost in great bold letters is written: HERE YUGOSLAVIA AND RUSSIA GO THEIR WAY ALONE...
...I have long been for it...
...What Communists are, is extremely plain to any one has lived in Eastern Europe...
...Nevertheless, eloquent American "liberals" make the welkin ring with declarations about Tito saving democracy in Yugoslavia and the world...
...President Roosevelt solemnly announced that promise before Congress, the American people, and the world as a democratic achievement...
...as Dumbarton Oaks gives it the right to do, what would happen to world peace...
...No American correspondent is permitted in Belgrade who is not believed to be favorable to the regime and even then he can report only what Tito wishes...
...10...
...trol in Yugoslavia as in Russia and most that has been written and spoken about this is sheer deception or a hoax...
...He is master of the Courts, Army and Navy, Propaganda, Police, the economic structure, the Legislature...
...Tito's Army took no vital point which the Germans considered worth holding...
...7. Tito's setting up of a Free Macedonia is placing a time bomb in the midst of the Balkans...
...Yalta piously promised elections on such questions...
...He has made a formal demand for all territory inhabited by Yugoslavs, and it is known that there are no fewer than 120,000 Slavs in Greece...
...Was our President fooling us or was he being fooled...
...Think of the power of that blackmail...
...Furthermore, future world peace depends largely on territorial settlements...
...He is "Hero of Yugoslavia," Commarrder in Chief of the Army and Navy, Minister of War, Prime Minister...
...Nearly all the leaders of the Free Macedonian Council are notorious Bulgarian revolutionists...
...The Partisan Army was chiefly interested in smashing political opponents and obtaining absolute political mastery...
...The Macedonian Slavs are more nearly Bulgarians than Yugoslavs...
...As Mussolini tried to unite Italians in dreams of grandeur, Tito is trying to unite Yugoslavs in dreams of Danubian hegemony and expansion...
...Franco not too subtly tried to blackmail him...
...And his deputy chief is Edward Kardelj, as ruthless, fanatical, flaming a Communist as is to be found in Europe...
...PM, recently put on a dramatic and heroic bit of grand opera when Mr...
...Here are some of the elemental things showing that: IThe dictator of Yugoslavia, the Croatian Com...
...Of that I have no doubt...
...The Macedonian question is one of the most volcanic in Europe and has caused acute trouble for 50 years...
...That Communists are masters of the Yugoslav government, the Yugoslav Army, and the Yugoslav administration is as plain as that the Pope is a Roman Catholic...
...they are preludes to and legalization of lynching or expropriation...
...They are Great Yugoslavs and make Great Serbs seem tame...
...they are really Macedonian National-Communists and may blow the Balkans to pieces...
...I think he did exactly right when he advised Mr...
...He is trying to swallow up the antagonistic lesser loyalties in the grand loyalty of triumphant, crusading Yugoslav National-Communism...
...But Tito has shouted to all the world in loud and strident tones that he will allow no journalist in Belgrade except his friends...
...Its inhabitants are Slavs and Greeks...
...If Tito should move toward Greek Salonica on the pretext of protecting the Slavs, and if Russia vetoed any world action to stop him...
...One of the saddest aberrations of this war was enthusiastic American reports of how Partisans were bringing literacy to Slovenia, whose inhabitants have long had a higher degree of literacy than any state in America, including Utah and Massachusetts...
...The masters of every single provincial government in Yugoslavia, without exception, are Communists, experienced, determined, trained, single minded, and utterly devoted to Soviet Russia...
...5There is no freedom of the press, locally nor in...
...And Tito himself has just said he will maintain a strong central government...
...One easily sees how this kind of a Yugoslavia will affect international relations...
...Macedonia now is divided among Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and Greece...
...We shall be asked to pledge our boys to defend the borders drawn by Tito, whom the Red Army placed in power...
Vol. 9 • May 1945 • No. 19
