TENSION AT TRIESTE
Sut,—In your "News of the Week" of September 27th, with reference to the Peace Conference at Paris, occur the words "the Jugoslav delegates have repeatedly referred to a growing understanding between Italians and Slovenes inside Trieste." The impression left by the passage is that Trieste is calming down- and its atmosphere becoming one of goodwill. But everyone who has been in Trieste this year knows that the Jugoslav delegates' references are all barefaced humbug. The atmosphere of Trieste is one of all-pervading anxiety. At least 8o per cent, of the people, most of that number Italians, but some of them Slovenes, live in constant fear of the gunmen whom Jugoslavia maintains in Trieste. Every week there are murders or kidnappings. Allied. Military Govern- ment is handicapped by its desperate effort to be impartial between Italians and Slovenes; or rather between the civilised population and the gangsters, some of whom are Italian Communists. There is no "grow- ing" understanding ; for the Triestini have understood perfectly well, ever since the murderous Jugoslav occupation in May, 1945, what to expect from Tito's Jugoslav;a. All talk of a "growing understanding" between the wolf and the sheep at Trieste is part of that dense fog of lies which the Jugoslav propagandists spread abroad to cover their terrorism at Trieste and elsewhere.—Yours sincerely, R. LAFFAN. Queen's College, Cambridge.
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