The Yugoslav Front
A significant appointment has been made by the new Prime Minister of the Yugoslav Government, M. Slobodan Jovanovitch, who succeeds General Simovitch. Its significance lies in the fact that though the Government has its headquarters in London its new Minister for War, General Draza Mihailovitch, is at the head of an army fighting the enemy in his own country. General Mihailovitch has accomplished an amazing feat of arms which has been far too meagrely reported. He has kept together the remnants of the Yugoslav army that was scattered by the Germans last spring, has organised them as guerilla troops operating in the traditional Serbian way from the mountains, has engaged the enemy now here, now there, worrying them and harrying them, and has now made himself virtual master of large tracts of country. So great has his success been that his army consists of much more than widely distributed bands of guerillas. It now constitutes an army in the field, with artillery of its own and even, it is reported, mixed squadrons of British and German- made aeroplanes salvaged from the defeat and reinforced by Russian light bombers. General Mihailovitch, with his trained patriot troops, has been reconstituting a new Near-Eastern front, engaging divisions which the Germans can ill spare from the major theatre of war in Russia. It is an augury of better days to come for the oppressed nations that an exiled Government should have one of its members carrying out his office in a battle area in his own country. The appointment of the new War Minister is the best sort of reply to those who have feared that the Governments in exile would get out of touch with their countrymen who are bearing the brunt of German oppression.
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