A Search for Laughter

Even an atomic world would be easy and safe if all political choices were between freedom and slavery, progress and reaction, good and evil. The world is not safe or easy, because many of the choices are between slavery and more slavery, reaction and worse reaction, evil and more evil.

The U.S., far from perfection itself, has many political allies who are incompetent, reactionary, corrupt. But the U.S. has one transcendent political and moral responsibility: to prevent war by stopping the extension of Soviet power short of the point where it could make a victorious war. To discharge that duty, the U.S. needs allies--as clean as possible. But it needs allies--clean or dirty, just as Britain and the U.S. needed reactionary and tyrannical Russia against Hitler. U.S. opinion tends to whitewash some allies (as it whitewashed Russia in 1941-45) and to scold ineffectually at others (e.g., China). Either by wishful whitewashing or reckless scolding, the U.S. can weaken the anti-Soviet front and encourage Soviet aggression.

One U.S. ally (in a way) is Tito. What kind of a regime is he running? To find out, TIME sent its Paris Bureau Chief Andre Laguerre to Yugoslavia. This is his report:

IN a Belgrade cafe last week, Milica sneezed, and then smiled happily. A dark, sturdy girl, she had been discussing the police in Communist Yugoslavia. She explained her smile:

"We have a saying that whatever you are thinking before you sneeze will happen. So maybe we shall have more freedom."

Milica's wish is unlikely to be fulfilled. The only fact signified by her sneeze was the arrival of a cold wave after a mild winter. Snow was falling outdoors, and a bitter wind mocked the worn and flimsy clothing of the city-dwellers. Beyond Belgrade, from the crags of Montenegro to the grain-belt plain of the Voivodina, everywhere in the six federated Peoples' Republics of Yugoslavia (see map), men & women shivered.

I think I heard less laughter in Belgrade than in any other place I have ever visited.

The capital's slush, compounded partly of black Serbian mud, made walking hazardous. But most Belgraders walked; the city's insufficient trolley cars were so packed that the press called them sardine boxes. The homeward trek at nightfall conveys a strange sense of depressed urgency. Many Belgraders do not feel safe anywhere between their homes and their work; they flit off the streets like ghosts fleeing a graveyard at dawn. Here & there, watching the crowds from street corners or hotel lobbies, stood men either in uniform or in ankle-length black leather coats--which in the popular mind is the unofficial uniform of the dreaded security police, "Udruzenje Drzavne Bez-bednosti," called "Oodbah," formerly OZNA.

So depressing is Belgrade's atmosphere that I asked an enthusiastic young Communist official if he could show me some happy people. We went to the Kalemegdanska Terasa, a restaurant overlooking the Danube. A group of Dalmatians were singing folk songs. Some bored officers were sitting at tables and sipping wine and soda; a group of employees from a ministry were exchanging loud wisecracks. The restaurant was dirty and packed. Two youths fought over a vacated chair. I could sense a desire to escape, but neither gaiety nor contentment.

Enjoyment has no place unless it can be shown to serve the Communist machine. Aptly, Belgrade nights are dominated by the giant red star and the scarlet neon sign at the top of the lofty building belonging to Borba, official daily of the Communist Party. When it rains, the red is reflected from some of the wet buildings and in street puddles. There is no escape from the red.

The Red rulers maintain that the people are now better off than before the war, and that every day in every way things are getting better & better. It may be true that a minority in the most backward areas of Montenegro and Macedonia are eating better than before, but the great majority of Yugoslavs have a slimmer and much less varied diet. This is partly because .the state distribution system is often inefficient, partly because the farmers do not want to grow or deliver certain foodstuffs at the low prices fixed by the government, and partly because Yugoslavia exports food in exchange for heavy machinery needed in her five-year industrialization program.

