The Bay of Plenty Beacon Published Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. MONDAY, MARCH 24, 1941. YUGOSLAVIA'S POSITION

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 3, Issue 286, 24 March 1941, Page 4

The Bay of Plenty Beacon Published Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. MONDAY, MARCH 24, 1941. YUGOSLAVIA'S POSITION

YUGOSLAVIA'S geographical position, as well as her economic interests, dictate that she should remain neutral in the present conflict, if neutrality be a practicable policy. Yugoslavia is a State born of years of nationalistic aspirations, operating on the opportunities afforded by the war of 1914-18 for setting up the racially composite State, In the diversity of its racial content it bears some similarity to the State of Czechoslovakia. Yugoslavia has within iself, consequently, those weaknesess which the Nazis exploited so successfully in Czechoslovakia before the Munich agreement; but there is this difference, that whereas the latter country could not defend itself on the Austrian frontier, Yugoslavia has a terrain favourable for defensive warfare and unsuitable for the operation of a mechanised force. The country spreads itself from north-west to south-east,, and has frontiers to Italian, Hungarian, Rumanian, Bulgarian, Greek and Albanian territory. If Yugoslavia took up arms against the Axis Powers, then Italy would have to withdraw from Albania at once, for with only the open roadstead of St. Giovanni di Medua, in the north of that country, through which to reinforce and supply her troops, this would be insufficient for the support of a campaign., even though it were restricted to the defensive. Communications with the port of Durazzo are inadequate, the facilities for which are even now severely taxed; to sustain the campaign against the Greeks. With the Italian campaign in Albania liquidated, Yugoslavia would form part of a three-sided combine with the Greeks and Turks, the German occupied countries of

Rumania and Bulgaria, constituting the centre : and with Russia forming a possible opportunist ally threatening from Bessarabia. With these considerations now under review, it is obvious why—considerations of personal prestige apart —Mussolini has of late been so very anxious to retrieve the position in the essential control sector of the Albanian front. (If the Albanian situation could, from the Italian standpoint, be improved, then the isolation of Yugoslavia could be established, and if that task were accomplished it would be reasonable to assume that the Government of Yugoslavia would, then be more amenable to Axis diplomatic pressure. There is, at the moment, however, no prospect of the Italians making that much-needed improvement, and it may be that a further decline in their position will result from the reverses suffered in the six-day battle which has just been concluded. Meanwhile, weather conditions remain unfavourable for a general movement by the German forces in the Balkan Peninsula. The present, therefore, will be used by German diplomats as a period during which they will exercise their influence to bring Yugoslavia into the Axis '(fold!* and at the same time to stir up racial antipathies within the country in order to weaken its resistance to external pressure. The long history of Serbia, however, has been that of a resistance to Austro-Hungarian pressure, and the memories of suppression which motivated Princips to fire the fatal shot in Serajevo in July, 1914, which set the wolrlcl afire, were memories of a Teutonic and a Magyar yoke, which this freedom-loving mountain-dwelling people found to be intolerable. The memory of the later years of the last century and; of the opening decade of this century, have not yet been obliterated from the minds of the Croats and the Serbs, and they can, in consequence, be expected to cling with tenacity to their position of neutrality.