The End of Mihailovitch
The tangled story of Mihailovitch has been hard for English readers to unravel, though controversy about the condemned leader's vices and virtues have been almost as acute in some quarters here as in Yugoslavia itself. As for the trial, its result was to be taken for granted from the first. There were two sets of considerations to sway the minds of the judges—who are by the nature of things sup- porters of the Tito regime—the opposition between Mihailovitch's mainly Serbian forces and Tito's mainly Croatian Partisans, and the earlier and the More fundamental question of Mihailovitch's alleged collaboration with the Germans. On the larter,point, in spite of the strong support extended to the Serbian general by some British officers, the British Government indicated its own conclusions long ago by withdrawing help from Mihailovitch and extending it to Tito. That is not evidence to hang—or. shoot—a man on, particularly as there is general agreement that at the beginning of the campaign Mihailovitch. was effectively fighting the common enemy, but it creates a certain presumption. Mihailovitch's own admissions in court, moreover, went far to ensure an adverse verdict. On. the strict justice of the trial it is not necessary to pronounce—still less to take account of charges made against British officers in the course of it ; it is enough that Mr. Bevin has flatly denied them. The affair has both its military and its political aspects, and the result was always a foregone concluson. Clemency was hardly to be looked for from General Tito, but the execution of the sentence is a matter for more regret than satisfaction here.
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