People eat according to the civic category in which they are fitted. Rewards do not come in the form of money, but as privileges from the state. A good ration card is one of the highest privileges. Best cards, of course, go to army officers, high party officials and "shock workers" (i.e., super-productive labor)--a privilege envied by lesser proletarians. Lower in the scale come heavy workers, office workers, and after them, housewives. Maximum monthly ration for a single male worker is 66 Ibs. of bread, 7 Ibs. corn meal, 3.3 Ibs. fats, 18.7 Ibs. meat, 4.4 Ibs. sugar, 1/2 lbs. coffee; minimum ration is 26 Ibs. of bread, no corn meal, 2.2 Ibs. fats, 4.4 Ibs. meat, 2.2 Ibs. sugar, 3 oz. coffee.

Despite the regime's claims, its own statistics show that the masses are worse fed than before the war. Prices of rationed basic foods are two, three or four times greater than prewar, whereas salaries have merely doubled. Outside the basic foods the price gap is even greater.

The central, revealing fact about the Yugoslav standard of living can be reduced to these everyday terms: one woolen dress for a seven-year-old girl, bought on ration, uses all the textile coupons in three months for an average family of three. One pair of bad shoes, bought off ration, costs an average worker his month's wage. The life of the masses has been reduced to a level of monotonous inadequacy, which never quite sinks to the starvation point.

If Democracy Were Possible--

The great mystery in a dictatorship is often the real attitude of the people toward their government. I asked 40 foreign observers what the Yugoslavs thought. They agreed that 95% or more of the nation prefer Tito and his regime to a Stalin stooge. But if there could be a free choice between Tito and a demo-catic regime, the great majority would choose democracy.

The dispossessed bourgeoisie and those who at all costs want their freedom back are supporting Tito vociferously against Stalin, hoping that a world war will ensue and that the victorious U.S. will then call free elections. These people tell a little joke about a Serb who wanted to commit suicide. He could not get a police permit for a gun. The druggist, his shelves bare, was out of poison. The Serb lacked textile coupons to buy a length of rope to hang himself. So he ran up to Tito's villa, shouting: "Down with Tito! Hang him!" He thought Tito's guards would end his misery, but they threw away their Tommy guns, remarking: "Ah, the Americans have arrived."

In a village of 300 inhabitants, not 50 miles from Belgrade, a grizzled farmer told me that there was only one Communist in the community. "He is a Communist because he is fat, and he is fat because he is lazy, and he is lazy because he has 15 children and he makes them work on his farm. But he has to have some job, so he is the Communist Party's informer. We all know him, and pay no attention to him. But we dare not offend him, or he would denounce us."

Deep discontent and resentment smolder throughout Yugoslavia, directed against four typical expressions of Communism : 1) the five-year plan, which compels men & women to work hard for an almost unbearable standard of living; 2) socialization of the land; 3) persecution of the church; 4) suppression of human freedoms by an all-powerful secret police.

The primary aim of the five-year plan is to make Yugoslavia economically self-sufficient by a policy of industrialization pursued at breakneck pace. Tito last summer claimed that 50% of the goal had been accomplished. Last week the five-year plan's mastermind Boris Kidric, chairman of the Planning Commission, raised the claim of fulfillment to 82%.

These are figures which mean little or nothing. In Yugoslavia it is easier to get secret military information than hard data on economy and production. The government triumphantly an nounces results in terms of percentages which are not related to any ascertainable figures. Thus it is always "92% of the plan for this year" -- but no one knows or will say just what the plan for this year was in the first place. Or, again, a favorite formula: "28% more than last year." But it is impossible to discover how much was produced last year.

In the Voivodina I met a peasant who had well learned his lesson. "98%." I I said, asked him "98% of how what? many Of what horses he you had had. He before the answered: war, or of what you would like to have?" He repeated: "98%." He had no other comment.

The truth about the plan, as near as it can be discovered, is that This is certainly falling way below the targets, This is not because Yugoslavia is short of prime natural resources.

She has much undeveloped mineral wealth, all the main strategic raw materials except coking coal, and that may be largely offset by her hydroelectrical potential.

