BANDITS AND BONDAGE

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 906, 25 February 1930, Page 7

BANDITS AND BONDAGE

TROUBLES OF UNHAPPY YUGOSLAVIA TRAVELS IN THE BALKANS .n T t r he Ve w e nL W of° be p r ep are d for brigandage more o ious than that of the tradesman ,r "in-Keeper, who so flagrantly n 3 stranger. Up in the mountains are men who take the business much more seriously—men who offer no alternative of y°r m oney or your life,” but hold both equally lightly. A Al 3 story of the land of his birth is tolcl by Mr. Ivan Radich, who has recently returned to New Zealand alter nearly three months in the Balkans. Mr. Radich, who lives in Stratford, Taranaki, is a British subject, thougn a Yugoslav by birth. He has been 18 years in New Zealand, and travelled to Europe last year to see "'hat effect the Great War had had upon his native land. He landed at Naples and travelled m a comfortable, though slow train, across Italy to the Adriatic. Never, A r * Radich said, had he encountered so many beggars as at Naples. They ran at his side, and in front of him, beseeching him for money with which

to buy food. Men searched the streets for cigarette butts, and poverty was most apparent. From the Italian port of Bari, the homing traveller crossed the Adriatic to Durazzo, in Albania. His immediate aim was Vigorac, the little coastal town where he was born. The village was full of historic associations for him, as his ancestors had fought and died there in defence -of their homes against turbulent neighbours and against the questing Turk. IN PARLOUS STATE ~ Yugoslavia, Mr. Radich said, was in a parlous state. Industry was absolutely at a standstill, and had been taxed almost out of existence by a Government that spent vast sums on the maintenance of an army, calculated to overawe both the discontented people and foreign States. Every able-bodied youth was forced to serve 3 8 months in the army for training at a. wage of ten pence a month. The Government was divided in itself owing to the incomplete and more or less unhappy fusion of the component parts that now go to make up the States of Yugoslavia. Parliaments rarely last longer than six months, and each has done fresh damage to a labouring nation without clearing the little left by its predecessors. The State has taken charge of the tobacco industry, and pays the growers only 7d a lb., a rate that makes the producers’ efforts unprofitable. Unemployed men of the more desperate type have fled to the mountains and joined the “Comets,” or brigands. They are the terror of the hill country and, so serious is the menace, that people in their vicinity have been provided by a thoughtful act of the Government with rifles and ammunition to defend their homes. A price is on the head of each “Comet,” and the more reckless of the hillmen go banditshooting in search of Government rewards, instead of working on barren soil. Just before Mr. Radich arrived at Skoplje, a town near the Bulgarian border, where the bandits were active, 13 or 34 youths, returning to their homes after completing 18 months’ military service, were attacked and k-.lled by the “Comets,” who stripped the** bodies. In the winter, when it is no longer I possible to hide in the mountains, the'

bandits have to come down into the valleys, when a summary and swift justice takes a hand. Men who are identified as “Comets” are shot immediately, without trial in many cases. In one instance, Mr. Radich affirms, a man who had mysteriously disappeared for a summer and returned with a supply of money was shot on suspicion. Mr. Radich did not travel further inland than Skoplje. Fie had intended to skirt the Bulgarian border into Rumania, but was dissuaded from following that course through the very real danger of desperate “Comets.”

Mr. Radich dreams of a United Balkan States, hardly a protectorate, but at least under the benevolent eye of Great Britain or America. “There will always be fighting in the Balkans as long as Government is set up against Government, and each border has its string of defensive forts,” Mr. Radich said yesterday. “Peace can onlv be found with a community of interest, and with a first-class Power to smooth away internal bickerings before they rise to such proportions as would mean another Balkan war.