Compton Mackenzie

WHEN in 1863 the news of the intended cession to Greece of the Ionian Islands was received in Corfu a deputation of citizens proceeded to the house of the Lord High Commissioner with an address, which stated : "Corfu is touched to the heart. . . . The reunion of the seven islands to the Kingdom of Greece . . . is an act of Divine Providence and diplomacy cannot but bow to it. But . . . the people cannot abstain from expressing their gratitude to the English nation, who from a love of liberty, have interested themselves in our holy cause. . .

Disraeli had used all his oleaginous eloquence in -Parliament to oppose the "gift of these islands to Greece" on account of the "mischievous influence" it would have and the temptation It would offer to Greece "to make aggressions upon the Turkish power and thus disturb the peace of the world." However, Palmerston had been firm, and the Liberal Govern- ment accomplished an act of statesmanship and political morality.

The inhabitants of the Ionian Islands had been agitating for union with Greece ever since the War of Independence and they had bitterly resented the compulsory neutrality inflicted upon them by the British protectorate.

The chief argument used against the cession of the islands to Greece was their strategic importance in the event of war with Prussia. The chief argument for holding on to Cyprus today is its strategic importance in the event of war with the Soviet Union.

In that very year of 1863 a Cambridge professor wrote a book about the Ionian Islands in which he viewed the prospect of their union with Greece with misgiving.

And of course, like the apologists for the present denial of liberty to Cyprus, he discovered it was "not true that the majority of people dislike, distrust or object to the Govern- ment of England," although he admits that it is not always popular because "an Englishman abroad has the.art of seeming. supercilious, and his reserve is taken for pride."

In fact, for twenty-five years before union with Greece was granted to the Ionian Islands there had been almost continuous agitation culminating once or twice in riots which were suppressed by the garrison.

In 1878 Disraeli, by now Lord Beaconsfield, made up for his failure to prevent the cession of the Ionian Islands to Greece by securing a protectorate over Cyprus at the Congress of Berlin in exchange for a guarantee to come to the help of Turkey in Asia in the event of aggression. His treatment of Greek claims at the Congress was resented by many Liberal politicians. Mr. Fawcett described his language concerning, Greece in the House of Lords as " contemptuous insolence" and declared that the Greeks. "relying on the promises of a great and magnanimous people, have been grossly and basely deceived." Mr Gladstone denounced the covenant to defend Asia Minor as " insane " and the manner in which it had been "reserved from the Powers" as an act of "duplicity, not surpassed, and rarely equalled in the history of nations."

Lord Derby, who had resigned as Foreign Minister three months earlier, took an opportunity to explain in the House of Lords that he had resigned from the Cabinet because he considered a proposal then before it to occupy Cyprus was fraught with menace to the peace of Europe. Lord Salisbury in replying for the Government compared Lord Derby to Titus Oates, which the shocked Spectator of that week declared to be one of the most elaborate and direct insults that had been launched by any orator of our time at the head of his opponent.

The London crowd cheered Beaconsfield when he told them, from his window in Downing Street that he had brought bacli from Berlin peace with honour: exactly sixty years later their grandsons and granddaughters would cheer Neville Chamber' lain at another window for bringing back from Germany peace in our time.

Whether the British have administered Cyprus well since Disraeli's act of dubious statesmanship has nothing to do with the unanimous demand of the Greek population for union with Greece. After the magnificent example to the world which Britain gave over India and Pakistan she cannot afford morallY to have the case of Cyprus brought before the United Nations. If Sir Winston Churchill will do what Lord Palmerston did in 1863 over the Ionian Islands he will add even yet another leaf to that bushy crown of laurels he already wears.

The policy pursued for so many years of helping Turkey at the expense of Greece, did not prevent Turkey from turning on us in 1914. Cyprus was annexed and in October, 1915, S4 Edward Grey offered the island to Greece if Greece would go to the help of Serbia. That offer was formally declined by, the Greek Government.

After the First World War Lloyd George's plans for a strong Greece were thwarted by the minikin Disraelis who directed Tory policy, but before he was ousted from power the Venizelos-Tittoni agreement of July, 1919, had been reached. By this eleven islands of the Dodecanese were to be transferred immediately to Greece and if after fifteen years Great Britain should have Ceded Cyprus to Greece Italy was to grant a plebiscite for the population of Rhodes to decide whether it wished to be Greek or Italian. Nitti's Liberal Government fell soon after. The conspiracy between France, Italy, and Mustafa Kemal led to the catastrophe of 1922; the fragments of the Venizelos-Tittoni agreement were flung into the flame!, of Smyrna.

It might have been supposed by the least optimistic philhellene that the glorious behaviour of Greece in the Second World War would have earned enough gratitude from Great Britain to cede Cyprus, but, alas, the passionate demand for union of over 400,000 Cypriote Greeks has been ignored. Every sort of excuse is put forward—the prosperity of the island under British adminstration, the need to protect the Moslem minority of some 60,000, the strategic importance of Cyprus now growing more important with the prospect of evacuating the Canal Zone, and those innumerable minor excuses with which any officialdom threatened with displacement is always glib.

I do not propose to fatigue readers with the niceties of bureaucratic and constitutional reforms, and if I seem to make a purely emotional appeal for the people of Cyprus I must reply that the desire for the enosis or union with Greece is ruled by the emotion of patriotism and not by material advantage.

Greece -turned her back on material advantage when she refused Hitler's offer of a truce on the terms that Greece should retain all territories in Northern Epirus occupied during the campaign against Italy, and this offer was refused because it would have meant deserting Britain at a moment when Britain with only Greece beside her was facing the darkest hour in her history.

The cession of Cyprus could be accomplished with a lease of bases with guarantees for the Turkish minority, and with safeguards for true democratic government in Greece itself.