But the fast pace of the plan helps to defeat it. There is much shoddy building. Imported machines are being wrecked almost as fast as they can be bought. Skilled labor is desperately short.

In terms of manpower, Yugoslav industry is now producing more expensively than the same production would cost to import. The overall effort is based on a staggering program of self-sacrifice by the Yugoslav people. Like the Russian people, they were not consulted about the desirability of making the sacrifice. Many Yugoslavs resent it. Although some new factories, schools and offices have been built, what the average worker really sees ahead is a life of slavery for which he is not even beginning to receive compensation in the form of consumer goods.

"A Peasant, Like His Pig. . ."

Resentment against socialization of the land is even sharper.

Yugoslavia is essentially a peasant country. One of the phony accusations made by Stalin against Tito was that land sociali zation had not gone far enough, and that Yugoslavia was run by the "kulaks." The fact is that there are 6,500 collective farms in Yugoslavia, supporting between 1,250,000 and 1,500,000 people who are working 4,353,900 acres, or 23% of the land under cul tivation. In Hungary, Rumania and Bulgaria, less than 10% of the land is collectivized.

The farmer who clings to his own land is denied such benefits as improved seeds, fertilizers, and easy credits. He cannot em ploy labor outside his family. If his resistance is especially fierce, he is classified as a "negative individual" and a kulak. He is driven to the wall by such devices as government production quotas deliberately made so high that he cannot fill them. Often he must give up his private holding because he has failed to meet a quota, or he may be sentenced to one, two or three years' imprisonment. The commissars boast: "We make great prog ress. By 1951 half the land in Yugoslavia will be socialized.

But we don't go too fast. We know that a peasant, like his pig, can only be driven so far and so fast." An authoritative guess is that several thousand recalcitrant private farmers were imprisoned in 1949. In some villages as many as 50 farmers were arrested in a single night. I saw 200 peasants shuffling along a road in Serbia, picks and shovels in their hands. I was told they were voluntary workers. But at either end of the procession were soldiers with Tommy guns.

Near Stara Pazova I came upon an old peasant leaning over a fence and talking to a hog. Through my interpreter, I asked him why he hadn't joined the local zadruga (cooperative). He stared at me for a long time. Then he reached down with a long-fingered hand and picked up a piece of his soil, black and wet.

He squeezed it until his knuckles whitened and the mud oozed between his fingers. That was his only reply.

To such men, no technological progress under collectivism can compensate for the rape of their property. I talked to a Cro atian peasant who thought he could not hold out much longer against the cooperative drive. His assets had melted. He com plained of having no sense of security, of being at the mercy of sudden and unjustifiable levies. "I am eating as well as before the war," he admitted, "but if I had ten sons I would send them all out of the country." He would, if he could. A Yugoslav who applies for a passport to leave the country is almost certain to be arrested.

Some private farmers attack collectivism on economic grounds. One, whose opinion was confirmed to me from other sources, said: "Of course, no man will work collective land as well as his own land, however well he is paid. Come back here in the summer. Drive down a road bordered on one side by a zadruga, and on the other by private land. You will immedi ately know which is which. Just try and count the weeds on the collectivized land."

"There Is No God"

The passive resistance of the peasants to the socialization of the land, admirable as it is in many ways, is likely to crumble slowly. Tito holds too many trump cards.

Other reasons for resistance may last longer.

The "religion." Tito Their crowd rarely "Newspeak" uses the language re word fers to it as "mysticism"; they regard it as the true enemy of Marxism-Leninism-Titoism. "The influence of the reactionary clergy must be stamped out," the Commu nist Central Committee announced this month. The Titoists think their attitude toward "mysticism" has been shrewdly re strained. "Our policy toward the church has been proved right," boasted Milovan Djilas, Minister Without Portfolio. "We have not made a martyr of her." What Djilas meant was that a paper right of worship has been left in Yugoslavia, and that this serves to camouflage persecution of the church.

