Where Democracy Was Born

When their relatives die, the Greeks no longer bury them in cemeteries. The cemeteries are full now. Instead the bodies are placed unmarked in garden plots. By avoiding mortuary declarations, the living can keep and use the dead's ration cards.

Tuberculosis brought on by undernourishment is now rampant in Greece. Meat, fish, potatoes and cheese are unobtainable. The present bread ration is five ounces per week.

In the Aegean islands 300,000 people forestall starvation by eating herbs, while Nazi objections to Red Cross shipments of Canadian wheat in Swedish ships are resolved. Thousands of islanders, their skin hanging in folds about their hunger-dulled eyes, have fled to Turkey in small boats. "Trying to halt them," said the mayor of Chios, "is like trying to drive clouds against a strong wind."

Tragic as were these stories told last week by escaping Greek refugees, there was still another story:

When British planes arrive over Greece to bomb Nazi submarine bases, there are still hundreds of Greeks who go to the rooftops. There they cheer and sing--and spit down at the despised Italian carabinieri who shoot up at them. On March 25, Greek Independence Day, the tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Athens was piled high with flowers during the night.

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