Nikola Tesla FBI Files - Page 142

DEATH AND TRANSFIGURATION →→→→ 260 Thus he began using Tesia for the policy directed against the Great Serbians. “Tesla himself … was not aware of the deep conflict between the Serbs and Croats, and as basically a scientist and in old age, he was very cardid in politics." Raditsa said he seemed happy that he finally had a man of his own blood near him in New York and noted that Tesla began to rely upon Kosanović's opinion on everything. During this period the inventor was receiving about $500 per month from the royal goverment as an honorarium. Various political messages elicited from Tesla for home consumption, says Raditsa, were actually written by Kosanović. Toward the end of 1942 the Yugoslav Information Center was opened in New York in the Royal Mission headquarters on Fifth Avenue. Raditsa and Kosanović worked together at this office, issuing bulletins and other publications. But a crisis broke out when news reached them of the fighting between Mihailović and Tito. "Kosanović," he said, “joined Tito and began to popularize the National Liberation Movement for a new Yugoslavia. He had a terrible time to convince Tesla that monarchy was losing in Yugoslavia and that a new Yugoslavia was beginning to come out from the fratricidal civil war. As the largest majority of Serbs in Croatia were joining Tito, Kosanović convinced Tesla that he too should join the movement that was largely shared by the masses of the people, Serbs and Croats. So Tesla's message to the Serbs and Croats was written by Kosanović.*** On the walls of the Tesla Museum in Belgrade one may read a vastly enlarged photocopy of the words allegedly sent by Tesla to his embattled countrymen only months before his own death. American Vice-President Henry A. Wallace also had a hand in its drafting Typewritten, it has many cross-outs and interlinings in Tesla's own handwriting yet the style is that of an ideologue, which the inventor was not Out of this war….. a new world must be bom, a world that would justify the sacrifices offered by humanity. This ….. must be a world in which there shall be no exploitation of the weak by the strong, of the good by the evil, where there will be no humillation of the poor by the violence of the rich; where the products of the intellect, science, and art will serve society for the betterment and beautification of life, and not the individuals for achieving wealth. This new world shall not be a DEATH AND TRANSFIGURATION ← 261 world of the downtrodden and humiliated, but of free men and free nations, equal In dignity and repact for man. The inventor's name also appeared on another message-sent to the Soviet Academy of Sciences on October 12, 1941, urging joint struggle against the Axis powers by Russia, Great Britain, and America, In aid of the revolutionary struggle of the Yugoslav people. This message is not to be seen in the Museum, however, presumably because nostalgia Russian-style has ceased to be politic. Kosanović became chairman of the Yugoslav Economic Mission advocating a New Yugoslav federation versus the centralistic prewar royalist Yugoslavia. This new organization also began working for a new Central East European Federation. Raditsa too became a member of the Tito movement. King Peter was desperately seeking for Mihailović the support of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill, as well as that of his own Uncle Bertle, who was King George VI of England. The British, at first sympathetic to the Chetrik cause, began to change as they received reports of the aggressive actions of Tito's Partisans. In 1942 King Peter visited Washington to intercade with FDR. Yugoslav pilots were being trained in Tennesses. FDR told him that America would send airplanes to the Chetniks as soon as they could be spared from the war in the Middle East. The monarch visited New York City, attending a large reception for the American Friends of Yugoslavia at the Colony Club. The Colony, the first fernale socialited club in America, had been founded at the inspiration of energetic Anne Morgan. She attended the function, as did the King's mother, Queen Marie, and Mrs. Roosevelt. It was the sort of affair Tesla himself would have delighted in had he not been weak and ill. So King Pater went to him. In his diaries (A King's Heritage), under date July 8, 1942, the young Peter il writes: "I visited Dr. Nicola Tesla, the world-famous Yugoslav-American scientist, in his apartment in the Hotel New Yorker. After I had greeted him the aged scientist said: “It is my greetest honor. I am glad you are in your youth, and I am content that you will be a great ruler. I believe I will live until you come back to a free Yugoslavia. From your father you have received his last words: "Guard Yugoslavia. 1 am proud to be a Serbian and a Yugoslav Our people cannot perish. Preserve the unity of all Yugoslave-the Serbs, the Croats, and Slovenes. من TAI