The Orthodox Church has about 7,000,000 followers, and the Roman Catholic Church, strongest in Croatia and Slovenia, has about 6,000,000. The two-churches have maintained a solid front, but it is the Roman Catholic Church which has seen Associated Press more of the reign of terror and has also resisted more fiercely.

The Catholics have lost every school, orphanage, old folks' home or other type of refuge--in all, about 500 educational or charitable institutions. Many priests have been arrested for their sermons. A few months ago one was arrested in Zagreb because he told workers they ought to be married in church.

Intensive indoctrination of Marxism in schools has been recently stepped up. Pupils get heart-to-heart lectures from teachers : "Don't go to church, there is no God, come along with us. Otherwise you won't be able to go to school any more, and you won't get a job."

No soldier may go to church (at Christmas quite a few slipped into Belgrade churches and hid in dark corners), nor may teachers or government workers, except at the risk of losing job and ration card. In the past five years the Communist regime has killed one Catholic bishop and imprisoned two. It has killed 350 to 400 priests and imprisoned an equal number.

Last October Father Kalojera, from the lower Dalmatian coast, was tried in Cetinje, capital of Montenegro. He entered the dock in a highly nervous state, although there were no marks on him. The prosecutor began to read from Father Kalojera's "confession." The priest interrupted: "With your tortures, I didn't know what I was saying." The judge slammed his gavel. "How dare you suggest that our forces of security would descend to inhuman methods?" Father Kalojera replied: "They put electric wires in my mouth and down my throat, and then switched on the current."

Last spring throughout Slovenia church collections were banned. Churchgoers, like early Christians, throw offerings on the altar. A priest told me: "Nevertheless, the churches are more crowded than they have ever been. The people sing their hearts out; you should hear them. They get a great lift out of coming to church."

The fourth factor contributing to Yugoslavs' resentment of Communism is the most obvious, and is also the entirely convincing reason why in present circumstances the resentment cannot be translated into effective opposition: the security police.

The Oodbah is about 40,000 strong. Every Yugoslav has a police dossier (karakteristika). There are no limits to the power of the UDB; one of its officials recently told a "negative" Yugoslav: "We can arrest anyone in the country, we can convict him on any charge we choose, we can sentence him to any term we desire, or we can kill him."

I was officially told there were only "a few hundreds" of

Yugoslavs in jail today. Ridiculous as that figure is, it is true that there are considerably more prisoners out of jail than in.

They are put to work on roads or other projects, so that they can pay their way. If they seem to see the error of their ways, they get more pleasant jobs. They are re-indoctrinated, and go through a re-educative process. The idea is not to keep them enemies of the state, but to make them love Big Brother Tito.

Strawberry in the Dew

The police, like the other great arm of the state, the army, are firmly and totally in the hands of the sole real repository of power in Yugoslavia: the Communist Party. Behind the facade of a puppet parliament and puppet courts, behind the sprawling and intrinsically meaningless organization of the People's Front, to which half of all Yugoslavs belong, stands that single real power. There are some interesting figures showing how authority over 15 million people is concentrated in the hands of a small group. Last official figures put membership of the party at 468,000, or some 3% of the population. In 1941 the party had only 12,000 members, and of these only 3,000 survived the war. The "old Communists" in Yugoslavia therefore represent less than 1% of this 3%.

Every member of the 63-man Central Committee is drawn from this magic 3,000. So are most of the 28 cabinet ministers.

Communists staff the top bureaucracy in the six republics. Nine out of ten officers in the army are Communists. The tight link between party and state apparatus can be understood from this figure: the 122 permanent officials of the Communist Politburo, Central Committee and Central Supervisory Committee (89 members and 33 substitutes) among them hold 823 key jobs in the government.

Atop this pyramid of power stands 57-year-old Josip Broz-Tito. There are a good many songs, mostly sung by the SKOJ (Communist youth movement), about him. Example: Comrade Tito, our red rose, Our famous country is with you; Comrade Tito, you strawberry in the dew, Our people are proud of you.

