TITO AND PEOPLE

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 206, 29 May 1944, Page 5

TITO AND PEOPLE

Opinion In Liberated Territory (British Official Wireless.) (Received May 28, 7 p.tn.) RUGIBY, May 27. “The successive Royal Yugoslav Governments in London seem very far away to these peoples of the liberated territories,” writes a correspondent representing the combined British and American Press. “Indeed, these Governments might not exist, except in so far as they prove a stumbling-block to Allied recognition of the National Committee. From here, in free Yugoslavia, there is but one Government, and 1 that is the Government of Marshal Tito. “There are without doubt, people m the liberated territories who still cling to relics of the days when Yugoslavia was a kingdom. I personally have seen pictures and photographs of the royal family, including Peter and his brothers, on the walls of country farms. But all these people are Yugoslavs; before anything else their one aim is to rid their country of the Germans, and to achieve this they see but one leader, Marshal Tito.” _ . Another correspondent writes ot the Axis crimes against the Partisans in ocupied Yugoslavia. He says: * Every day I hear or read accounts of systematic mass crime committed by Germans and Croatian and iSerbian quislings on the population, stories of incendiarism, rape, sadism, bayoneting of children and wholesale slaughter, stories so gruesome that my typewriter revolts at having the details put down. Trials of Criminals. “The adjoining district, where my family comes from, is the province of Knordun, where ’BO,OOO Serbian peasants lived before the war. No fewer than 40,000 have been massacred by the Croatian quisling Ustashi organization. The figure has been checked, because the province has been liberated. . “Whenever the Partisans get thenhands on a war criinnal they take mm to the place of his crime and try him with a public -prosecutor and defence counsel, delivering their speeches in front of hundreds of local witnesses. Tolerance of a mass crime on the part or a quisling official is in itself a war crime. “In the last few mouths five largescale public trials of war criminals, among them two governors under the quisling Pavelich, took place m this part of Yugoslavia. An Ustashi commander, Ivan Medjumurac, was hanged in public for having killed with his own hands 30 Serbian old men, women and children. So ivas another •Ustashi commander, Franjo Vorel, who had boasted of having drunk Serbian blood.” [The Ustashi is an old' terrorist organization which has collaborated with the Germans on the ground of Groat nationalism.] Reserved Silence.

A correspondent a't Marshal Hto® headquarters reports that the news ot the fall of the Puritch 'Government, including General Mikhailovitch, has caused reserved silence both in high Partisan quarters and 1 among the population. ■Whatever Cabinet in exile is formed abroad, the correspondent does.not believe that the Partisans; will Like back the decision of their anti-Fascist council last November .proclaiming the G®mmittee of National Liberation as the sole provisional Government of Yugoslavia and resolving that the final form of government, including the choice between a republic and a monarchy, shall lie de cided by the people after th e war in the Kind’s absence, Yet, he added, the tor mation of a Royal Cabinet without Mikhailovitch and friendly to the 1 artisans might he p to ease the present tension and smooth out the transition into tederal democratic organization ot slavia after the war.