Sunday, February 16, 1941

HITLER PRESSURES YUGOSLAVIA. And the Yugoslavs may be about to cave in, according to an Associated Press dispatch yesterday --

"A Belgrade source close to Premier Dragisa Cvetkovic said last night that Yugoslavia would accede to Adolph Hitler's wishes after the return today of her statesmen from a conference with the Fuehrer. The country is expected to accept what were described as comparatively favorable terms in order to keep out of active warfare. These terms, while not yet known, are expected to call for active participation by Yugoslavia in Hitler's 'new order' for Europe. Informed sources interpreted the Yugoslavs' journey to Germany as meaning that the government of Yugoslavia had been driven into a corner as a result of Bulgaria's bowing to German wishes and Russia's nonintervention policy in the Balkans."

If the Yugoslavs sign on the dotted line, it'll be the biggest triumph yet of Hitler's building-block strategy in the Balkans -- turn Rumania into a vassal state, use her territory to pressure Bulgaria into submission, and then use the Bulgars' acquiescence to get the necessary concessions from Yugoslavia. And what are those concessions? The Germans aren't being bashful about this, according to a Friday A.P. dispatch -- "passage for German troops through both Yugoslavia and Bulgaria in order to get at Greece and the eastern Mediterranean." The New York Times story on this, by C. Brooks Peters, says the Yugoslavs' payoff for cooperation with the Nazis would be a slice of conquered Greece, namely Salonika, which Belgrade has been interested in as a more direct route to the Mediterranean.

Isn't it screwy that at a time when the Axis' military might is being tested more than ever -- routed in Italian East Africa, in North Africa, and in Greece, and blasted by an aggressive new R.A.F. bombing campaign over German-held territory -- Hitler might be on the verge of his greatest triumph yet at aggression-by-diplomacy?

THE TRIBUNE LASHES OUT AGAIN -- AT DEWEY. What's a Republican isolationist newspaper to do, now that Thomas E. Dewey has joined Wendell Willkie in endorsing the lend-lease bill? Publish yet another bitter, carping editorial, I guess. The Chicago Tribune did so yesterday, and placed itself in the strange position of denouncing last year's G.O.P. presidential candidate and the party's second most popular public figure as traitors to Republicanism. The crime is what these two gentlemen said in their Lincoln Day speeches --

"Republicans in the midwest who made [Willkie] their favorite candidate and who regretted to the last that the Willkie hoax was put over on the convention were not prepared to have him use the occasion of a Republican anniversary to give support to the dictatorship bill opposed by the faithful members of his party. Mr. Dewey endeavored to soften the effect of what he was doing. He referred to the bill as dangerous and unwise in the form it was submitted by the administration. He remarked that at the insistence of the minority it had been carefully considered. He said that as an American he was proud of the fair hearing given to both sides by the committees of the house and of the senate....'With some necessary further reservations of power to the people thru the congress,' said Mr. Dewey, 'I am satisfied that the House bill will be adopted. Speaking for myself alone, I hope it will be. I also hope that it will be in such form that it can be adopted with the support of both parties, serving notice on the world that the American democracy in full flower is a strong and united nation.'"

Sounds like an admirable show of bipartisanship to me, and a smarter approach than the Roosevelt Administration's short-sighted indifference to passing lend-lease by more than a party-line vote. But to the Tribune it means, somehow, that Mr. Dewey is a liar -- "[He] knows that if the bill was dangerous and unwise when introduced it was dangerous and unwise when it passed the house. He knows that evil was not taken out of it by amendment." Oh? And what evidence is there that he "knows" this? The Tribune doesn't say. And how does his qualified endorsement of lend-lease make Mr. Dewey "opposed to nothing the third term incumbent wants"?

The Tribune's latest barrage is one more outburst of hyperbolic pique, typical of the isolationists, capped with a closing thought that comes close to a smear -- "If the Republican party remains an American party, it will not make Mr. Dewey a candidate for president of the United States." I doubt that too many Americans will agree that Mr. Dewey is "un-American" for urging a bipartisan approach to our war policy, any more than most people can make any sense out of isolationist wheezes about the lend-lease bill serving as President Roosevelt's bid to "Hitlerize" America.