V.M.R.O.

EXPRESS TO THE EAST--A. den Doolard --Smith & Haas ($2.50). In the maze of intrigue and assassination known as Balkan politics, the activities of the Vetrechnata Makedonska Revoliutsionna Organizatsia have given rise to strange legends. Originally a conspiratorial group seeking independence for Macedonia, V. M. R. O. organized uprisings against the Turks, bombed trains, spread a net of terror that reached into most European countries. Last spring the known history of V. M. R. 0. was recounted by Stoyan Christowe in Heroes and Assassins, Last week U. S. readers were offered a translation of a remarkable Dutch novel in which the emotional aspects of life within the organization were more vividly and completely set forth. A melodramatic, yet mellow and human book, Express to the East presents a tragic picture of modern flesh & blood conspirators whose intense lives are sacrificed for the cause they have made their own. The author of Express to the East is almost as mysterious as the organization of which he writes. Den Doolard, which means The Wanderer, is the pseudonym of C. Spoelstra, 34-year-old Dutch novelist, adventurer, roving editor of an outdoor-sports magazine, now traveling in the Near East. Although his novels are popular in Holland, they have not won the endorsement of intellectual bigwigs, who created a sensation when they refused to award him the Dutch equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize. In a brief introduction to Express to the East, den Doolard mentions his months of wandering through Macedonia, "sometimes thirsty and penniless and dirty, sometimes drinking iced plum brandy in the luxurious restaurant wagon of the Orient Express," hints that he has taken part in the activity of the organization he describes. Noting his detailed account of conspiratorial methods, it is a likely conclusion that den Doolard did not get his knowledge of them exclusively from books. The story revolves around Milja Drangov, slender, striking, brown-eyed daughter of a famed leader of the movement for Macedonian independence. Her father was killed in a futile uprising against the Turks soon after her birth. With her mother, she was swept over the border in the tide of refugees, eventually adopted by a Serbian family, educated, became a village schoolteacher. A member of V. M. R. 0., disguised as a sewing machine salesman, made her a member of the organization, returned her to her birthplace. In a round-up of Macedonian peasants by Serbian police, she was beaten, saved from worse tortures only because the commander wanted her for himself. Released by the commander's son, she joined Macedonian raiders who operated over the Bulgarian border, found herself with Todor Alexandrov, most famed and mysterious of Macedonian terrorists. During a wild, cross-country flight, in a lull between battles, he became her lover. She lived in Sofia in a house that was always guarded, was trained to carry messages whose meaning she did not know, traveled as a lady of fashion on the Orient Express, lived the queer, nerve-wracking life of a professional conspirator. Slowly she came to understand that a deep sense of futility was destroying the organization, embittering her lover's life. Despite all the self-sacrifice and passion of individual members, V. M. R. 0. was degenerating into a tool of the great powers, who employed it to harass rivals, reduced it to the level of hired gunmen. When Milja persuaded Todor to give the organization the purpose it had previously possessed he was assassinated by enemies in his own ranks. Indifferent to her own fate, emotionally exhausted, Milja lived in Paris, saw her onetime comrades destroy one another in fights for spoils. To get her to run one last secret errand, V. M. R. 0. offered the only bribe that could attract her--the name of the man who had killed her lover. But the betrayals had become too intricate; the man named was not Todor's murderer but merely another victim of the ruling clique. Milja abandoned her errand, deceived the chiefs, was blown up in the Orient Express as it thundered past her birthplace.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.