MILITARY PLOT

Wairarapa Daily Times, 7 December 1937, Page 5

MILITARY PLOT

REMARKABLE STORY DANGEROUS COMIC STREP. Press Association Electric Telegraph—Copyright) LONDON, Monday. A Mickey Mouse comic strip figures in a remarkable story from Yugoslavia. Mr H. Harrison, Reuter’s* correspondent at Belgrade for the past eight years, has been ordered to leave by Wednesday owing to allegedly tendentious reports apparently in connection with a statement that a comic strip appearing in a newspaper had been indefinitely banned. The police state that the strip was banned for two days, as it depicted a Ruritanian revolt in which a boy King's! unele was plotting to depose him. The “News Chronicle” says well-in-formed circles in Vienna declare the strip so closely resembled actual conditions that it was considered dangerous. Nevertheless, it was not the hoy King’s uncle, but the Deputy-Regent of Yugoslavia, General Tomitch, who was planning a military conspiracy aiming at the removal of the Regent, Prince Paul, the Premier, M, Stoyadinovitch, and a military alliance with Germany. He had the support of five generals commanding military districts who prepared a manifesto declaring that they were establishing a military dictatorship to keep the country from Italian hands. When the plot was discovered a general and a junior officer were sent with proofs of the treachery to see General Tomitch, who died ag a result of the visit. It was given out that his death was due to suicide. The generals have been suspended. A message from Belgrade published on 12th November stated that the Deputy-Regent of Yugoslavia, General Tomitch, was found shot in his home, a bullet having lodged near the heart. It was stated, that he was depressed by his family troubles.