NEWS OF THE WEEK
/4 ITTLE by little the truth is beginning to get disentangled about the situation in Greece, though it is evident that even Sir Walter Citrine and his T.U.C. colleagues who are on the spot find it no easy task to unravel the skein. Happily, most of the Army and R.A.F. men who had been prisoners have returned to the Piraeus, and many of the hostages have been released. There is no doubt now about the appalling atrocities against civilian hostages and the cruelty of the treatment of prisoners. The White Paper issued on Wednesday tells a hideous and completely authenticated story of the brutalities for which E.L.A.S. forces have been responsible—British citizens as well as Greeks being among the victims. None the less, the Regent is still pursuing his efforts to arrange a peace conference with the E.L.A.S. leaders in Athens, and the meeting, once delayed, is now likely to take place. The hard core of E.L.A.S. in whom the resistance to an agreed Government has centred is Communist or under Communist influence, and it is with it primarily that agreement, if agreement is possible, must be made. In the meantime, the T.U.C. leaders, who have gone out to examine not political but trade union questions, have moved about freely and have actually visited E.L.A.S. at their headquarters, and have succeeded in inducing the rival claim- ants to leadership of the trade union movement to meet in Athens, and even to agree concerning the methods of electing leaders, but not about the date of holding the elections. One of the difficulties they have encountered is that the industrial problems of labour have
proved to be almost inseparable from the political issue. The trade unionists of the E.L.A.S. persuasion are most anxious to post- pone the elections, and it is not unnatural to conclude that neither
they nor the political leaders of E.L.A.S. believe that they have much to hope from a free ballot. Sir Walter Citrine reports wide- spread support for the view that the British Government could not throw its responsibility overboard. Events are proving abundantly that Mr. Churchill's policy has been right from first to last.
