YUGOSLAVIA: Rebirth In Bosnia

Partisans with tommy guns stood guardwhere Jajce’s steep and darkened streets leave the town for the mountains. The Germans across the ridge might know of the meeting, try a night attack. In the center of the old Bosnian town, in a shabby hall beyond the Turkish fountain, sat 142 sweating, cheering men, engaged in founding a government.

Before the delegates stood the man called Drug Tito. He heard them acclaim him Marshal of Yugoslavia, the first in history. Now he could drop his incognito, step forth officially as Josip Broz, Croatian metalworker, Communist labor leader and fighter for Loyalist Spain against Francisco Franco. The new Marshal’s first act: substitution of the conventional army salute for the Partisans’ greeting—the clenched fist.

Solemnly the ragged men proclaimed themselves a National Committee of Liberation, assumed the powers of a temporary Government for the freed areas of Yugoslavia. The variety of figures at the head of this Government reflected Yugoslavia’s historic groupings, now partly fused by war: the Roman Catholic Croats; the hardy, heady, Orthodox Serbs; the minority Slovenes. The Partisans made Marshal Broz president of the Committee and chairman of a special Defense Committee. Next they chose a presidium and placed at its head an aging, upright Croat: Dr. Ivan Ribar, first president of Yugoslavia’s Constitutional Assembly after World War I. To aid Democrat Ribar, the Committee named Serbian Communist Mosha Pijade and two other vice presidents, one a Croat, one a Slovene. Then they were ready to go on the air.

There was consternation in Cairo. The new Government, the first to be formed of men who had endured Nazi occupation, ignored young King Peter and his War Minister, Draja Mihailovich, leader of the quiescent Serb Chetníks. Also ignored was the fact that the Government in Exile had been recognized by the Great Powers (including Russia, which has nevertheless nourished the Partisans). To the men of Jajce, a government abroad is no government; a denouncing king in Cairo is no king.