Yugoslavia, a dictatorship as absolute as Stalinist Russia or Franco Spain, needs economic help badly. All summer the sun has baked its rich black earth uninterruptedly to produce the worst famine in generations. Many peasants have not even bothered to harvest their dismal crops despite compulsory delivery quotas ordered by the government. They have slaughtered livestock for want of feed.

This famine endangers the Tito regime so that the Marshal will have to import $50,000,000 in foodstuffs if he is to avoid mass starvation in Yugoslavia. He will be forced to cancel a large grain export program with which he hoped to earn money for the purchase of machinery. Discontent is already growing on the countryside; only two weeks ago starving peasants in the village of Selo burned local government headquarters. Similar outbreaks may convince Russia that the time is ripe to bring Yugoslavia back into the Cominform fold by getting rid of Tito and the Titoists.

In order to avoid hunger and unrest this winter, Tito has asked the United States for assistance. In fact he said in a speech to a Yuogslav Women's Congress Sunday that this country was already giving aid to Yugoslavia "favorable consideration."

Tito's plea for help deserves not only favorable consideration but action as soon as possible in the form of sending either funds to buy food or the foodstuffs themselves. Although Titoist Yugoslavia is a Communist dictatorship of the most unsavory sort, Yugoslavia is also a diplomatic oddity well worth preserving. She is a Communist nation that has escaped the Russian orbit. As such she may sway other Communist nations, such as China, to the view that there is a third relationship with Western nations besides clearcut alliance or clearcut opposition.

Nor should the United States ignore the military value of Yugoslavia friendship. Tito has 33 to 35 highly trained, armed divisions under arms and close to a million trained reserves. It would be poor diplomacy to risk the collapse of a regime, no matter how distasteful, if such a collapse meant these armed forces would be under Russian control.