The Natives' Return

At a Montreal pier last week lay the 6,100-ton Radnik, a former U.S. troopship now owned by the Yugoslav Government. Her holds were being filled with Canadian machinery, including $330,000 worth of mining equipment, $182,000 worth of diesel engines and fishing gear. Her human cargo was waiting in tourist camps at suburban La Salle. They were 500 Yugoslavs who have had enough of Canada and want to return to their native land. Of an estimated 21,000 Yugoslavs in the Dominion, about 1,500 have signed up to go home.

A year ago the Yugoslav charge d'affaires told the Department of External Affairs that many of his countrymen in Canada wanted to go back to Yugoslavia as soon as shipping became available. An advance guard of four Yugoslav-Canadians went to the mother country to make arrangements. Two returned: Steve Serdar and Nick Kombol, both known Communists. They set about drumming up recruits for repatriation, working through the Communist-dominated Council of Canadian South Slavs.

The Yugoslavs waiting to board the Radnik are from Vancouver, Windsor, Toronto, Port Colborne, Brantford and London. Many are men who left their families behind them in Yugoslavia before the war. Others are oldsters pining for their native land. Most came to Canada as adults; they have had difficulty learning English, continue to feel like strangers. Some are politically conscious Communists. Many are not. But none of the emigrants believes that Tito's regime can be more tyrannical than the Karageorgevitch dynasty whose oppression they fled.

Building Materials. In the rebuilding of their homeland, the returning Yugoslavs have much to contribute. In Canada they have learned new skills. They are taking with them machines to employ these skills, have already subscribed $1,119,000 for equipment. Each permanent emigrant can also take out his personal possessions plus cash up to $25,000. For a year abroad, $4,900 cash is allowed.

Many of the homebound Yugoslavs are traveling on Canadian passports. Most of their applications said that they would be away for six months to a year--a device to help them get back if they do not like it under Tito. But these passports worry Canadians, for some might be used for re-entry by the rightful holders, after being indoctrinated in Yugoslavia in Communist spy techniques. Others might be picked up by Tito's OZNA and used to gain illegal entry into Canada for other agents of the Kremlin. Canada will have to be on the alert for years to come.

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