The Marshal's Pressagent

When Colonel Blimp opened one of his favorite papers one day last week--the Tory Evening Standard--he got an eye-bugging jolt. Gad, sir, the Standard seemed to have an odd new contributor: hell-raising Laborite Aneurin Bevan, who once called the Conservative press "the most prostituted in the world."

Bevan, with his wife, Labor Amazon Jennie Lee, and a troupe of other left-wingers, spent the summer in Yugoslavia, the new promised land of leftists who are no longer pro-Russian but are still pro-Marxist. Reporter Bevan, eager and ecstatic, told the Standard's readers about Tito's charm and the wonders of his regime : "The Yugoslavs are . . . good-looking people . . . proud . . . courageous [and] Prime Minister Josip Broz Tito is in all those respects representative."

Adriatic Frolic. Bevan and his wife found "no fake austerity" during a two-day visit at Tito's summer home on the Adriatic island of Brioni, but found no opulence either. "It had the flavor of a partisan company headquarters." Hero-Worshiper Bevan sketched a picture of Tito and his comrades of World War II days who are now government officials, sitting on the island in bunkhouse familiarity swapping crackerbarrel jokes and war memories. Bevan pooh-poohed the idea that Tito, approaching 60 and recovering from an abdominal operation, was past his prime. "His tanned, compact figure might have been that of a man twenty years younger."

Continued Bevan: "I am the world's worst swimmer [but] Tito is expert. When we went bathing together, Tito, my wife and Tiger, the magnificent German police dog that goes everywhere with him, the three of them enjoyed my discomfiture . . . The Marshal promised if I stayed a little longer he would soon teach me to be as good a swimmer as he is himself."

After frolicking in the Adriatic, they discussed the state of the world. Tito does not think Russia aims at a general war but she might "fall into it." He is in favor of Western rearmament (Bevan is not). Most disturbing question to Reporter Bevan: Can Tito maintain his dictatorial hold on the touchy Yugoslav peasants?* Bevan admitted that the forced seizure by the government of the peasants' pigs and grain was condemned in the Western world. "But," he added defensively, "it is difficult to see how the Yugoslav government could do otherwise."

The Man He Wants to Be? Many British readers were outraged by the fact that (as one put it) "the unspeakable, anti-British, anti-empire and pro-Communist Bevan" should be allowed to publicize himself and "his Moscow-trained Communist dictator friend Tito" in a "decent . . . newspaper." The Standard, owned by Sevan's personal friend and political enemy Lord Beaverbrook, replied that Mr. Sevan's report had been printed "because it is news."

Commented the Daily Express, another Beaverbrook paper: the Bevan articles give "an extraordinary insight into the character and aims of this man who hopes one day to become Prime Minister of Britain . . . In describing Tito, Mr. Bevan is describing the sort of man that he himself would like to be . . . the political powers which he himself would like to have in this country."

* This week, for the third time in seven weeks, Tito received a warning from a top-level Stalin henchman--Deputy War Minister Vasily Sokolovsky--that the Yugoslav people would overthrow him.

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