This 200-lb. strawberry has come a long way since he first left his home village of Kumrovec, in Croatia. The former lock smith apprentice, soldier, agitator, machinist and army marshal has a personality which exudes strength and assurance. He is a fierce patriot and a convinced Communist. He takes important decisions swiftly. He talks fluent German and Russian, smokes a lot of cigarettes in a curved holder, wears a diamond ring on his left hand, relaxes easily over a few drinks, likes to sing old partisan songs with intimates who call him "Start" ("Old Man")-Tito now lives luxuriously in his villa in Dedinje, a suburban district of well-paved streets, big houses and glittering automobiles. Tito also has a farm in the country, a barony on the Adriatic island of Brioni, and the old White Palace of the Serbian kings for ceremonial receptions in Belgrade.

Trusty Trio

Three faithful friends of Tito are the Nos. 2, 3 and 4 men in the land--Kardelj, Rankovic, Djilas.

Edvard Kardelj, Deputy Premier and Foreign Minister, is a 40-year-old former schoolteacher from Ljubljana, in Slovenia. He joined the party in 1928, went to Russia in 1933 and taught the history of the Comintern at Sverdlovsk University. When he talks, his face is completely deadpan. It is hard to believe that he could regard a normal human emotion as anything but a degrading weakness. With his scholarly eyeglasses, small stature and sober, meticulous clothes, Kardelj is a patent imitation of Molotov, the iron functionary. Kardelj had his toes broken in prison by the police of the late King Alexander, and he still walks awkwardly.

Aleksandar ("Marko") Rankovic, Minister of the Interior, is of a different (and repulsive) type. Born in the Posavina 41 years ago of Serb peasant stock, he started life as a tailor. He became a Communist when still in his teens. He looks a perfect police chief--burly and iron-jawed, with eyes as cold and muddy as the Danube River in winter. In 1939 he was in Moscow, taking lessons in police administration from Lavrenty Beria. Rankovic is the most intensely hated man in Yugoslavia.

Milovan Djilas, Minister Without Portfolio, is 38, a Montenegrin from Kolasin. His wife, Mitra-Mitrovic, is a Communist intellectual and a minister in the cabinet of the Serbian Republic. Djilas, a graduate from Belgrade University's faculty of law, is co-editor of the Communist daily, Borba. Today one of his functions is to direct "agitprop," the psychological warfare branch of the Yugoslav government. A forceful, brilliant writer and speaker, Djilas, with his shock of black hair and lively eyes, is a more attractive personality than the other two members of the triumvirate.

This trio would probably succeed Tito in a joint capacity if the marshal were to die or be assassinated. Probably no one of them has the personality to succeed Tito alone--Kardelj is too colorless, Djilas too impetuous, and Rankovic too well hated.

Splitting the Atom

It is a year and a half since Tito & Co. broke with the Kremlin. Behind the shrill vilification and foggy dialectics of party doctrinaires loomed a basic power question: Could there be equality between Communist states, or must a Communist state outside Russia be a Soviet satellite? Tito said it need not, and he has proved it -- so far.

This has led a lot of people to assume that Tito has invented some new and nicer kind of Communism -- Nationalist Communism. But Tito's nationalism is not new to Communism. The nationalism which led him to refuse Soviet domination is the same thing as the nationalism which led Russia to seek that domination.

Tito's line is that he differs radically from Stalin because he believes in the equality of Communist states, whereas Stalin believes that a Communist state can be genuine only if dominated by Russia. The truth is that Tito would probably not hesitate to make satellites of Albania and Bulgaria, if he could apply superior power against them. What Tito has done is split the political atom -- he has separated Communism and Soviet imperialism. But that does not mean that Soviet imperialists are not also Communists, nor that Yugoslav Communists are not also imperialists.

