Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1951-02-15
Crisis in YueosIovio-II
By jones Sweinhort
North American Newspaper All;anee


In Bosnia Herzegovina. the Yugo-
Slav government has been trying
to make progress with $50 mil
lion steel project.
Robert l. Brooks, chief engineer
for a New York firm which has
contracted part of the work, was
trying to make me comprehend
what the drought really was"
See that stream?" he said,
pointing out the window toward
the slowly flowing river. "Ordi-
narily it's just about like it is
now-about so feet wide. Is to
Is feet deep and wet as water
can be.
"Well, toward the end of last
April, it began to dry up. Be-
tween April and late September
all of us around here saw that
river shrink until a child could
step across it; and if, anywhere
along it. a dog, cat, chipmunk or
bird could find a or inch hole
with enough water in it to get a
drink, that animal or bird was in
luck.
81 ask no man who did not
actually see it to believe what
happened here. Gradually, the
banks, then the basin, finally the
very floor OF the river became
exposed to the bllstering sun
and, make no mistake about that,
1t was blistering.
For miles along here the sides
and floor of the river baked so
hard they carcked and looked
like millions of warped, mud
pancakes.
Some places out in the country
the earth baked and warped right
open in cracks, 80 to 100 feet
long and from 10 to Is feet deep
and stayed that way for weeks
When, at last, rain came. in
early October, it came in a deluge
but. actually. the earth was SO
dry, and absorbed the rain SO
fast, that 10 days passed before
food developed.
along with other factors the
drought contributed to hinder our
work here very materially. I was
sufficiently interested to go to
some plains to find out if there
had ever been anything like this
before in this part of Europe. And.
apparently, there never has been
At least no one can remember
any such thing in their lifetime "
Worst Since 1888.
That last comment of Mr..
Brooks stuck in my mind. Par
ticularly did I recall it three weeks
later, when standing atop the high
hill to the south of Belgrade, the
whole country, north, east and
west. seemed awash.
The researcher has to go back
1853 years to find, in Europe, a
parallel to what is happening now.
In the summer of 1888 all Cen
trail Europe was blighted by
drought. Then, in late September,
q tremendous wind, rain and hail
storm swept France and parts of
Austria.
Whatever the peasants hoped to
save from the drought was leveled
and drowned out by the hail and
rain.
In the misery, famine, financial
ruin and despair of the winter of
1913 historians find some of the
causes of the French Revolution
and all it's frenzied fury which
burst on the world the following
summer.
The lounge at the local hotel
was the nightly gathering place of
executives. engineers and techni-
clans of the foreign construction
companies building the big plants.
One evening I asked a group of
them to tell me how the drought
and famine are effecting their
operations.
Hunger is destroying the
energy of the workers." said one.
THE work done each day, now, by
600 men, under famine condi-
tions is about equal to what might
be expected of 200 men under
normal conditions.
THE company I'm with" said
another, spends $500 a month
importing food for it's executives
here. There are three foremen in
key positions vital to our opera
tons. All are Yugoslavs. We use
our imported foods-canned fruit
juices, cheese, ham, sausage and
the like-to bolster their regular
ration or they would be of no use
to us at all, from lack of energy
because of long-continued hun
ger"
Ends With Tragic Death.
Over at our job" a third re-
lated, "a man fell into a pit the
other day, and was killed. When
we got the body out he was moth
ing but skin and bones. The thigh
of his leg was about the size of
your wrist. That could only be
the result, for a man of his big
build, of continuous hunger for
months. How can they get any
results at their work when they're
all like that?"
I believed him, for three days
before we had stopped outside G
farmhouse near Knin pronounced
"kin-neen') to ask about condi-
tons there. A small Grove
gathered
Among them was a man-ap-
parently a farm worker of some
kind-Whose right pant leg hae
q two-foot rent. His bare leg from
the knee up was visible. The thigh
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