YUGOSLAV PATRIOTS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 January 1943, Page 4

YUGOSLAV PATRIOTS

ASSORTMENT OF GUERILLA BANDS SITUATION VERY CONFUSED. DEEDS BEFORE WORDS. LONDON, October 10. The controversy now raging in the United States whether real patriots in Yugoslavia are Mihailovists or Communists is deeply regretted, here not only as liable to cause misunderstanding among the United Nations and thus serve the ends of Axis propaganda but also as calculated to bring into disrepute brave elements at both ends of the political scale who are at one in resisting the Axis invader, states E. Berg. Holt, special correspondent of the “Christian Science Monitor.” The truth is that the situation in. Yugoslavia is so confused that any attempt to simplify it only leads to greater confusion. The labels Chetnik, Mihailovist, Communist —or Partisans —are themselves misleading. Many who are called Communists are not Qommunists at all. Some are, but others are merely riffraff escaped from gaols, others are moderate left wingers who have joined forces with Communists in order to present a united front to the invaders. Some of the Communist bands co-operate with Mihailovists, who also are politically heterogeneous. Others do not. Some of those who have been called Mihailovists appear to have been actually cooperating with the Axis or at any rate/ with the puppet Government of Gen. Milan Neditch—who incidentally was reported to have resigned. Some so-called Communist bands are simply out for plunder. So of the so-called Mihailovists.

A somewhat similar problem is arising over the Chetniks. To begin with, Chetniks were always irregulars who were resisting the Axis. But today it appears that the Axis is trying to appropriate the name for puppet troops, just as it tried to appropriate the famous V symbol to prevent the United Nations from using it as a symbol with which to revive morale in Occupied Europe.

OLD ANIMOSITIES. Another angle from which the Com-munist-Mihailovist tangle should be viewed is to be found in the old local animosities which have torn the Balkans for decades. Indeed, if instead of Communist we said Macedonian or Montenegrin, and for Mihailovic, Serb * of pre-1914 days, we should often not be far wrong. The Macedonian Slavs came under the rule of the Serbs after 1918 and did not have a very happy time.

After the German invasion last year, they were handed over to Bulgaria and apparently they don’t much like that, either. At any rate, the so-called Communist risings which the Axis said six weeks ago had occurred in Bulgaria were in the area which under Yugoslavia was called South Serbia., Evi-/ dence is too slender to be certain, but it appears probable that “Communists” in this are feeling more co-operative toward Mihailovists than, say, in Montenegro where the so-called Communist elements seem to be . those which opposed Serbianization in the pepiod between the two wars. this process of Serbianization and attempted obliteration of local national sentiment which was carried on in the period between the two wars is also responsible for the terminological confusion which is apparent in the more northerly parts of Yugoslavia. Thus in Croatia, many of the true antiAxis Chetniks are Croats, the major l ity of whom are sympathisers and followers of Dr. Vlatko Matchek, leader of the Croats, but called Communists by the Axis in order to bring them into disrepute with more right wing elements. BITTER QUARRELS. r'-i-But there are also many Serbs in Croatia, and during the period of centralised government in Belgrade, fierce enmity sprang up between the two racial groups. When Serb control was removed after the German invasion, the two races came to blows, and they still have bitter quarrels, though many Croatian Serbs like the Croat Chetniks are fighting against the Axis Army of Occupation. Farther north still in Slovenia, there are Communist and right-wing Chetniks. Here, however, co-operation appears to be closer. Their operations are evidently a thorn to both Germans and Italians. Indeed, the latter have admitted incursions into Istria which, though allotted to Italy at Versailles, is chiefly inhabited by Slovenes. A true picture of the Yugoslav scene thus shows the country dotted with a strange assortment of guerilla bands, some of which owe allegiance to a central authority, while others operate independently. Sometimes local co-operation exists between groups which are politically and racially distinct. Sometimes it does not. The upshot is a state of general insecurity and uncertainty, with the Germans and Italians holding the main north-to-south line of communication from Sarajevo to Belgrade and Nish fairly firmly, as well as a majority of the towns, while the lateral lines of communication and the country districts are often under complete control of patriots for weeks at a time. What will be the outcome .no one can possibly tell. But there is widespread feeling among Yugoslav exiles here that there can be no return to the unified pre-war Yugoslavia. The Croats and Slovenes say that unless there is a federation in which the three races are on a basis of full equality and local self-government, they would prefer not to reconstitute YugogMjjb at Such a tendency is approved w J some Serbs and stoutly resisted by a very vocal but apparently numerically small group which is strongly represented in the United States. v WHAT OF SERBS? Even if the demands of the Croats and Slovenes for local self-government are conceded, there is the further question what is to happen to the Serbs. Many of them, as already pointed out, live in Croatia. But that is not all. There is' the question of Montenegro, which used to be independent but was merged with Serbia in 1919. There is also South Serbia, or Macedonia. Are these two areas to be reincorporated in Serbia or is Serbia also to be subdivided if and when a new federal Yugoslavia is formed after the war? Im any case what is' to happen to Bulgaria? <