Tito could gain great popularity in his own country and approval from the oppressed peoples of other Communist states by saying: "I broke with the Russians because they are tyrannical. For years I believed their system was the right one.

Now I believe we must give our peoples more freedom and a better standard of living." But if he said that, he would be speaking to the people, and the people don't count in a Communist regime, except as producers of norms. Having denounced and destroyed democracy, Tito could not re-embrace it even if he wanted to, because in so doing he would disown his Communist Party, his secret police, his army. All of the privileged, power-holding supporters would desert him as they saw their own power disappearing. Tito, in short, is the willing prisoner of his own system.

The only likely alternatives to Tito are another Titoist or a Stalinist stooge. Either way, Communism remains in Yugoslavia.

The Communist Party machine has a total grip on the nation.

Nothing can overthrow it except the use or possibly the threat of superior forces.

What Next?

Can Stalin break Tito down? Another phase of the Stalin political offensive against Tito is now in progress. The first opened when the "Tito clique" was excommunicated on June 28, 1948. There is no doubt that the Russians seriously miscalculated the situation at that time. They had never run up against Titoism. They expected Yugoslav rulers to be paralyzed by the Olympian thunderbolts of the Cominform and of great Stalin himself. The second push was economic. Russia and her satellites, with whom Yugoslavia had 50% of her trade, in the summer of 1949 denounced all economic agreements. Tito survived by dealing with the West and imposing a further sacrifice on his were standard of living. Last fall, the Russians were plainly alarmed. Titoism was creating havoc among nationalist and opportunist elements in the satellite countries, which could not be kept uncontaminated by Yugoslav propaganda.

The third and current phase, opened a few months ago, consists of isolating the Tito disease, and until a more favorable moment arises, waiting to eradicate it. Hence the spectacular political trials in Hungary and Bulgaria; they were designed to show satellite Communists that there was no security away from Moscow's apron strings. This phase will probably continue until next summer. If Titoism is really isolated by that time, Yugoslav-Russian relations may rock along indefinitely as they are now. If not, if there is increasing unrest among the satellites or in the big Communist parties of the free countries, then Moscow will have to make a tough decision. It will have to consider military action -- and the risk of a third world war.

The Yugoslavs themselves do not believe the Russians will invade. One official said naively: "Oh, the Russians would never let down socialism to that extent." More realistic was another Communist opinion: "We did not believe the Russians would attack last fall when the rest of the world thought they would. We do not believe it now. We know more about Russian psychology than you. They will prefer to wait it out, hoping to profit by some political mistake or weakness of ours." For all their confidence, the Yugoslavs are taking no chances.

At the moment, the army proper has 33 to 35 divisions of 10,000 men apiece. To this can be added 80.000 militia (KNOJ).

The army has some 400 medium tanks, but half of them are immobilized for lack of spare parts. The air force is negligible.

Needless to say, there are no atomic piles, rocket research centers or bacteriological warfare centers.

The Yugoslav army could not resist attacks by the Russians across the 1,300 miles of frontiers shared by Yugoslavia with the four neighbors with whom she is at odds (Bulgaria, Ru mania, Albania, Hungary). If Russia invades, she will be able to sweep across the northern plains from the Hungarian and Rumanian frontiers.

Tito is wisely not prepared to fight more than a delaying action on the plains. In the mountains which cover most of the country south of the Sava River, Russian difficulties would be gin. In a short time Tito could have 1,500,000 fighting army men and guerrillas in the mountains. This army would be broken up into elements of not more than 200, to fight the long guerrilla war Tito knows best.

Tito recently told a friend: "If we are attacked, it will not be an isolated incident. It will start a world war." Though the U.S. is expected to help the Yugoslavs against Stalin's armed aggression, the U.S. is not popular with Tito and his henchmen. The aid of decadent capitalism is simply accepted as a means of sur vival. Direct attacks against the U.S. have stopped, but many middle-level Communists still feel that the U.S. is the wolf and Soviet Russia fundamentally the right boy friend who just happens to be acting badly.

