Washington Sideshow - Gunplay Comes Naturally to Yugoslavians

I found a Yugoslav today to tell me what’s going on in the European backwoods, where the boys had as soon take potshots at our airplanes as at each other.

The situation is what you might call complex; slivovitz isn’t helping any, and now I am as confused about Yugoslavia as the 20th Century-Fox Film Corporation.

The Yugoslavian Serbs, Croats, Muslims, Slovenes, Magyars, Turks, Albanians, Bulgarians, Germans, Hungarians and Gypsies have been shooting at each other since the invention of gunpowder. Other people have been shooting at them too and they have drowned their sorrows traditionally in slivovitz. This is a distillation of fermented plum juice.

There are 50,000,000 plum trees in Yugoslavia. In a good year they produce 750,000 tons of plums. Nobody ever has measured the resultant slivovitz in gallons. My man says it is warlike stuff and inclined to make you see double.

Most Yugoslavs are farmers, except when they are playing politics, which they do with guns. This is no wisecrack; it is a matter of record. A Yugoslav congressman got so exasperated in 1928 at the way the debate was going that he pulled out his shooting-iron and began firing at random. He happened to plug three members of the opposition; that almost started a revolution and King Alexander clamped on a dictatorship. The king was murdered later. And so on.

The Yugoslavs grow grain, pigs, sheep and pyrethrum plants, the flowers of which they grind into insect powder. They distill alcohol from wood, weave carpets by hand and, near Stip, grow opium poppies. They also cultivate silkworms.

Many Yugoslavs grew so tired of being targets that they left for more peaceful climes. The first ones fled the Turks in 1540 and sailed for America. Only a few were believed to have arrived. More came later and we now have in the United States nearly 1,000,000 people of Yugoslavian descent. They have made excellent peace-loving citizens.

Among them are Frank J. Lausche, governor of Ohio, and Louis Adamic, the author. Nikola Tesla, who invented the induction motor, was a Yugoslav. Had it not been for him, we’d still be riding in horse cars.

Germany invaded Yugoslavia during the war and that’s when Draja Mihailovitch set up his Chetnik armies to harass the Nazis. The 20th Century-Fox Company was so impressed it produced a movie, “Chetniks,” glorifying the general.

About the time this picture was to be released, one Josip Broz became known as Marshal Tito and organized the Partisans to fight the Nazis and the Chetniks. He said General Mihailovitch was a bum. The Allies seemed to agree. This was a jolt to 20th Century-Fox, which quickly withdrew its movie.

Mihailovitch said Tito was a Communist. Tito’s government executed Mihailovitch. Then his army started shooting at our airplanes and that brings us up to date.

My Yugoslav friend never goes to wild western movies. Too much shooting.