Coin Trick

The Finance Minister's Parliamentary Assistant Jimmy Sinclair remembers now that he did not have much hope of success when he was sent to Yugoslavia last year. His mission was to collect a debt ($226,000) owed to Canada for postwar relief. To his pleased surprise, Marshal Tito amiably agreed to pay back two-thirds of what Yugoslavia owed. He also wowed Sinclair with his coin-trick joke about Stalin.

Tito extended his hands, placed the opposing fingertips together, except for the middle fingers which were bent so that the backs of their second joints stayed in contact. Then he put a coin between his thumbs. "This is the way Britain gives assistance," he said as he parted the thumbs, allowing the coin to drop easily. Then, just as easily, he dropped the coin from between his index fingertips; that, he explained, represented the ready generosity of the U.S. Then, still holding his fingers in the same position, Tito pressed the coin between his third fingers. He tried but could not draw them apart; the coin could not be budged. Sinclair, when he, too, tried the trick, found it impossible to part his own third fingers. "That," said

Tito, "is the way Russia gives assistance."

Ever since then, Yugoslavia and Canada have been getting along better & better. The two countries have just elevated their respective envoys to the rank of ambassador (for Canada, J. Scott Macdonald will be shifted from the embassy in Rio de Janeiro to the new one in Belgrade; for Yugoslavia, Minister Rade Pribicevic in Ottawa has been prompted). To show its good will, Canada has even sent a gift of 125 tons of codfish to Titoland.

Last week only one dark cloud, as yet no bigger than a man's hand, hovered on the horizon of Yugoslavia-Canada relations. Tito has notified Ottawa that one Radan Radican Grujicic is a refugee in Canada and should be sent back to his homeland to stand trial for 1,000 political murders. Grujicic, according to Belgrade, was chief of Hitler's Gestapo in Serbia. In 1948 he entered Canada as a D.P. Until recently Grujicic lived in a Toronto rooming house; his present whereabouts are unknown, except perhaps to the R.C.M.P.

If Canada refuses to turn the wanted man over to Tito, the cordial new relations will suffer; if Canada extradites him, Grujicic may not get a fair trial. Grujicic, in Tito's hands, will be like the coin between the third fingers.

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