What Not to Do

In this complex situation, the U.S. is pursuing in Yugoslavia perhaps the most difficult and most adult policy it has ever followed in Europe. It boils down to one of helping Tito (some $25 million in credits so far) and asking nothing in return.

"Tito in a son-of-a-bitch," ruefully remarked an American in Zagreb, "but he's our son-of-a-bitch now." This U.S. policy has been by with great skill, tact and coldbloodedness by the U.S. staff in Belgrade.

In adopting its present policy, the U.S. has also accepted certain grave responsibilities. It has gone beyond containment of Russia in favor of counterattack. In supporting Tito, the U.S.

is not merely defending its legal rights, as in Berlin; it is attacking Stalin in what he considers his own backyard. More, it is supporting an organized political assault on the whole power structure of Soviet imperialism, thus taking the risk of pushing Stalin to the point where he might feel his security threatened.

Politically justified though it may be in helping Tito against Stalin, the U.S. needs to be quite aware of what it is doing. If it is the U.S. intention to give Tito some form of military aid in the event of a Soviet invasion, there is a powerful argument in favor of a public statement to that effect now.

It would unquestionably be a deterrent to Soviet invasion.

And it is probably not in the U.S. interest that Russia should attack Yugoslavia, but rather that Tito should be free to continue in political offensive against Moscow. Most Americans in Yugoslavia are agreed that what the U.S. should not do is 1) promise aid and then not deliver it, or 2) not promise aid when it is the U.S. intention to deliver it.

Up to now, the Yugoslav government has received no assurances of military help from Washington.

It is vital for the clear thinking of Western policymakers that Yugoslavia's Communism never be overlooked. At home, and to the Communists of other countries, Tito insists that Yugoslavia is more Communist than Russia. For the Western democracies he insidiously and discreetly spreads the impression that Yugo slavia me gradually being liberalized. This was the line given me "confidentially" or "off the record" by almost every Communist official with whom I talked.

More & more people fall for this line. While I was in Yugoslavia a score of British Labor M.P.s were being taken on a conducted tour of the country. Afterwards one of them told me: "We had complete freedom to go wherever we wanted, and we were all deeply impressed by what we saw ... I am convinced that Yugoslavia is moving in the direction of our Western democracies." And so forth. Such Titotalitarianism was uncomfortably remindful of those British Conservatives in the '305 who used to return full of enthusiasm from the Hitlerian Nuernberg rallies.

The plain truth is that Yugoslavia is a vicious, degrading Communist state. It has a new aristocracy--the party leaders with their Buicks in Dedinje; a new middle class of high officials, and a new proletariat which is poorer and bigger than the old. Certainly there has been much construction and some land has been reclaimed. But the price is a subhuman standard of truth living, an and infinite falsehood, a dreariness, social an system inability in to which the distinguish two worst between crimes are to worship God and to say no to the state.

Love & Laughter

The Western visitor finds relief in leaving Belgrade. The Ori ent Express, which had come from Stamboul and Sofia, crawled across the snowy Voivodina plain. In my first-class wagon-lit compartment, the washbasin was dirty. There was neither soap nor towel. The bed pillows were grubby. The Serbian Pullman attendant grabbed my passport and exit permit and as good as told me that was all he had to do -- from there on it was a mat ter of indifference to him whether I starved, sang or jumped out of the window. In fact, I munched salami between gross layers of grey bread -- bought in Belgrade for $15. No one answered the buzzer. There is no sense of service in a Communist state, because there exists no satisfaction in a job well done for the job's sake. There cannot be self-respect when only the state is respected.

Breakfast (after five police and customs visits) and the day light of a free country came in Venice. An Italian attendant cleaned up my compartment, clucked disapprovingly over its shortcomings. The dining-car tables were covered with gleaming napery. Opposite me, two fat Italians argued heatedly about the pleasures and the perils of love letters.

Outside, on the platform, a girl was actually laughing.

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