(The letter referred to is as follows:)

[Translation by W. H. Smyth, New York, N. Y.]
PEOPLES REPUBLIC OF SERBIA

COMMITTEE FOR WATER HUSBANDRY

BELGRADE, July 30, 1948.

MR. SMYTH: For the execution of the regulatory works included in the 5-year plan which is being carried out by our institution we require certain construction machinery which is produced in the United States of America. Insofar as it may be possible to secure it under favorable terms, we address ourselves to you because you were the representative of several of the companies mentioned below, and request your cooperation in this business.

Principally these firms are known to us:

1. Caterpillar Tractor Co., 1937 Walker Street, Peoria, Ill.; produces elevating graders, graders, bulldozers, scrapers, and tractors.

2. Austin Western Co., 1945 Barrows Street, Aurora, Ill., which produces parts for dredges [probably they mean graders].

3. Northwest Engineering Co., 1827 Steger Building, 28 East Jackson, Chicago, Ill., which produces dredges [mean dragline scraper], cranes, and parts for dredges and cranes.

4. Buckeye Traction Digger Co., Royce and Crystal Avenues, Findlay, Ohio, which produces ditchdigging machines, dredge accessories, graders, and bulldozers.

5. Bucyrus-Erie Co., 1046 Monroe Avenue, South Milwaukee, Wis., which produces self-propelled dredges and excavators with diesel, gas, and steam power. 6. Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing Co., 1126 South 70th Street, Milwaukee, Wis., which produces bulldozers and other material.

In as far as you also have connections with other companies they also may come into consideration.

We need machines as follows:

I. DREDGES-DRY LAND

(a) Chain-bucket type on caterpillars or rails, effective capacity 70 to 100 cubic meters per hour, or 120-150 m3h theoretically. Buckets to be of about 80 liter capacity mounted on articulated steel links. The steel link belts must be such that they may be lengthened or shortened. The length of the steel link belts must be about 20 meters. For casting out the excavated earth the dredge (excavator) should be directly or separately connected to a conveyor 20 or 25 meters long mounted on wheels, with a rubber belt approximately 70 centimeters wide. Because of its great length the conveyor may have to be supported. Besides the conveyor the dredge should be equipped with an arm for loading wagons and wagonettes right alongside the dredge.

(b) Shovels on caterpillars (tracks) with articulated latticed arms. The articulated arm must have a bucket of about 0.60 m3 capacity and must be so constructed that it may dig to a depth of 7 meters and lift to a height of 4 meters for discharge into wagons; the effective capacity of this equipment must be about 60 to 70 m3h. The latticed arm must be of 2 parts-that is of 1 basis arm and 2 extension pieces (short and long). For work with the short arm a bucket is required of 1.0 to 1.25 cubic meters capacity. The effective capacity of the excavator with the short arm must be 50 to 60 m3 per hour. The length of this arm must be about 10 meters. For work with the long arm a bucket is required of 0.75 to 1.00 m3 capacity. The effective capacity of the shovel with the long arm must be 40 to 50 m3 hourly. The length of this long arm must be about 14 meters.

(c) Self-propelled steam-floating dredges, bucket and suction types whose capacity will be—

1. Working with suction lines (sandy material) 250 m3h.

2. Working with buckets in sandy material 180 m3h.

3. Working with buckets in gravelly material 150 m3h.

4. Working with heavy buckets with teeth in strong material 50 m3h.

The dredges must have the following engines:

1. For work with buckets, 2 engines each of about 250 horsepower.

2. For work with suction lines one engine of about 250 horsepower.

3. For weighing (?) lifting while working and for lighting, 3 engines of about 70 horsepower each.

The dredges must be equipped with the following accessories:

1. 100 pontoons each with a suction hose 5 meters long on it.

2. 20 pieces of suction 5 meters long for shore-work.

The dredge must be equipped with cabins for the entire crew, with lighting for maintenance work and with steam heating for the winter.

II. BULLDOZERS

The machines which come into consideration are those made by American factories, types D-8; D-7; and HD-14. Bulldozers must be easily maneuverable, with motors of 80 to 120 horsepower with adjustable blades 3 to 4 meters long.

III. SCRAPERS

(a) Bowl capacity 5m3, type D-7; HD-14 and HD-10 with tractors of corresponding strength.

(b) Bowl capacity 8m3, type D-8; D-7 and HD-14 with tractors of corresponding power.

(c) Turnapulls with bowl capacity 12 m3 with tractors of corresponding power.

IV. ELECTRIC CENTRALS (GENERATING SETS) MOVABLE

Capacity 60-120 kilowatts, that is 80-160 horsepower with distributing table, cables and other necessary equipment for the conduct of electric current to a distance of 3 kilometers. These generating sets must serve to drive pumps and other machine tools as well as to light the work place-grounds.

Insofar as it may be possible to cover our requirements in the United States of America we request you to send us catalogs with detailed specifications of the machines so that it may be possible to decide from these and such others not listed above but which we could employ profitably in our work.

