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Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 96, 19 January 1944, Page 4

There is undoubtedly a close connexion between the recently-reported restiveness and alarm in Balkans countries, an£ the air raids on cities and military centres which are being regularly launched by the Allies from Southern Italy. Sofia, capital of Bulgaria, which lies close to the Yugoslav border and is within 400 miles as an aeroplane flies of the Italian airfields in Allied hands, has been raided on a number of occasions by both British and-American formations. From a purely military point of view the raiding‘of Sofia may be of lesser importance and urgency at the present time than is the task of destroying German establishments on Italian soli. It would seem therefore that the Allies are conducting these long-distance attacks on Balkans targets at least partly with the object of bringing home to Hitler’s apprehensive minor partners the grim consequences of their continued association with a lost and evil cause. Little has been told of late as to the true state of public feeling in Bulgaria, Rumania and Hungaiy, hut that little has indicated a growing disinclination to play Germany s desperate game.' In Hungary, and also in Rumania (which a few months ago felt the weight of American bombing) there is lively public alarm at the prospect of an ultimate Red Army break-through southward and southwestward, via Bessarabia. The Bulgarians are more remote from this threat What is more a large section of the people is pro-Russian by inclination. But Bulgaria is under the shadow of Anglo American wings and no doubt the moral suasion of this immediate peril is even more effective. Gradually but surely the Balkans as a whole are being what the Germans, in their conquering days, used to term “softened.” It may not be long before this process leads to revolt against Nazi overlordship as bitter and persistent as that existing in the occupied lands -of western Europe.