SIR,—With reference to Brigadier Parker's letter in your issue of
November 25: 1. I made, and make, no assumption of negligence in the British Administration of Cyprus. My words were that it has not been above reproach: a very different thing, and one which may be explained, as I did explain it, by the accidents of history whereby the island came under British rule, and its recently increased importance to the strategic situation in the Middle East.
2. It was precisely Colonial Service officials from whom my information did come, and from native Cypriots as opposed to 'residents of long standing,' by which I suppose Brigadier Parker means the British Colony at Kyrenia. If so I plead guilty, for I found little worth listening to in the moaning at the bar of the Dome Hotel.
3. Of course progress has been made in public works as is shown in the official pub- lications and statistics. My point is that it has not been enough and that much remains to be done.
4. Unlike Brigadier Parker, I am not con- tent to take as the standard for British territory those of the adjacent countries of Syria, Iraq, Egypt or even, if it comes to that, Greece.
5. I do not hold it to be true 'that the Greek Cypriot is not interested in comparisons of material prosperity.' Why else, in the first eight months of this year, did some 2,800 Cypriots emigrate to the United Kingdom and none to 'Mother Greece'? Would the Cypriots not rather be in the sterling area than in the drachma bloc?
6. I agree that the Greek Cypriot says 'I am Greek and wish to be united to my mother country,' but he says this under the threat of excommunication, which to him is a very real disaster, and under the menace of violence from EOKA. I do not believe it to be a genuine free expression of opinion.
7. Brigadier Parker shows a curious lack of knowledge of the hierarchical matters of the Orthodox Church for one of forty years' resi- dence in the Middle East. If enosis were to become an accomplished fact this would have no effect whatever on the autocephaly of the Church of Cyprus which indeed attained that state 1,400 years before Athens. It is temporal power that Archbishop Makarios wishes to retain and increase. Under enosis he might (for he is yet a young man) aspire to the leader- ship of Greece and become, as.did Archbishop Damaskinos, a world figure.
Since I wrote my article for the Spectator I am delighted to see that the Govermhent and Sir John Harding have borne out nWch of what I tentatively put forward as being part of the solution to the Cyprus problem by the announcement of a £38,000,000 programme of development. Does Brigadier Parker think this superfluous and wasteful? Is Sir John Harding to defer to forty years' experience which has led us to the present impasse?—Yours faithfully,
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