International: Rumor–and Warning

Twice a year since Tito broke with. Stalin, a tide of rumors about a Russian satellite invasion of Yugoslavia has washed through the Balkans. Last week the waters were rising more than ever.

Tito himself cried alarm. “The least possible event in Europe,” he broadcast, “is a localized war.” It was a warning to the Kremlin that an attack might well be the step into World War III.

Tito’s uneasiness welled up from the fact that the military balance in the Balkans has been tilted against him. Russia has been equipping its satellite armies with planes, tanks and heavy artillery.

Western intelligence reports:

CJ Rumania has close to 1,000 T-34 Soviet

tanks. With its 200,000-man army are

two Russian divisions.

Cf Hungary has an army of 100,000,

beefed up by three Russian divisions

which patrol the Yugoslav frontier.

<J Bulgaria has been maneuvering its army of 175,000, under Soviet instructors, near the Yugoslav border. It has more

Soviet tanks (nearly 2,000) than either Rumania or Hungary.

Against this array, Tito has a tough army of 600,000 men. But his country was hit hard by last year’s drought. Political concessions made to Yugoslavia’s restless population may have weakened his hold on his own Party machine.

London and Washington feared that Tito’s troubles at home plus the rearmament of his hostile neighbors might tempt the Kremlin into a Balkan Korea. A sign of U.S. backing for Tito was the visit to Belgrade of Assistant Secretary of State George Perkins. The U.S. Mediterranean fleet has just completed joint maneuvers with the British. In Washington, Secretary of State Dean Acheson, like Tito, broadly hinted that “the fabric of peace” would be rent asunder by World War III if Yugoslavia were attacked.