As we have stated above all these machines are highly necessary for the improvement of agriculture in our country, therefore we request you to secure exact information for us concerning the following:

1. Method of closing contracts directly with factories (companies).

2. Method of payment (through cash or the exchange of goods, state what good would come into consideration for export from our country),

3. Time of delivery (if possible at the earliest date-even from stocks if this can be done).

4. Method of taking delivery.

5. Means of transport and other eventualities we cannot foresee.

Insofar as the conditions of the offers from the mentioned firms would suit us, we would inform you as to the quantities of the various machines which would be required.

In case of necessity you may put yourself in contact with our commercial attaché, Beno Habjanic, 1818 24th Street, Washington, D. C.

We hope for your early reply and request you to tell us the terms for this business.

Engineer DRAGOSLAV MUTAPOVIC.

Minister in the Government of the Peoples Republic of Serbia.

Mr. SMYTH. Ladies and gentlemen, we must not make the mistake of considering Tito's communism-national communism or Titoismas some call it, to be different in any way from the original Moscow brand of international communism. To point this up, I would like to trace quickly the development of Tito's power in Yugoslavia and show that his methods and aims are identical with those of the Soviets.

On March 27, 1941, a small group of Serbian officers and politicians, some well intentioned but ignorant of facts, others apparently paid by British intelligence, staged a coup d'etat and turned out the Government which 2 days earlier had signed a nonmilitary pact with the Axis Powers at Vienna. Churchill stated in Parliament that day: "Yugoslavia has found her soul." But Yugoslavia, especially the Serb part, was doomed to destruction.

Ten days later the Germans attacked, the men who staged the coup of March 27 left the Yugoslav people to their fate, fled the country like rats, taking with them the young King Peter, who did not wish to go. Yugoslavia fell in 10 or 11 days. Tito, nominated by Malenkov and placed by the Comintern as secretary-general of the Yugoslav Communist Party in 1937, and his Yugoslav Communists-allied to Hitler through Stalin-took no parts in the events of March 27 nor the Yugoslav resistance immediately following until the capitulation—that is, the capitulation of Yugoslavia. And incidentally, and very important, is that it was Malenkov who nominated Tito to be secretarygeneral of the Yugoslav Communist Party-Malenkov, the man who today is No. 1 in Russia.

Now, with surprising candor, Tito and his Communists celebrate March 27 as a Communist Peoples' revolt-the birthday of their Communist Yugoslav Government. Probably they are right in a sense, for without the coup of March 27, Yugoslavia would exist today, even as Sweden exists as a free country although she allowed the Germans to run their troop and supply trains across Sweden for the entire war.

In that case. Tito might be again playing his old game of hide and seek with the Yugoslav police, and a Yugoslav instead of a Swede might be General Secretary of the United Nations.

Hitler's attack on Stalin June 22, 1941, caused Tito-presumably to fight Germans--to join the already organized and hard-fighting resistance movement of Colonel Mihajlovich, a Serb regular officer who had not surrendered at the general capitulation, but who had taken to the woods.

But when Mihajlovich saw that Tito's main activity seemed to be the killing of peasant leaders in the Serb villages-potential anti-Communist leaders-Mihajlovich turned on Tito and drove him out of Serbia. Stalin quite naturally recognized Tito as Yugoslav resistance leader, and Tito began a civil war against the Serb Nationalists which lasted throughout the war.

Colonel, later General, Draza Mihajlovich, built a real nationalist resistance against the Germans. Incidentally his cutting of the German short supply line down through eastern Serbia to Greece in 1942, forced the Germans to ship their Rumanian oil to North Africa the long way around via Italy, which contributed greatly to the British victory at El Alemein where the German tanks ran out of gas with Egypt before them.

Tito fooled the Yugoslavs, who were anti-Communists, all of them, by not proclaming his movement as Communist. He called it the Peoples Partizan Units of Liberation and finally the Peoples Army of Liberation and Partizan Units. These names and deceptive slogans enable Tito to get non-Communists into his organization, which, at the start of the war, was based solely on his 12,000 party members.

In a way, he was aided by the Croatian Ustashi, Hitler's Croat allies, for they had one common interest, to destroy the Serbs, the largest racial block in Yugoslavia. The Ustashis wished to eliminate the Serbs in Croatia, while Tito, as noted above, wanted to destroy them as strong individualists utterly opposed to communism.

Churchill and Roosevelt apparently decided at Quebec in 1943, possibly because of threats from Stalin that he would make peace with the Germans, to back Tito-Stalin's man-in Yugoslavia. Within a week after that fateful conference, "Reports from Radio Free Yugo

slavia," announced as Tito's station, but actually beamed from Tiflis, Georgia, Russia, were in our newspapers, Mihajlovich was pushed aside and the false buildup of Tito as a liberator was in full swing.

The Allies began wholeheartedly to support Tito, and in addition to dropping supplies for him, gave to him, instead of to our real ally, Mihajlovich, all arms, munitions, and supplies of the Italian Army of Occupation in Yugoslavia, disarmed after the Italian capitulation. In spite of all that equipment Tito was too weak to enter Serbia where Mihajlovich held sway.

