-2-
 
winter. Typhus, typhoid, dysentery, venereal disease, and, above all, tuberculosis, are making
rapid encroachments on the population's health, both civilian and military. These diseases are
particularly serious because they are superimposed on a two-and-a-half-year period of maln.
utrition and undernutrition.
 
              The total tonnage of supplies necessary to relieve at least the most critical of these
shortages is small, as these shortages are mostly in lightweight and compact articles. Vital needs
probably could be met by a relatively small step-up of the program now in progress of supply
from the air.
 
               III.     POLITICAL INTELLIGENCE
 
              The Partisans appear to control about two-thirds of the area of the country. This area is
now governed by means of, elected village committees which are responsible to elected regional
committees, which sre in turn responsible to the elected National Committee of Liberation. Tito
states (and all the Partisans whose opinions were consulted seem to agree) that the future political
policy of the country will be along democratic lines; that major issues will be settled by post-war
plebiscites; and that the basic administrative framework will be a constitutional form of
democratic government. Tito states that when the Germans have withdrawn from Jugoslavia the
Partisans will, by popular support, be the controlling factor in the entire country. He claims
further that they are already that, except in parts of Serbia and Macedonia.
He says that it is neither unlikely nor undesirable that during or after the war one central
democratic government will be adopted by the Partisan movemerit in Jugoslavia, Albania, Greece,
Bulgaria, and possibly even Rumania. Tito is now and has for some time been in touch with the
Partisan movements in these countries. He seems to see himself today as the de facto head of
sixteen million Jugoslavs, and tomorrow as the de jure head of some thirty or forty million
Balkans.
 
              Tito realizes that diplomatic conditions may prevent, for some time, the political
recognition of his provlztonal goverrmnent as the true government of the Jugoslav people. There
seems to be no doubt in his mind, however, theft such political recognition will 1ogically and
inevitably be forthcoming. Meanwhile, one of his principal political objectives is to establish with
the ican Govermment a diplomatic channel of communication which will enable him to exchange
meesages informally with the President of the United States in nuch the same way as he now does
with the British Prime Minister through Brigadier MacLean, and with Marshal Stalin through Lt.
General Korneef.
 
                IV. PSYCHOLOGICAL INTELLIGENCE
 
The United States, evidently, does not figure importantly in the
consciousness of the Partisans. They do not seem to believe that the United States has furnished
them with ,asistance of any sort. Nor--with the exception of Tito and a few of his staff officerse
--do they seem to expect much future help from the United States. The Russians appear to be held
first in their esteem, and the British, at least for the monent, as the prime source of material
support.