The Caves of Europe

The Yugoslav Government-in-Exile was hastily formed in the summer of 1941 by men who symbolized most of the political errors of the past two decades. Last week the sexagenarian exiles gave themselves an overdue shake-up and ousted bent, deaf, secretive, forgetful Foreign Minister Momchilo Ninchich.

One of the richest men in Yugoslavia, and the man who signed the U.S. master Lend-Lease agreement in 1942, Ninchich was a sacrifice in a Cabinet reshuffle designed to "achieve unity among various groups inside the country and to strengthen the Government." His place was taken by another oldster, Premier Slobodan Yovanovich, who announced that General Draja Mihailovich would continue (from inside embattled Yugoslavia) as Minister of War.

Brought into the open, with the aid of recent documented evidence of conditions within Yugoslavia (TIME, Dec. 14), was the inability of the Cabinet to secure two important things: 1) a Serbo-Croat agreement about the future (i.e., Greater Serbia or Federated Yugoslavia); 2) an agreement between Mihailovich and Yugoslav Partisans to stop fighting each other and unite in fighting the Axis.

Black Lambs. Born out of centuries of wars, Yugoslavia was christened as a nation in 1929 after President Woodrow Wilson had been its godfather at the 1919 Peace Conference's ethnic partition of Europe. The Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, who breed great fighters, lawyers and poets, dreamed of unifying and industrializing their new nation, but their individual ambitions thwarted unity.

In the confusion of defeat after the Nazis seized their country, Yugoslav soldiers made their way to their ancient refuge, the hills. There Mihailovich, the ranking officer, assumed command of guerrilla fighting. His valor and the skill of his soldiers captured the world's headlines. To much of the outside world, Mihailovich became a symbol of freedom.*But to many Yugoslav patriots, intellectuals and peasants, he became a symbol of the discredited Belgrade government clique and the Kara George dynasty which first gave Yugoslavia dictatorial King Alexander, then, after his assassination, a Fascist-minded set of regents while King Peter was growing up.

Grey Falcons. So today in Yugoslavia Mihailovich leads, at best, only half of the guerrillas in a delaying action designed to maintain resistance until an Allied invasion comes to the rescue. The Partisans,/- waiting for no invasion and traditionally sympathetic to Russia, are doing the major fighting. In his anguish, Mihailovich, as Chiang Kai-shek did in China in 1927, has labeled the Partisans criminals and ruffians. The exile Government has described them in the same vein, often credited their victories erroneously to Mihailovich.

The rotten spot at the core of the dispute has been the Yugoslav Government-in-Exile, whose hard work has been overshadowed by a stubborn desire to pin down their country to the pre-war status quo. This attitude stands in sharp contrast to that of Norway's Prime Minister Johan Nygaardsvold, who last week in a message to his people outlined post-war reconstruction plans, and added: "The present Government does not do this with any thought that it is to retain power and look after the administration of Norway after the liberation."

Bald Eagle. In its broad aspects the Yugoslav disunity can be traced to failure of the United Nations to supply a dynamic post-war policy. To Author Louis Adamic, speaking for the land of his birth, Yugoslavia today is a testing ground for all of post-war Europe. In a pamphlet amplifying a recent article in the Saturday Evening Post, Idealist Adamic spoke up with all the burning eloquence of a man whose mother and nine brothers and sisters are still somewhere in Yugoslavia:

"O, America! In March 1941, you asked us Yugoslavs to rise against Hitler and say 'No!' to him. Your representatives came to us and made promises. Your President had Belgrade on the telephone several times. We rose against the ogre. . . .

"Now we are dying. We are fighting.

We want to fight; we must; but it would help if we knew what for. It would be easier for us to die individually if we knew that it might help to save our nation and humanity as a whole. . . .

"Not many of us Yugoslavs will survive this hell on earth. When it ends, we will be in caves. Perhaps that's where most of Occupied Europe will be if the war lasts beyond 1943. What then? Can't you do something, America, you with your 100,000,000 ex-Europeans who have had 160 years of democratic experience? Your isolation is over. Take the responsibility! Develop a plan which will give us a chance to stand erect when we come out of the caves; a chance to be human beings again, free, democratic--or let us die.

"Don't kid us, America! We in the woods and mountains of Yugoslavia are speaking for all of Occupied Europe, for the common man everywhere on this tragic continent--everywhere in the world."

*His fame reached the Argentine hinterland, where last week bands of gypsies, having elected Mihailovich honorary chieftain, were raiding cattle ranches and scrupulously setting aside their loot in an aid-to-Mihailovich fund. /-"Partisans" was originally an American word for guerrilla bands in the Colonial wars between the British and French. Later it was applied to such groups as "The Green Mountain Boys" in the Revolution and to Cantrell's Guerrillas in the Civil War. Partisans were active in the Napoleonic wars and the Russian Revolution. The name now designates Communist-led and other leftist guerrillas in Europe.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.