MARSHAL TITO

Grey River Argus, 22 September 1944, Page 6

MARSHAL TITO

(By

F. BALCHAN).

New Zealand is far removed from the Balkans, but that fact accentuates clearly the oft-repeated statement that the world to-day is fast becoming one whole instead of the conglomeration of completly separated units it was in former times. This was illustrated to me recently in Wellington when, on walking into a grill restaurant the other day, mine host, the proprietor, asserted that Broz Tito was one of the greatest men of the age. I demurred and a spirited discussion followed. To a New Zealander far removed from the scenes of mass hatred engendered by irrefutable historical facts —facts of oppression centuries old, of poverty, misery, murder for murder’s sake, of fierce retaliation, of engrained and inbred vendettas—the recital of terrible and sadistic punishments meted out to populations striving to retain their national culture and hegemony seemed like a reading from Dante’s Inferno.

Tony, my vis-a-vis, was obivously a man of high intellect, a native of Croatia and an ardent partisan of Tito. In reply to my question as to why} he was not over there helping in the good .work by personal service, he simply stated a positive truth. Speaking with some difficulty in a language that was foreign to him, he said, “My friend, you can’t fight without

weapons. They cost lots of money. I earn good money. After I have fed my wife and children I send the surplus to Tito, sometimes £2, sometimes £lO. If you New Zealanders are hungry and come into Tony’s aplenty, Tony makes good money for Tito.” Such was his philosophy} and a good' one I thought, for he obviously was a real patriot and wished to see his country free.

This was the first of many subsequent discussions, and after a time he asked me to tell my countrymen, since I had stated that I did some writing, in an article or series of articles of some of the things he had told me.

“My country,” he said, “has been oppressed for centuries. The land to which we came as long ago as you English came to your land, has suffered so much from invaders that few people are of the same blood as the original Slavs who came from the north-west and' settled in Croatia. But through all the oppressions we have retained our national speech and our culture. When our speech and literature was suppressed, we carried on the struggle in song and story handed down from father to son, and each boy and girl was taught to hate the oppressor and never make terms with him. In this way we kept our race intact. The same is true of the Yugoslavs and the Bulgars and many of the people of Roumania also, and Tito will unite all of these people who are the same people into one.

“All the Balkan countries suffered under the Turk and he was the worst oppressor in the history of mankind, and when his Empire was falling to pieces because his vitality as a race was sapped by easy living upon us his slaves, we rose in revolt and drove the ‘Son of Allah’ back across the Bosphorus. I was a boy when this happened, and I could tell yjou incredible stories of what happened during this time. Of how the Turk, when he was in a position to do so, treated us. Of the Bastinado, death by beating with thin brass rods which seared the flesh upon which the flies would settle and lay their eggs until a man was one festering sore. It took a strong man five days to die in agony in this way. Of many other forms of torture of which your Government, and rightly, so, would not allow the details to be published. Sudden death was a boon granted to few. Under the Turk this happened for hundreds of years all over the Balkan countries. My land was liberated from the Turk sooner than some of the other lands, for Austria wrested our part from the Turk long before the Balkan war. But the people of Croatia found they had lost one master for another nearly as cruel, and so the struggle still went on against the new masters.

“Up to a few years ago most of the people were nearly illiterate, and although the hatred of ■ the oppressor was kept alive by his own misdeeds—jjou have no Maori problem in New Zealand,” he interpolated, “because British people don’t ill-treat their subject people—there was no vehicle such as newspapers, radio, books, etc., which could be used as the means of uniting the people. S'o we had to combine around inlividual Readers who went from place to place and preached the holy war of liberation. When these leaders were caught, it was ‘Kaput’ for them, although they always died slowly. Finally my land gained some measure of independence from Austria and we made rapid progress economically and in culture.

“Then came the Great War and we had the same story all over again, but this time the losses in population were fearful. War casualties, starvation, and typhus wiped out nearly four generations of men in four years, and only babies and women who survived were left to carry on the struggle. You English think that your losses in the Great War were dreadful. Lidice and what happened to it is known to the world. What happened in Yugoslavia, Bosnia and Ffertzegovpia was Lidice multiplied many times over, but the world generally does not know the story. After the war wa's over we were so poor that we had little means to tell the world, and so what were left of us set to work to build the race anew.

“But French diplomacy, backed by international capitalists found an easy prey to exploit. That is the news behind the news of the assassination of Alexander and Barthou in Marseilles. Unfair trade agreements designed to keep us in a state of eternal poverty replaced the lash and the gallows, and the struggle still goes on. I don’t know how many more years we will have to fight, but I believe we have tha leader in Tito. France -is crushed and cannot exploit us again. Germany, is crushed or soon will be, and Uncle Joe is marching south. We South Slavs after centuries will be reunited with the great people to whom we belong and of which we are a part, and Tito in this generation is the instrument to accomplish this great aim.” So said Tony. I left him knowing that I had been privileged to meet and converse with a great patriot. Breathes there a man with a soul so dead Who never to himself has said, “This is my own, my native land ?” . —N.Z. Transport Worker.,