Feilding Community Centre

Manawatu Times, Volume 66, Issue 80, 3 April 1941, Page 4

Feilding Community Centre

DISCUSSION OF WORLD AFFAIRS Commenting on tho news of the week 'at the open forum of the Feilding Community Centre on Tuesday evening, Air. H. C. D. Somerset said that the coup d’etat in Yugoslavia was undoubtedly the most important single event in the war to date. Its importance lay, not so much in its immediate military value, though that was very important, as in the tact that for the first time Hitler’s secret weapon which had proved so successful to date and against which there seemed to be no effective reply, had signally failed. The secret weapon wa* one that was used for years before hostilities broke out; it was the weapon of the secret agent carrying out the Nazi policy of “divide and destroy.” A country like Yugoslavia which contained within its borders so many disappointed people as a result of new frontiers drawn ou the map after Versailles, was the most likely soil for Fifth Column tactics, and Germany had made the best of her opportunities. Economically the conquest of Yugoslavia had long ago taken place. In 1932, just after Hitler came into power, Yugoslavia sent 11 per cent, of her exports to Germany; five years later she was sending 21 per cent.; at the time of the outbreak of the war the new Germany, including Austria, was taking nearly half of her exports. Although payment was made in “block” marks which could bo used only for the purchase of German goods and services, which included, by the way, some strategic military roads, the argument that Germany was Yugoslavia’s best customer was a powerful one in the months of the German agents. Yugoslavia was ripe for the plucking; those in high places went to Vienna, signed on the dotted line, and tho plum dropped into the basket — nearly. News from Germany attributed failure of their plans to British agents; there was little reason to doubt that this was so. “If we have found a method of combating Fifth Column propaganda in the Balkans, the new order in Yugoslavia might well P rove . , t0 1 .5 ,e turning-point in the war,” said Mr. Somerset. “In the military sense, said the speaker, “Yugoslavia is a country to be reckoned with; it has a largo army of nearly 200,000 men with a reserve of over a million; before the war it was trained by a French genera staff and armed with munitions from Czechoslovakia.” Air. Somerset gave a concise history of tho country from the Treaty of \ ersailles, dealing particularly with the problems of the Croats aud Slovenes within the orbit of a Serbian autocracy. He then dealt with the causes of th. assassination of King Alexander at Marseilles in 1934 and the policy of the Regent, Prince Paul. The meeting concluded with a naithour’s discussion of the poin‘ s raised.