THIS paper deals with the region south of the Carpathians, embracing Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Albania, Roumania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Austria; it excludes Greece and Poland. Five essential points are common to the whole area. (1) The internal regimes are characterized by a strong trend to the Left, but they represent neither the Soviet system nor Western democracy; they oscillate somewhere between the two. (2) The foreign policies of these various countries will very probably lean on that of Soviet Russia, for one fundamental reason: Soviet Russia is the only Great Power in a position to give these countries immediate and effective military assistance against aggression. (3) A Regional Bloc seems to be in formation in Central Europe and the Balkans based not on any confederation, but on individual alliances between Soviet Russia and the separate countries. (4) According to all evidence so far, the region will not have a communist system of economy but will adopt certain State control over capital and a number of cooperative activities. It will probably, some time in the future, be organized as one trade unit and will need an outlet to the Mediterranean. (5) In that area, Yugoslavia is at present the strongest single military Power, with the most stable Government, and to a large degree represents to the outside world the common interests of the 60 to 70 million people of the whole region. From the Western point of view, it has often been said that Yugoslavia has a totalitarian regime, or at least that she is not a democracy in our sense, since there is as yet no legal opposition in that country. However, Yugoslavia is not a totalitarian country-nor a Tito-talitarian country either-because the Government is composed of leaders, or at least of representatives, of all the eight pre-war political parties but one. This shows that in our political thinking we still use old cliches which cannot accurately describe certain events on the Continent. Like all the countries of Central Europe and the Balkans, Yugoslavia emerged, after the last war, with the most modern Western democratic institutions, with Parliament, free press and free competition of parties. In 1920 the only free elections in the history of Yugoslavia were held. In these elections the Communist Party obtained the third largest number of seats. In the following year, 1921, the Law of Defence of State banned the Communist Party, whose popular strength has never again been tested by legal means. The Law of Defence of State expanded with the years. It embraced first the Leftists next to the Communists, then the Liberals,