Waugh and Tito

Standpoint magazine in its current issue has reprinted a letter from Milena Borden who is also one of our readers. She was commenting on an article in the magazine’s November issue as explained in her letter. Here is the text of her letter:

Robin Harris’s fine report from Zagreb, ‘Tito’s Crimes Should Never be Forgotten’ (Standpoint, Nov 2017) would have been applauded by Evelyn Waugh. Fifty five years ago almost to the date, in his Sunday Express article ‘Our Guest of Dishonour’ (30 Nov 1952). he asked, ‘Who is the man?’. Waugh argued that ‘Tito was simply his Comintern code-word. Marshal was a rank of the Red Army unknown in Yugoslavia. He had Stalin’s commission and Stalin sent him his marshal’s cap.’

Waugh protested to Anthony Eden’s invitation to Tito to visit London and was against the ‘English Conservative courtship’ of the Yugoslav leader. This was intensified by the split with Stalin in 1948, correctly judged by Harris as a matter of personal ambition rather then principal disagreement. [No doubt Waugh would have also enjoyed hearing more about Tito’s undignified personal life as he jokingly referred to him as a ‘she’ presumably meaning among other things that he was not a real ‘man’. ]

The main agreement he would have had with Harris is the deceptive misconception that Tito was a heroic ‘antifascist’ rather than a communist dictator. Waugh himself wrote an important report about the brutal elimination of Catholic priests by Tito’s partisans. He immortalised the British alliance with Tito in Unconditional Surrender (1961), the third part of his war trilogy Sword of Honour as the ultimate betrayal: ‘He was busy then, as now, in the work for which he has a peculiar aptitude – hoodwinking the British.’

The bracketed text above was deleted from the version reprinted in Standpoint. Waugh’s 1952 Sunday Express article is collected in Essays, Articles and Reviews.  Thanks to Milena for passing this along.