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YUGOSLAVIA: The Guest of Dishonor

3 minute read
TIME

The first to raise a clamor about Marshal Tito’s proposed state visit to London next March was Novelist Evelyn Waugh. As a Roman Catholic and a British officer who served with Tito’s partisans in World War II, Waugh felt outraged. “OUR GUEST OF DISHONOR” was the headline over his protest in Lord Beaverbrook’s Sunday Express.

“Do [politicians] really suppose,”asked Waugh, “that Tito, who has betrayed in turn King, friends and finally his one consistent loyalty to Stalin, will prove a trustworthy friend to them? . . . Tito is seeking to extirpate Christianity in Yugoslavia . . . Mr. Eden would not invite the country to feast and flatter a notorious Jew-baiter. Only when Christianity is at stake do our leaders show bland indifference.”

Roman Catholic Archbishop Donald Alphonsus Campbell of Glasgow called Tito a “modern Nero,” and Bishop John Carmel Heeman of Leeds threatened Tito with “a warm reception in this country.” At this point, Britain’s leading Roman Catholic, Bernard Cardinal Griffin, spoke up in a quieter voice. “To say that we find it difficult to understand why this invitation was extended is an understatement.” But Anthony Eden, said the cardinal, “need not fear that his visitor will suffer discourtesy, let alone violence, at our hands.” The Economist insisted that “the majority of British people are curious to see the man who stood up against Stalin, who fought a good fight against the Germans … It would be a pity if Roman Catholics in this country found themselves shoulder to shoulder with Communists in demonstrations against his visit.”

But the Economist proclaimed its majority perhaps a little too quickly. Last week the Archbishop of Canterbury, religious head of the Anglican Church, described Tito’s government as “vowedly anti-religious,” declared that all Christians are “bitterly aware of the sufferings” in Yugoslavia, and trusted that Eden would tell his guest how “very strong and very widespread” this feeling was.

All of this put Tito into a terrible pout.

Speaking at the little railroad manufacturing town of Smederevska Palanka, he challenged the West: “Do you want Yugoslavia as an ally or not?” It has “the strongest army in Western Europe,” he said, but “if they don’t want us for allies, we have another outcome.” What this outcome was, except to sit on his hands, Tito did not say.

Next day Tito’s Foreign Office summoned the Vatican charge d’affaires in Belgrade and formally broke off diplomatic relations with the papacy. Tito was mad at the Vatican for conferring the Cardinal’s red hat on his arch enemy, Archbishop Aloysius Stepinac, who served five years in a Tito jail and is now restricted to his home village.

As for all that fuss in Britain, said Tito, if more than 50% of Britons do not want him, he will not come, no matter how much he wants to improve relations.

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