Politika
- Give Us a Man
Politika's editorial "Give Us a Man" opened with a wartime parable rather than with Belgrade politics. It recalled how the British armies in France, supplied directly from home, had been put in mortal danger by inadequate railway lines, and how England, a nation that learns from its own mistakes, searched among its people for the most capable person equal to the crisis. England found him in Geddes, whom the paper described as a director of the "North-Western railways." The same page also carried a cartoon of Prime Minister Nikola Uzunović, whose government was then reshuffling ministers.
This edition translates only the opening paragraph of the editorial "Дајте нам човека", transcribed from the page image because the OCR was unreliable. Text cut at column edges was not reconstructed. The Uzunović cartoon on the same page is not translated: the start of its heading and most of its caption are cut off or blurred. The selected passage contains no railway budget or deficit figures, and no fetched source covered the 1926–1928 Transport Ministry budgets, so that question is not addressed here.
Translation
Give Us a Man
When, during the war, the great English armies on the French front, fed and supplied directly from England, were in mortal danger for want of enough strong railway lines, England — which never loses heart, and which, even when it errs, uses its errors as a lesson and a spur to hasten toward its chosen goal with new and still greater energy — that England sought among its people the most capable of the capable, a man equal to the danger and stronger than it. And it found him. That man was Geddes, one of the directors of the North-Western railways.
Context
What Geddes actually did on the Western Front in 1916
Politika's parable rests on a real episode, though the editorial tells it as a nation's search for "the most capable of the capable." In August 1916 David Lloyd George, then Minister of War, persuaded Sir Douglas Haig to invite Geddes and a three-man team to France for two days to advise on transportation. Haig was so impressed that the visit was extended, and Geddes was appointed Director General of Military Railways and Inspector-General of Transportation with the rank of major general. His team got the ports and railways working efficiently and built light railways to carry materials to the front. The independent record therefore shows a man brought in through ministerial patronage and a commander's invitation, not an open national talent search. The paper's description of him as a director of the "North-Western railways" is also inexact. Geddes had joined the North Eastern Railway in 1904 and rose to deputy general manager in 1911.
Why a British railwayman became a model for choosing ministers
Geddes was one of the businessmen drafted into wartime government for their managerial record. Lloyd George, as Minister of Munitions, brought him into government service as one of the "men of push and go"; in 1915 Geddes was made deputy director general of munitions supply and left the North Eastern Railway. After the war, in May 1919, he became Britain's first Minister of Transport. For a Belgrade editorialist in 1926, Geddes thus stood for a minister picked because he had proved he could run large organisations. The headline "Give Us a Man" and the phrase about a man "equal to the danger and stronger than it" show that Politika wanted that standard applied at home. The opening paragraph names no Yugoslav office or politician, but its subject, railway supply under strain, points toward the transport portfolio and the state railways it controlled.
Who held the transport portfolio in October 1926
When the editorial appeared, the Minister of Transport was Vasilije Jovanović. Nikola Uzunović's first cabinet lasted from 8 to 15 April 1926; in it Krsta Miletić held the transport ministry until 13 April, after which Jovanović took over. Jovanović kept the post in Uzunović's second cabinet, which governed from 15 April to 24 December 1926. When Nikola Nikić left the Ministry of Forests and Mines on 7 October 1926, less than three weeks before this issue, Jovanović was also made acting minister of that department. So at the moment Politika demanded "a man" equal to a railway crisis, the transport minister was also covering a second ministry in an acting capacity.
The unstable Uzunović cabinets of 1926
The demand for a capable minister came amid repeated cabinet turnover. Nikola Pašić, facing corruption scandals, was forced to resign in April 1926, and Uzunović became prime minister on 8 April. He faced internal conflict within his own Radical Party, and a succession of short-term governments came and went under him. His first cabinet lasted one week, the shortest term of any Yugoslav government, and his second, in office when this issue appeared, ended on 24 December 1926. Uzunović's premiership ended on 17 April 1927, when he was replaced by Velimir Vukićević of the same party. The Uzunović cartoon printed on the same page belongs to this setting of constant reshuffles, which made the choice of individual ministers a live political question.
Original
Дајте нам човека
Када су за време рата велике енглеске армије на француском фронту, хра њене и снабдеване биле непосредно из Енглеске, са немања довољно и снажних железничких линија, у животној опасности, Енглеска, која никада не клоне већ и када греши грешке јој служе за наук и подстрек да са новом и још већом енергијом хита одређеној мети - та Енглеска потражила је међу својим људима најспособнијега међу способнима, дораслог опасности и јачег од ње. И нашла га је. Тај човек био је Цедес, један од директора северозападних железница.