The Key West citizen. [volume] (Key West, Fla.) 1879-current, 1941-04-05
YIJCOSLAVS AND
WAY OF LIVING
ARE DESCRIBED
MANY WHO MAKE ABODE IN
OFFICIAL WASHINGTON
HAVE MUCH KNOWLEDGE
OF PEOPLE OF EUROPE
BY JACK STINNETT
APP Feature Service Writer

/ WASHINGTON, April 5. -
There is one thing about Wash
ington - practically nothing can
happen anywhere in the world
but that you can find someone
here who knows intimately the
facts and legends and people and
countries involved.
don't mean at the embassies
either. Stiff formality, the de-
mands of diplomacy, make them,
for the most part, a pretty poor
source of anything but official
announcements. ] mean people
who have lived there or were
born there and now live here,
grinding their, own axes and not
those of some foreign land.
That is why, when. the eyes of
the world turned on Yugoslavia,
/ went over to the bus terminal
which never used as such) now
houses the makeshift offices of
the Department of Justices alien
registration division and looked
up Donald r. Perry, the acting
director.
Perry is product of the Whar-
ton graduate school at the Uni
versity of Pennsylvania. He is an
economist and expert on t.nance.
For eight years before coming to
Washington last summer he was
state director of finance for Penn
sylvania You wouldn't think on
the face of it that Donald Perry
would know all about what some
one described as the Balkans
crazy-quilt kingdom and land of
unpronounceable names. But a
little more than 20 years ago,
Perry's name wasn't Perry. He
wasn't an American and he was
fresh from three years and seven
months of bitter fighting in the
gallant little army of his native
Serbia.
An Epic In Blood
Their history is not just his
tory" he says. at is an epic
written in blood. For centuries
they have striven to maintain
freedom, independence and the
democratic spirit. The Serbian
peasants have an oft-repeated
saying, I would rather go to my
grave than become a slave, and
they mean it.
AS the story of the Balkans is
extended in 1941 terms, it might
be clarified little by remember
ing some of the things that Perry
has to say.
In the first place, you are going
to read much of the Yugoslavian
or Serbian peasants. Perhaps no
where else in the world does the
word peasant (selyak) have the
same meaning. There it is title
to be proud of. Eighty-three per
cent of the entire population are
peasants and there is no nobility.
It is the one country in Europe
that boasts of a ruling peasant
dynasty.
Point No. 2, Yugoslavia really
is a patchwork kingdom, made up
of Serbs, Croats, Stevens, Mon
tenegrans, Bosnians and even
others. Their main points of diff
ference, Perry says, are concerned
with who's going to be sheriff and
who deputy Shorthand the diff
ference of religion. Part of the
population is Greek Orthodox and
part Roman Catholic. In the final
analysis. Perry doesn't think that
these differences within viii split
the country.
On a Busy Highway
In the third instance, Yugo-
slavia is on the Balkan peninsula
which is "the land bridge be-
tween Europe and Asia" II has
been the main highway of the
armies of Alexander the Great,
Attila the Hun. Ghengis Khan,
the Turks and the Crusaders.
Bismark said that no one could
control Europe or the world with
out controlling this land-bridge.
Perry calls that "Bismark's Sym
phony in 5-B Major-Berlin, Blu
dapest. Belgrade, Bosporus and
Baghdad." Whoever owns it. win
control the Black Sea and the
Darianelles--..the iugular vein OF