Inside and Outside Greece
The first meetings of the United Nations investigating commission in Athens suggest that the guerilla war has been carried from the northern frontier into the council chamber itself. The Yugoslav and Bulgarian liaison officers lost no time in stating that Greece's troubles were purely due to internal political strife, and the Greek spokesman was equally emphatic that the subject under investigation was Greece's relations with her neighbours. The members of the commission will no doubt form their own opinion on these matters, and the American and French representatives have already made it clear that the commission will determine for itself where it will pursue its investigations, thus disposing of an artless Albanian suggestion that it should stay inside Greece. No doubt the assertion of the right to go• anywhere will command , Russian assent, since the prestige of the Security Council is involved. Whether the exercise of the right will command a similar assent remains the crux of the matter, for there is little hope of isolating and dealing with the real problems if the members.of the commission take sides. In view of the earlier demonstrations of Russian solidarity with her Balkan associates, that matter must not be Pre-judged. The fact that Greece is the one Balkan State which has not undergone a fundamental revolution, has undoubtedly produced a formidable 'pressure on her frontiers. Nevertheless that pressure will settle nothing. The Greeks must settle their own internal political prob- lems. What they cannot settle for themselves is the problem of external interference. It is the business of the commission to investi- gate and define that problem, and it must not be interrupted in that work by the forces of propaganda which the other interested parties are bringing to bear. It has recently been decided to reduce still further the number of British troops in Greece. That ought to help to reduce correspondingly the circulation of reports of British interference. But nothing but a strong and popular Greek Govern- ment can give Greece any real hope of a quiet life, and even then it is within the power of ill-disposed neighbours to kill that hope.
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