CYPRUS |: Truce's End

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CYPRUS

One night last week Nicosia's fire brigade raced five miles out of town to the village of Laxia. It was a false alarm, but back in Nicosia, two British military-supply stores erupted in gasoline-fed flames.

With this neatly executed bit of arson, the EOKA men marked a switch from a policy of passive resistance (TIME, March 17) to a nonshooting campaign of selected sabotage. All week long bombs went off. A pump house supplying water to a British camp was blown up; one midnight a building stocked with shiny new government lottery machines suddenly belched smoke; Cypriots crowded the streets to watch a garage filled with government farm machinery light up the sky. Troops, police and firemen were kept running, but their only captures were 220 sticks of dynamite found hidden under a truckload of vegetables, and a 32-year-old Greek Cypriot who had blown off his own hand with a bomb.

The flames wrote a clear message on Cyprus' clear sky. After a year of truce, EOKA had lost patience, wanted action from Britain on its demand for union with Greece. Sir Hugh Foot, the liberal-minded governor who went to Cyprus four months ago talking confidently of compromise, had seen his suggestions pigeonholed by the Tory government, which discovered that every formula that would satisfy its ally Greece was vetoed by its ally Turkey.

This week all over the island Cypriots will celebrate Greek Independence Day-traditionally a time for anti-British demonstrations that, in the past, have turned into bloody riots.