GENERAL Draza Mihailovitch has been arrested by agents of Tito. This news was announced
to the Yugoslav Government by General Rankovitch, Minister of War in Tito's Government, on Sunday, and broadcast over Belgrade Radio on the same evening. The leader of the Chetniks was described by the speaker as " a criminal," " notorious," and the " hope of reactionaries at home and abroad."
It was also said that he was taken in an old forge, with only eleven of his soldiers, after a chase from mountain to mountain.
In 1942 the Germans placed a price of 200.000 dinars on the head of Mihailovitch, leader of the Chetniks of Yugoslavia, the peasant bands which rushed to his side after the National Revolution of 1941. His name was heard all through the free world; it was the symbol of resistance to the aggression of the Germans in the Balkans. At one time the Chetniks numbered over 100,000 men, and it has been reported that this number rose to 170,000, In the free Yugoslav Government centred in London and described by the British Foreign Secretary, Mr. Anthony Eden, as the " only properly constituted Government of all Yugoslavia," Mihailovitch held the position of Minister of War, As he was operating in the field and never came to London, General Zhivkivitch deputised for hint.
In 1943, at a National Congress held in the mountains, the National Democratic Union of Yugoslavia was formed in which the ideas, morality and future of the future Yugoslavia were stated by Mihailovitch and his followers, owing allegiance to King Peter.
But it was after this period that the weight of Allied assistance was thrown on the Tito side of the scales. This despite the fact that it was known in London that Tito was imposing Communism on the country by force of arms. It was also known, and is known, that many of those surrounding Tito were former quislings, who had worked for and with the Italians and Germans. The names of these persons are known to the British Goveminent.
On May 2, 1944, Mr. Churchill announced in the House of Commons that the Attics had stopped supplies of arms to the Chetniks because " they were not fighting the Germans." There is recorded in the Nineteenth Century of a date following this announcement, a description of battle engagements which took place between the Germans and the Chetniks in March of the same year, engagements in which the Chetniks lost 300 men and the enemy " sustained heavy losses."
Now the first underground leader of all Europe, and the most effective, will go on trial as a " war criminal."
For many of the above facts we are indebted to the Editor of the Nineteenth Century; in the files of this review the full and thoroughly documented account of the struggle between the conflicting forces in Yugoslavia can be found.