CYPRUS: Bitter Breakdown

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Whose Island? "We have the right to govern ourselves," says Dr. Themistocles Dervis, the Greek Cypriot spokesman, in his book-stacked library. Almost all of the island's 400,000 Greek Cypriots obviously share Dervis' feelings—but by no means all Greek Cypriots support EOKA's violence. Most of the 5,000 people in the British administration are Greek Cypriots. Greek Cypriot businessmen suffer from the curfew and the EOKA-inspired boycott of British-made goods. But moderate Greek Cypriots, sickened by violence, dare not speak out for fear of reprisal.

"We hope we shall never see an independent Cyprus!" says Raouf Denktash in his lawyer's office in Nicosia's Turkish quarter. "We are Turks, 100-000-strong, not Greeks, and this island is as much ours as theirs. The Greeks want freedom from the British. All right, we want freedom from the Greeks."

In 201 of the island's 626 villages and towns, Greeks and Turks live side by side, often using the same water supply, depending on each other for both goods and services. Without wholesale migrations, the Turkish talk of partition is thoroughly unfeasible, and economically it is senseless.

Dance to the Tune. "Get out of Cyprus! Be realistic, my dear fellow," says the British colonel, one of those disgruntled army men who in their urge for tougher measures refer to the harassed Governor as "Sir Hugh Pussyfoot." "What about the alliance with Turkey, the Baghdad Pact? We have a few interests still left over that way [in the Middle East], you know. This trouble can be quieted down. We've had tougher ones, you know. From the Bronze Age through to us, these people have had their affairs run for them. That's their way."

"I'm damn well going to defeat them," declared wiry Major General Kenneth Darling, director of Britain's security operations, last week. "We've got these terrorists beautifully on the hook. We'll give them everything we have, including the grand piano and the kitchen sink. When you have the initiative, you can make the other fellow dance to your tune."