Mouse Affair

The exits of most deported foreign correspondents are quiet and quick. Quite a different affair, however, was the expulsion from Yugoslavia's capital last week of Hubert D. Harrison, chief Balkan correspondent for Reuters, British news agency, and part-time reporter for the New York Times. As Mr. Harrison's train pulled out of Belgrade, he got a Channel-swimmer's ovation from a noisy crowd of fellow journalists, students and well-known politicians. Mr. Harrison's exile was in itself unique. It had to do with Mickey Mouse.

Weeks before in the Walt Disney offices in far Hollywood, Ted H. Osborne had conceived a Mickey Mouse comic strip episode in which a Duke Varlott plots to gain the mythical throne of Medioka from his under-age nephew, King Michael. The Mickey Mouse strip is distributed by Hearst King Features Syndicate, one of whose clients is the Belgrade Politika. First Regent of Yugoslavia today is Prince Paul, first cousin once removed of King Peter, a minor, an analogy to the Mickey Mouse comic which few foreign papers failed to draw when fortnight ago Mickey Mouse was suppressed from Politika by the Government for two days. Unfortunately for Reporter Harrison, his story implied permanent suppression.

That such a minor journalistic crime would warrant expulsion from Yugoslavia, no one who knew Mr. Harrison's past performance could believe. More significant was the fact that in July Yugoslavia refused to renew Reuters' Harrison's residential permit after he had lived in Yugoslavia 14 years. Powerful because his Slovene Clerical Party was one of the three strong units welded into the present Government Party, Minister of Home Affairs Dr. Anton Koroshets, a Jesuit priest, resented Mr. Harrison's July accounts which described the Government's vain attempt to force the unpopular Concordat with the Vatican. Subsequently Premier Milan Stoyadinovitch permitted Mr. Harrison to remain in the country. Last week with Premier Stoyadinovitch in Rome, Acting Premier Koroshets was able to make good his effort to drive Writer Harrison from Belgrade.

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