War Without End

The most hushed-up campaign of World War II is the war in the steep barren mountains of Serbia that the Axis has not, after more than six months, been able to end. Some of last week's unconfirmed reports on this war:

> There are two Yugoslav "armies" in the field, numbering between 80,000 and 100,000 men. One, largely composed of Regular Army units, which never surrendered, is fighting in eastern Serbia near the border of Bulgaria. The other is operating on the borders of Bosnia in western Serbia. From Bosnia fully 1,000,000 Serbs have been driven by Dr. Ante Pavelitch's squads of terrorists, the Ustaschi. Most of the men refugees have joined the Chetniks in the hills.

> The Armies maintain communication through dozens of portable radio stations. Well enough off for food, they badly need clothes, arms, ammunition. The Yugoslavs have five airfields behind their lines, hope the British will be able to fly in some supplies from the Middle East.

> A professional soldier and a former Belgrade lawyer are the leaders of the Yugoslav forces. The soldier is Colonel Drazha Mihailovitch, a lean, pince-nezed man of 47 who in World War I captured an enemy battery of heavy artillery with a single machine gun. Dragisha Vasitch, the lawyer, was an Army reserve officer, but was better known as a writer and the founder of the Serbian Cultural Club.

> An extraordinary meeting in the mountains took place "somewhere southwest of Belgrade" early in October, when the Serbs were holding 650 German hostages. The Serbs had warned the Nazi authorities in Belgrade that the hostages would be killed unless the mass executions of Serbian patriots was stopped. To the rendezvous went two German officers and Yugoslavia's No. 2 Quisling, General Djura Dokitch. Meeting with Colonel Mihailovitch, they asked him to name his peace terms. But Mihailovitch and his army wanted no German peace. After a two-hour talk, he gave his final word. The Chetniks would fight to the end.

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