SINCE MY VIEW OF THE GREEK SITUATION seems not very widely held, I am glad to be able to quote in support of it (from Partisan Picture by Basil Davidson) a letter to the London Times of February 24, 1946, by Captain Francis Noel-Baker, M.P., who, says Mr. Davidson, “had been closely associated with Greek affairs during the war and spoke from long experience of Greece.”
From 1942 onwards it was difficult to detect either objectivity or consistency in British policy towards Greece, and I believe that I am not alone in thinking that that policy was one of the causes of the civil war in which it culminated. In my view, two cardinal mistakes were made. First, ignoring the popular reaction against the pre-war Fascist dictatorship and against King George for his part in installing and maintaining that dictatorship, the British Government persisted right until the eve of liberation, in “hoping” (and working) for a royal restoration. Second, in their fear of the left wing (which in Greece, as elsewhere in Europe, was the core of the resistance movement), the British authorities did nothing to encourage “moderates” to join E.A.M. in the early days when it was not yet Communist-dominated, but, on the contrary, tried to create a “counter-balance” by building up “nationalist” groups of E.A.M.’s extreme political opponents. The tragedy of this policy was that it produced precisely that situation which it sought most desperately to avoid. Baffled and exasperated by British maneuvers, E.A.M. became more extremist, more Communist and eventually violently anti-British; whereas our “national” bulwark soon collapsed.