Death of Raditch

A chubby and phenomenally lifelike corpse lay in state last week at the Croatian capital of Zagreb. Throughout the entire province, peasants burned mourning candles under black shades and church bells tolled at midnight. Among some thousands of pious, grieving folk only the corpse seemed cheerful. A contented smile curved the dead lips, and the face was not "deathly pale" but merely less tanned and florid than usual. As the black-hooded candles danced, and solemn prayers were uttered, cables flashed around the Globe that Death had come to Stefan Raditch.

A volume crammed with paradoxes might conceivably sum up the man. Yet all his inconsistencies sprang from a consistent love of fellow men and a consistent impatience with vested authority. Perhaps the key fact is that Stefan Raditch's parents were Gypsies. He rose beyond their sphere to become the greatest champion of Croatian Freedom; but he remained always a rolling stone, shrewd and earthy. Even his lying in state smacked of paradox. The spacious death chamber was the Great Hall of the onetime Arch-Ducal Palace at Zagreb; but Gypsy Raditch had turned it years ago into a democratic, almost proletarian Party Headquarters.

The corpse of such a man may well smile optimistically, as though the soul were soaring up among Croatian angels, all crying, "Zhivoi Raditch! Hail Raditch!"

Curiously, the Death of Croat Raditch caused a potent repercussion in the household of a famed U. S. Middle Western couple who are now honeymooning* in England. The husband, Mr. Sinclair Lewis, found his wife suddenly a-pecking at his typewriter. Mrs. Lewis is the onetime International-Correspondent Dorothy Thompson. Therefore, just as a cry of "Help!" will cause a retired life guard to dive automatically; so the "break" of the big story at Zagreb set Mrs. Lewis to reeling off a long and able despatch which was soon read with surprise by devotees of her old papers, the New York Evening Post and Philadelphia Public Ledger.

"I knew quite well the Croatian Peasant leader Stefan Raditch. ... I have visited him in his home . . . and he has visited me." Such was the sure-fire lead which Mrs. Sinclair Lewis slapped upon her story. She continued:

' "No political leader now living ever has changed his tactics and his outer program more often or more radically. He was a Pan-Slav Anti-Habsburg agitator before the World War, yet he supported Hungary and the Habsburgs during the War.

"When the Kingdom [of Jugoslavia] was founded he . . . became leader of a Croatian Sinn Fein, refusing to allow the 50 Deputies of his party to go to Belgrade. [Then] he got into touch with Moscow. . . . The result was six months' imprisonment for treason. . . . He was released when he had indicated his willingness to abandon his ... Sinn Fein policy . . . and to cooperate with Belgrade [i.e., with the Government of Jugoslavia].

"I was in Jugoslavia at the time of his imprisonment and release. Everything had been done to damage him in the eyes of his supporters. The conservative peasants had been told he was a Bolshevik. It became known he had been released because he had promised to reverse his whole policy.

"What political leader could withstand such attacks with such evidence to support them?

"Raditch, however, announced that he would address the peasants. They came on horseback and in carts from the ends of the country to hear him. He stood up before them, a most unprepossessing figure, ill-dressed, half his face concealed by a heavy beard, the other half by thick convex spectacles, for he was nearly blind. He talked to them rapidly, often allegorically and often inchoately. They gave him a reception so passionately loyal, so adoring that it was touching to see."

Reminiscing of the home in which she had visited M. & Mine. Raditch and the Seven Raditches. Mrs. Sinclair Lewis wrote: "He lived in a simple house in Zagreb and loved to entertain friends there, always offering them paprika sandwiches which made tears start while he talked--so rapidly and incoherently that the mind could hardly follow him. He earned a living by keeping a bookshop."

The cause of Stefan Raditch's death, last week, was a bullet wound which he received on the floor of the Jugoslav Parliament (TIME, July 2), from the pistol of a Government Deputy who fired amuck among the Croatian Deputies, killing two, and wounding four, including Stefan Raditch.

Some seven prominent physicians were able to preserve the Gypsy's life for 50 days; but complications arising from diabetes finally brought Death.

Croatians mourn Raditch as their most potent protector from the tyranny of Serbia, which is the "Parent Kingdom" of that realm called Jugoslavia, which includes Croatia. Jugoslavs of national consciousness believe, however, that Stefan Raditch, whom they deem a demagog, was a pernicious influence, obstructing the eventual union of the Serbs, Croats and other South Slavian peoples. If his murder does not provoke a revolution in Croatia, it may yet prove to have been for the eventual good of the whole kingdom.

Behind the hearse of Stefan Raditch, walked, according to the lowest cabled estimates, slightly over 1% of the population of Jugoslavia.* At the climax of this prodigious demonstration, a wreath of thorns was laid upon the grave. From the wreath dangled, on a golden wire, the Serbian bullet which killed Croat Raditch.

* The New York Herald Tribune published last week "Main Streets" of Britain in which Novelist Lewis recounts that on his honeymoon he has observed:

a "gritty beach"

"pimply red glassware"

a town "itchy with boarding houses"

"slattern mothers"

"capering fathers"

"lords of steel and soap and cotton"

"Lord Balfour . . . quietly stumping along"

"little visionless rabbits"

"runts"

* Population: 12,017,323; mourners: 150,000, approx.