BALKAN COUNTRIES

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 126, 30 May 1944, Page 5

BALKAN COUNTRIES

REACTIONS TO BOMBING

NEW YORK, May 29.

According to reports from the Balkans, the Allied bombing campaign in the late winter and spring resulted in a striking loss of sympathy for the United States, and in a lesser degree for Britain, says the "New York Times" correspondent in Ankara. At the same time, Russia's popularity is increasing. Germany's stocks have not risen, in spite of her propaganda efforts, since the peasants of Hungary, Rumania, and Bulgaria apparently recognise that the Axis cause is lost. Rumanians complain that the British and American raids—particularly the daylight American attacks—have been causing great loss of life, whereas the relatively few Soviet raids against ports such as Galatz and Constanta are not so costly. The bombings are encouraging war weariness in both Bulgaria and Rumania, and the present political crisis in Sofia is no doubt partially due to it.

Anticipating an imminent Russian offensive in the north against the Baltic States, the Nazis have launched a terror campaign in Estonia, reports the Stockholm correspondent of the "New York Times." According to "trustworthy eye-witnesses," virtually all intellectuals in the country have been arrested and charged with conspiring to achieve a political union of Estonia and Finland. Moreover, the Nazis have disarmed 3000 Estonian so-called volunteers in the Finnish army and herded them into a concentration camp because they were alleged to be unreliable.