Mission to Athens

Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden had planned to spend Christmas at home with their families. Instead, they spent it in Greece trying to end a civil war. The long winter flight from London to Athens held hazards to life & limb. But it was the greater hazard to Britain's power & prestige that spurred Churchill to fly impetuously to Greece.

The situation there had grown almost out of control. The civil war looked as if it would last months, perhaps years. Four weeks of vicious battles between two sides, both of which claimed to serve democracy, had established that: 1) the British might clear Athens but ELAS firmly held the rest of Greece; 2) clearing the rest of Greece would require a major operation for which Britain was neither militarily nor politically prepared. The mounting tide of blood and bitterness must be stemmed. Churchill pocketed his pride, swallowed his scorn at the ELAS "band of brigands," as he had called them in the House of Commons.

This time the British press and public, which now disapprove of any needless "Winnie" junkets, were glad to see him go; his summary summation of the Greek situation had not been in the best British diplomatic tradition. The London Times called the journey "an act of statesmanlike courage," the Labor Daily Herald, "the first constructive move towards a settlement that has come either from the Greeks or the British." If the Prime Minister were indeed backtracking, this would not be the first time in his long career that he had first breathed defiance, then hearkened to the voice of public opinion, and of his own practical conscience.

Cheers, Bullets. The big plane landed in Athens on a chilly Christmas Day. In the streets British troops were blasting and bayoneting ELAS riflemen out of a gasworks. In their homes, Athenians were burning furniture to keep warm. A few Greek civilians recognized and cheered the portly figure in the R.A.F. commodore's uniform as he stepped out of an armored car. Before a pink stucco building Churchill paused, waved and smiled. The fighting continued.

A conference of all parties was called for late next afternoon, with safe conduct for all ELAS delegates. British security officers tore their hair. Their charge--the Empire's No. 1 man--was blithely disdainful of personal precautions. That morning a ton of German dynamite and Italian TNT had been discovered in a sewer under the Hotel Grande Bretagne, home of high-ranking British officers and Greek Cabinet Ministers. Even as Churchill arrived at the conference a distant sniper pinged in his direction. Doorways bristled with guards, tanks watched every intersection. Overhead Spitfires patrolled.

In a large, unheated room lit only by flickering oil lanterns, the delegates faced one another across a table. At the head, in his flowing black robes of office, sat the chairman, towering, bearded Archbishop Damaskinos, primate of the Greek Orthodox Church, no politician but now deeply concerned with the politics of his country's agony. Down one side sat lanky, leonine Premier George Papandreou with members of his Government and leaders of other political groups. At the other end were Churchill, Eden, Field Marshal Sir Harold Alexander, Lieut. General Ronald Scobie, U.S. Ambassador Lincoln MacVeagh, French Ambassador Jean Batlen, Soviet Military Attache Colonel Gregory Popoff. Only the ELAS seats were vacant.

The conference began. Churchill was speaking when the ELAS men turned up: Communist Party Secretary George Siantos, EAM Secretary-General Demetrios Partsalides, also a Communist, and ELAS General Emmanuel Mandakis, hero of Crete, who is suspected by the British of being a Communist. All wore British battledress, all were relieved of their pistols at the doors. Then the door was locked, the key handed to the ELAS men.

"This Effort to Rescue." Churchill started over again. Each sentence in a quarter-hour speech was painstakingly translated. The Prime Minister was grim, his jaw set. He thumped the table. "I and Mr. Eden have come all this way, although great battles are raging in Belgium and on the German frontier, to make this effort to rescue Greece from a miserable fate. . . . Very violent and unexpected troubles have arisen and we have become involved in them through doing what we believed was our duty. That duty we shall discharge inflexibly and faithfully to the end. . . .

"We have hoped there may be established a broad-based Greek Government representative of the Greek nation . . . until a fair and free general election can be held all over the country.. . . We hope that thus the voice of the Greek people shall be fully expressed in a sure way as we express our voice in England and America, by the method of elections based on a secret ballot. . . ."

Churchill had spoken and what he had to say was in effect:

"Settle it among yourselves, or we shall settle it for you."

"What Cheek!" Next day he stepped out to watch the war. A burst of Spandau machine-gun fire hit a wall 30 yards away. Said Sandhurst's Churchill, with disdain: "What cheek!" He went on watching.

In the conference room the second session grew so stormy that the Archbishop adjourned the meeting before blows were struck. From the spate of tempestuous talk emerged only one point of unanimity: Archbishop Damaskinos was acceptable to all parties as Regent. But George II of Greece, waiting in London's swank Claridge's, must not delay his consent.

The area of agreement looked disappointingly small, but it held hope of extension and, above all, of an end to the bloodletting. To Churchill and Eden, with a fresh, on-the-spot appreciation of ELAS strength--and Greece's tragedy--it offered an urgent bridge to peace. The Prime Minister was confident he could persuade the King. He was whisked off again to England. In Athens the fighting continued.

In London Churchill wasted no time. He sent for King George. The 54-year-old Greek monarch was apprehensive that a temporary relinquishment of his throne might become permanent--that, in effect, he might be signing his abdication. But after Churchill had talked with him for an hour he consented to the Regency. A royal proclamation announced that the Archbishop had been authorized to "take all steps necessary to restore order and tranquility," that the King would not return to Greece "unless summoned by a free and fair expression of national will." The Archbishop proclaimed his own immediate two-point plan: 1) a new national Government, 2) cessation of the civil war. Promptly Premier Papandreou and his Cabinet resigned.

While the Archbishop spoke the fighting continued. Men still died in the streets of Athens. But the end seemed at last to be in sight.

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