Browning chief. [volume] (Browning, Mont.) 1941-1953, 1944-03-17
Jugoslavia's
Tito
BY Frank Gerrasi
T ~ % -
(WNU Feature-Through special ARRANGEMENT
with Golfers Weekly

Fifteen years ago, Josip Broz was
a nameless man hunted as Com
munist criminal by the police and
secret agents of the then most pow
erful figure in Jugoslavia, Gen. Pera
Zivkovic, strong-arm front man for
the late pious, dictatorial King Alex
ander.
Josip Broz did not have birth
certificate, much less a passport.
For the entire year 1923, he lived in
the political underworld of cellars
and garrets in Belgrade, Zagreb and
Split, and wherever he could find
refuge.
His crime? He had organized the
Metal Workers Union and was one
of the leaders of the trade-union
movement in Jugoslavia.
He was caught early in 1929 and
jailed. He was released fou, years
later with gray in the soft waves OF
his brown hair, ulcers in his stom-
ach and dream in his brain.
Leader of 100000 Fighters.
Today, at the age of SIS, he stands
at the head of an army of 100000
and possibly 100000 oddly uniformed
but uniformly determined men and
women known as "Partisans," who
have proved everlastingly that slave
men may win battles but free men
win wars.
Today Josip Broz is the military
and spiritual leader of a movement
which has broken the Nazis' hold on
the Balkans, Obviated an Allied Of
fensive in southeastern Europe until
the main German armies can be
crushed in the East and West, and
has given new meaning to the words
"a Peoples War" and "The Four
Freedoms"
To his army and the guerrilla
bands and to millions of Jugoslavs
in freed territory and the outside
world, Josip Broz is known as Tito.
"Ti' means you and ITO" means
this. Broz has few idiosyncracies
or mannerisms to mark him apart
from other men, but one of them is
the habit of prefacing an order with
"You do this" Hence his name. 1t
is pronounced Tee-toe.
To the Titos of this world and their
followers must go an indefinable
measure of credit for the victory
that will be ours.
To one particular Tito-he who
was born on a 30-acre farm near
Zagreb of Croat father and a
Slovene mother-must 60 most of
the credit for the rebirth of Jugo-
slavia and the immobilization of the
German armies in the Balkans, and
the setting into motion of a revolu-
ton in southeastern Europe which
might provide permanent solution
to the problems of one-third of the
people of that continent.
Mikhailovitch Helped.
What credit isn't Tito's must be
given to Draja Mikhailovitch, who
unfortunately chose, at one stage of
his dramatic career as liberator, to
turn from killing Germans to taking
part in civil war and only sporadi-
cally resumed the bigger job.
Tito is of slightly more than me-
dunn height, broad-shouldered, long
armed and sturdy-legged. His head
sets low on his shoulders and it is a
remarkable head In profile, it is
the head of a poet and philosopher
who is also a skilled craftsman-a
Cellini perhaps. Full face, it is the
tough, determined vsage of a triple
threat halfback.
A side view of this prodigious
proletarian shows high forehead,
bulgy shaggy brOws with a deep
crease between them, capable of
eloquent frowning. Tito's nose is
long, slightly beaked, with thick nos
trils. He has a straight, kindly
mouth, good chin and a heavy work.
mans neck. There is what some
would call an American Indian cast
in his features.
Face to face, he looks remarkably
like a clean-shaven Stain, the effect
being accentuated consciously or not
by the cut of his unadorned broad
conared tunic.
He speaks matter-of-factly, in a
low, well-modulated voice, looks d.
rectly at you as he talks and never
speaks until you have finished what
you have to say. He talks, they
say, to each individual in an audi
ence, moving his eyes deliberately
from one person to another.
He smokes innumerable cigarettes,
chain fashion, from a small holder.
Far from being "a man of STEEL"
he is capable of great emotion.
Mourns for Dead.
"When something really bloody
happens" man who spent months
with him in Jugoslavia told me,
"he's knocked out No Mysteries, no
pyrotechnics. He just retires quiz
city for hours, as he did the night
he got word that his friends Milose-
vic and Kovasevic had been killed"
Out of their affection for Tito, the
people have fashioned a legendary
man of extraordinary courage and
endurance who rides white charg-
er and walks uphill to spare its
strength, who is always at the head
of his guerrilla attachments.