MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
MR. JOHN SOFIANOPOULOS, who is now on a visit to London, is an interesting man. I first met him twenty-seven years ago when he was on the staff of Venizelos at the Paris Peace Conference. Since that date he has been three dines imprisoned and three times Minister for Foreign Affairs. He was the negotiator and signatory of the Varkiza agreement, which put an end to the civil war of 5944 ; he thereafter resigned on the ground that the Government had not carried out their pledges under that agree- ment. It was stipulated at Varkiza that if ELAS would lay down their arms and disperse to their own homes, the Government would guarantee the restitution of civil liberties. There has been no such restitution. At this moment there are some r2,000 political prisoners awaiting trial. The actual number of those now imprisoned varies according to the political sympathies of those who produce the statistics ; one thing alone is certain, namely that many thousand men are still in prison almost two years after the Varkiza agree- ment. The excuse given by the Greek Government is that many of these are held for offences under the criminal code, and that with the existing shortage of magistrates and judges it will take some time to separate the sheep from the goats. That is not a tenable argument. A Government which delays justice to so extreme an extent cannot claim to be either liberal or properly organised. Nor is this all. The British Government stood as guarantors of the Varkiza agreement. A breach of that agreement, either on one side or the other, affects our own credit and good name. It is true that again and again, both officially and unofficially, we have urged a general amnesty. All that we have obtained in these two years is the release of about a third of those originally rounded up. That is not good enough.
* * * * Greece is now in the grips of something very like a second civil war. Guerrilla forces, composed of what we used to call " partisans " and now call " bandits," are operating in the area between the Pindus and Mount Olympus and threaten to sever the land communications between Salonika and Athens. I am prepared to believe, especially after reading Mr. Patmore's article in The Spectator of November 29th, that the majority of these forces have been equipped and trained in Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Albania. I regard as credible, and indeed probable, the assertion that groups of ELAS fugitives have been organised in camps such as that of Boulkes near Belgrade and that of Koritza in Epirus. It may be true also that at Skoplye there exists another training-camp in which the Slays of Greek Macedonia are organised by the N.O.F. of Macedonian autonomists. There are certainly some 75,000 Slays in northern Greece who would welcome the creation of an autonomous Macedonia within the South Slav Union. It may be even that certain Greek Com- munists sympathise with this movement. All this is highly dangerous and probably true. Yet the disturbances have not been confined to the northern provinces alone. There have been risings in the area of Sparta and even in Mitylene. Even if one discounts the congenital Greek tendency to " take to the mountains," it is impossible to dismiss these risings as mere sporadic brigandage, fostered from across the frontier. There can be little doubt, more- over, that the officers and non-commissioned officers of the army and gendarmerie, to say nothing of the civil servants, are to a very large extent chosen for their right-wing sympathies or their left-wing antipathies. At Varkiza it was stipulated that there would be a purge of all collaborationists and all Fascists ; that, I admit, is a stipulation which can all too easily be abused ; but the fact remains that the real purge which has taken place is that of those who were suspected of having EAM sympathies.
* * * * The reaction of the ordinary British citizen to these distressing events is a longing to be quit of the whole business. In practice, we cannot honourably disengage our responsibility. I am not criticising the action we took in 1944 ; there was no possible alter- native to that action. But we must face the fact that we intervened by force in the internal affairs of Greece ; that but for that inter-
vention EAM would have made themselves masters of the capital and the Piraeus ; and that by organising the Varkiza discussions and underwriting the Varkiza agreement we assumed responsibility for the execution of the peace which had been reached. It may, to our minds, have been an irresponsible and even unpatriotic action on the part of the centre and left-wing parties to boycott the elec- tions of March 31st ; but the fact remains that the Chamber then elected is not representative of the Greek people. This appears to me the central point in the whole argument. It is contended, by those who seek to justify the continued presence of our troops in Greece, that they are there only to " maintain order " and that it is for the Greeks to govern themselves. But order is not being maintained ; and the Greeks are not governing themselves. It may be also that the British Government were justified in refusing to create in Greece " a second Egypt " and that they were right not to establish a veiled protectorate with advisers in the several Athens ministries. Yet we are behaving like ostriches if we imagine that any Greek or any foreigner does not take it for granted that we remain in Greece for strategic reasons, and that we are supporting the present regime by force of arms. I know that such is not our intention. But the result of our dual policy is that we incur all the odium of intervention while refusing to take such measures as alone might render our intervention justifiable.
* * * * We thus find ourselves in another false position. The letters of condolence which we address to the Bulgarian or Rumanian democrats are dripping with crocodile tears. Our attitude seems to identify us with all that is most dangerous in American foreign policy and to alienate us from all that in the United States is soundest and best. And it cannot be said that even in Greece itself we are amassing a large capital of affection and respect. Our pathetic attempt to combine military intervention with political abstention has exposed us to many errors. It was a mistake to withdraw Mr. Harold Macmillan (who had established strong personal influence upon all parties in Greece) before the Varkiza agreement had been executed by both sides and not only by one side. It was a mistake not to exercise pressure when the economic reforms of Mr. Var- varessos were rejected by the Greek Government. The Greeks may be adept at finance and commerce, but in matters of economic planning they are positively children. Mr. Varvaressos was the only man who planned the means by which Greece might regain her economic prosperity. Yet we refrained from giving him support on the ground that it would be wrong to intervene in an internal Greek affair ; and that at a moment when Athens was full of British troops. I am not saying that Mr. Sofianopoulos is another Venizelos, capable of stilling dissension and of leading his country back towards the paths of sanity. He has missed many valuable opportunities and has lost credit by his overtures to almost every group at the same time. But his advice, as coming from a patriotic Greek, without passionate prejudices against either Slav or Briton, is assuredly worth listen:rig to. And I am sure that the authorities have listened.
* * * * What is the nature of that advice? He recommends that we should use our influence to induce the King of the Hellenes to form a coalition Government, in which even those parties should be repre- sented who abstained from voting at the last election. Such a Government would have to grant a general amnesty, to cleanse the administration and the forces of reactionary elements, to prepare new electoral registers, and finally to hold a general election in which all parties would co-operate. It will be said, of course, that any such policy would increase the present chaos. It probably would. What Herodian called " the ancient malady of the Greeks " has always been that of faction, and their inability to unite has always exposed them to the domination of the barbarians of the east or west. It may be also that King George, who is an honourable man surrounded by bad counsellors, would resist any such experiment. That may be so ; but we cannot logically continue, year in and year out, both to iintervene and to abstain
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