YUGOSLAVIA: Red Star and Clenched Fist

Rain and darkness made an ideal cloak. In the hour before dawn the little vessel from Italy ran in close to the rocky Dalmatian coast and dropped its solitary passenger. Daniel De Luce, Associated Press correspondent, climbed into the wet woods without a sound, felt his way to the appointed rendezvous.

Two Partisans appeared: a hard-faced, unshaven man with a red star sewn to his cap and a 16-year-old, lugging an Italian bandoleer and carbine. Swiftly De Luce was passed from hand to hand, always upward, away from the sea, into the Dinaric Alps.

The Plans. He met officers whose red bars of rank were backed with green—the sign that they were political officers, charged with developing popular support. He saw black-robed Catholic priests raise clenched right fists beside their heads in greeting to the Partisans. He heard businessmen call the Partisans sincere fighters, worthy of support. He spent an afternoon with a Partisan brigade commander in a red-roofed, limestone house in a mountain town, going over maps, plans, requirements. The Partisans made full notes of all they told him—to forward to Drug (Comrade, pronounced “droog”) Tito,† Marshal of the Partisans, at his Bosnian headquarters.

Wrote De Luce: “They urged quick dispatch of American and British troops across the Adriatic and promised the people would gladly tear out their vineyards to make landing strips. . . . They argued also for sending grain, beans, rice and medical . . . supplies to Partisan areas where the population is facing hunger and disease. . . . ‘But arms are the most important of all. We can fight without food but we cannot fight without arms.’ ”

The Power. De Luce found the Partisan movement assuming the proportions of military big business. “Until now [they] have relied for success on their own guerrilla skill. . . . [But now] there are more new soldiers than rifles—even counting the long-barreled old squirrel shooters of Balkan War vintage—and there is a job to finish that only planes and armored vehicles can do.”

The commander told De Luce: “There are no barriers of religion or politics. We embrace all patriots who love and fight for Yugoslavia.” De Luce learned that 600 of 2,000 Jews released from an internment camp had joined the Partisans; that a considerable number of priests had become members.

The Faith. With the commander and a priest De Luce stood before the altar of a Twelfth-Century church. Fascinated, he watched the commander make the sign of the cross with one hand, while holding his grey cap with its red star in his other. Outside, looking over the roofs at a red, white and blue Croatian flag with a red star in the white stripe, the priest said: “Tired of the Fascist yoke, the priests and people of our community began cooperating a year ago with the Partisans, furnishing them money and food. We considered it the only thing to do for the liberation of Yugoslavs. . . . On Sept. 12 two Partisans appeared and the following night the Italians evacuated. . . . Later [the Partisans] issued instructions for a municipal election … all men and women over 18 would vote . . . We’ve had peace and order in our town since the first day it became Partisan.”

In Italy, before he set out, De Luce was warned by “exiles who still are stoutly devoted to General Draja Mihailovich of the danger . . . [but] I’ve found not one scrap of evidence of Partisan terror.”

Drug Tito, De Luce found, “has welded his guerrillas into a tightly disciplined and hotly idealistic force that shows more enthusiastic determination than any outfit I’ve seen since I met Major General Vassili Novikov’s Caucasus Army. . . . It’s a people’s army, and presumably susceptible to most of the mistakes . . . ex-civilians usually make. But its spirit is amazing and exhilarating. It knows how to shoot straight.”

The Chetniks. The day De Luce visited the Partisans a Swedish journalist stationed in Zurich received a personal letter from General Mihailovich, saying his troops were taking no part in the battles being waged against the Axis. “I have told the British and Americans my army is ready and will begin to fight when the first Allied division lands in Yugoslavia,” the War Minister of the Government in Exile added.

Last week in Cairo, King Peter and the rest of his Cabinet in Exile waited patiently. Over the radio the 20-year-old claimant to an overturned throne in Bel grade addressed his subjects, urged them to “obey Mihailovich and other national leaders of your resistance to the enemy and refrain from internal struggle.” It was a long step for Peter to mention other leaders; he still could not bring himself to call the Partisans by name.

Tito is Josip Broz, or Brozovich, 53, Croatian ex-metal worker,Communist-trained leader of the People’s Liberation Army, rival organization toGeneral Draja Mihailovich’s Chetniks. Berlin has offered 100,000 gold marks for eitherman’s head.