860H.00/1506
Memorandum of Conversation, by the Assistant Secretary of State (Berle)
The Yugoslav Ambassador came in to see me, at his request.
He referred to an official broadcast made to Yugoslavia through the facilities of the Office of War Information. It was reported in a Croatian paper of June 16th. It was an appeal to Croatians to get up and fight against the Axis; it did not mention Yugoslavia; it wound up with the phrase: “Hail to Croatia”. The Ambassador pointed out that in the Croatian translation this read: “Hail to free Croatia”,—“free” having the sense of something close to “independent”.
I asked whether the burden of his complaint was that Yugoslavia was not mentioned. He said he did have that in mind; but he also was worried about the “free Croatia” at the end. He further said that Butkovich had been accused of being pro-Fascist; that he had sued for libel; that the libel case had been dismissed. I observed that that did not mean very much, but I said we would consider the matter.
He then brought up the publicity resulting from Elmer Davis’s59 letter to a Mr. Werleinisch, which accused the Srbobran of misconduct. He produced a newspaper which he said was Communist (and I believe is under Communist influence) which on the basis of Elmer Davis’s letter was campaigning for delegates to the convention of the principal Serb society. These delegates, he insisted, were Communist. The paper campaigned for them on the ground that they were “Roosevelt delegates”.
I said that, as he knew, we had been concerned about the violence of Yugoslav controversies for a long time. These were American newspapers, printed by and for American citizens. The Department had steadily deplored attempts to involve American citizens in controversies based on foreign political disputes; and this new controversy merely indicated why we had not been happy about foreign [Page 1015] influence exerted on Americans of European extraction, and in a foreign language.
Finally, the Ambassador spoke of the bishop of the Serbian orthodox church, and said that Cannon had indicated that they were dissatisfied with his activities. He wondered whether I could give him any facts. I said I did not have any definite instances in mind; but we had been distinctly worried about a Serbian orthodox bishop undertaking to influence Serbian orthodox churches in the United States at the same time that he was assigned to and supported by a foreign government. This was not a healthy situation.
- Director, Office of War Information.↩