GREECE: If We Hold Fast . . .

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Today British soldiers and diplomats keep uneasy watch in Athens. Of them, royalist Premier Petros Voulgaris recently said, "I wish they would [stay] here forever." Without them, neither Greece nor Britain could hope to attain the kind of democracy and stability which Churchill had laid down as the aim of British policy. The interests, ideological and imperial, which impelled Tory Churchill now held Laborites Attlee and Bevin to the identical policy.

Even with British support, Damaskinos and his Ministers had hard going. By Christmas, UNRRA in nine months will have distributed $245,000,000 worth of food and goods, is already feeding three million daily in Athens and Salonika. The U.S. has just granted a $250 million credit. Yet Greece was still a hungry nation, facing a threatening winter. Former Supply Minister Kyriakos Varvaressos, longtime head of the Bank of Greece, for a time stemmed and even counteracted the horrendous Greek inflation. But he was forced out three weeks ago.

The leftist EAM and its disarmed army, ELAS, had been vitiated. But Greeks had forgotten neither the valor nor the sins of the resistant Left, and the presence of thousands in Greek jails did nothing to erase the memories. Many a Briton on the spot, many a Greek who infinitely preferred Damaskinos to the harsh extremes of Left or Right, testified that Damaskinos' ministers often outdid the repressed Left in rigorous repression. In a telegram to Damaskinos, Attlee himself had deplored "right-wing excesses."

The ever-seething question whether King George II (or any king) should take the throne recently embroiled Damaskinos' first choice for the premiership, General Nicholas Plastiras, and led to his over throw. Distrusting him, royalists published the fact that Plastiras had invited German intervention during Greece's heroic war with Italy, forced Damaskinos to discard the General. Face lost, Plastiras tried to argue the matter with Damas kinos, and stormed out of the Regent's office crying "Tragos!" ["Billy goat!"]. Into office came harassed, tubby Admiral Petros Voulgaris, commander in chief of the Greek fleet and a follower of Greece's great statesman, Eleutherios Venizelos. The Voulgaris Government is nothing to brag about, and Archbishop Damaskinos carries most of the national burden.

The Stakes. The Regent's immediate problem is to carry Greece through this winter, hold elections for a new government, and see that government through. Then must come an explosive but unavoidable plebiscite on the monarchy.

Beating upon him within Greece are minority Communists and equally vocal Rightists. Between, and close to the heart of the ruling peasant from Thessaly, are the Greek millions who know only that they are weary of war, oppression, hunger, and of all extremes.

Beating upon him from without is the big-power contest for the Mediterranean.

By old agreement with Churchill, the Russians officially have kept hands off Britain's one remaining satellite on that shore of "Britain's sea." But Moscow glowers and grumbles, and Greek Communists — profoundly distrusted now that the war of liberation is over — do their best. Damaskinos' interim role is to hold the line, control Greece's inner ferment until the Greeks can choose for themselves.