Chased out, on his own birthday, May 25, 1944, by German parachutists, of what Churchill had described in Parliament as his impregnable and inaccessible mountain stronghold, Drvar in western Bosnia-incidentally the manager of the lumber company there had bought a Packard from me so I remember that town well-Tito finally was rescued by a British airplane, flown to Bari, Italy, then to other points, to be received with all honors by various Allied commanders, and then installed on the Dalmatian coastal island of Vis by us and the British and treated as if he were a valuable ally. Sound intelligence would have called for his internment or liquidation and the turning over of our aid to Mihajlovich, even then stronger than Tito.

To the surprise of our people a Russian plane called at Vis, picked up Tito, flew him to Moscow where he met Stalin. On his request the Russian Army entered Yugoslavia, in violation of the agreement that no allied army would enter Yugoslavia. The Soviets placed Tito and his Communists in power and began to help them organize the country.

Tito immediately conscripted all the Serb youth he could find, drove them as a human shield against the retreating Germans in the Srem and Slavonia regions north of the Save River. The 40,000 young Serbs lost in those actions, and the three-hundred-thousand-odd killed by the Tito Communists during late 1944 and 1945-simply a massacre of good people, was done by Soviet methods and for Soviet aims, namely, the destruction of those persons they feared could be potential leaders of anticommunism.

On top of that, and in striking parallel to the slaughter of 10,000 Polish officers at Katyn Forest by his Soviet mentors, Tito's men at Kochevija Forest in Slovenia, western Yugoslavia, murdered 11,500 Yugoslav officers and men-about 9,000 Slovenes who were Roman Catholics, and 2,500 Serbs, who were Orthodox Catholics.

Those unfortunates had crossed the Yugoslav frontier into a Britishoccupied zone, they gave up their arms on the assurance of the British that they would be sent for internment into Italy, were then loaded by the British into freight cars, shipped back to Yugoslavia unarmed, where Tito's murderers dispatched them on arrival in an orgy of Communist hate.

Through that terror the Yugoslav Communists elected a pseudo Parliament of their own party people. They voted a constitution, but as help from the western powers was indispensable, placed the following in it: "Private property and private initiative in the economy are guaranteed."

Thanks to the resulting UNRRA help, Tito was able to place 600,000 men under arms, with which army he forced the Yugoslavs to accept his regime. Remember there was a trusted Communist commissar in

each unit with a myriad of his spies, so there was no possibility for the army to revolt.

He carried out the nationalization of property, generally through false statements that the owners had collaborated with the enemy or enriched themselves through the war. We few Americans who had been in Yugoslavia had our businesses or property taken over with the rest.

The Yugoslav Communists blindly executed Soviet instructions until excluded from the Cominform in June 1948, whose sitting was under the chairmanship of Zdanoff, Malenkov's rival, later liquidated in Malenkov's rise.

Tito and his people tried for 10 months to get back into the Cominform. It would seem that the Yugoslav Communists, although following Moscow's instructions, were too nationalistic for Stalin, who could brook no competition in any degree. Probably he wanted to eliminate Tito, as he had done Tito's three predecessors as Secretary General of the Yugoslav Communist Party, and install a new man, who like Tito in earlier years, would have no visions of grandeur.

The Yugoslav Communists used the most brutal methods to drive the peasants into the cooperatives and socialize agriculture. That was a mistake, for in a peasant country like Yugoslavia, the peasants are fanatically attached to their land; tax the peasant, take almost anything from him, but don't touch his land, his plow, horse, cow, sheep, and so forth. A peasant will kill his neighbor for trying to move his plow over half à furrow onto his land. Land means life to him.

I have heard Serbian peasants make such statements to me about their property and I know what I am talking about.

Aleksander Rankovich, Tito's Minister of Police, stated in 1950, that his department had arrested over 5 million people from the end of the war to that moment. That meant roughly 1 person out of 3 in the whole country. As at least 80 percent of the population is peasant and they furnish a corresponding percentage of the army, how can anyone expect the Yugoslav Army to be loyal to Tito under such conditions? Arrests of peasants were principally for refusal to join cooperatives and for declining to deliver produce at the low prices prescribed by the state.

Thanks, as generally reported, to British Intelligence, Tito located Mihajlovich, the ally we deserted, as he lay sick in the mountains in Bosnia. He arrested, tried, and shot him in June 1946. Thanks to us Americans, Gen. Milan Nedich, the great Serb patriot who assumed the Presidency of the Serb Government created by the Germans in 1941, and who did that merely to try to save his countrymen, was turned over to Tito.

Although it was reported that General Nadich died jumping from an upper story of the Belgrade Police headquarters, it is commonly believed that first he was killed by Rankovich, Tito's minister of police, then thrown out the window.

The liquidation of those two Serb national heroes and of Gen. Lav Rupnik, a great Slovene, who similarly tried to save his Slovenes, certainly left an hatred toward Tito and his government which precludes any idea of loyalty of his troops toward him.

Yugoslavs, like most Slavs, are deeply religious at heart. The Serbs have a great respect for their church, as it was the church which