GREEK AIMS IN WAR

Press, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23446, 29 September 1941, Page 6

GREEK AIMS IN WAR

New Political And Social Life

PRIME MINISTER’S STATEMENT

(8.0. W.) RUGBY, September 26. The Greek Prime Minister (M. Tsouderos), speaking in London today. said: "We are fighting so that a really new order of things may prevail. For us, victory, which will also bring a redressment of the injustice done to us by the Italians and their associates for many years past will mean the restoration to our country of a new and free political and social life based on the principles of equality and the equitable distribution of wealth. “From this barbarous war one good thing will spring when victory comes —the progress of liberty and the uplifting of man to a higher level of social life; in other words, the exact opposite of the results embodied in the destructive aims of the Axis Powers, which wipe out all social and political values.” “The outstanding features of the situation in Greece,” said M. Tsouderos. are:— . , "(1) The ruins of the bombed cities. 19 of which were completely destroyed. “(2) The widespread hunger, because the enemy has carried off foodstuffs, including'even children’s milk. “(3) The fierce resistance of the whole country by all available means against aggression. “(4) The unprecedented violence, brutality, and ferocity of the methods employed by the' enemy to suppress national sentiment and any feeling of human pride.” Axis Forces in Greece The Prime Minister revealed that the Italian troops occupying all the central and southern portion of Greece numbered 14 divisions, and that friction between them and the Germans was so great that separate feeding arrangements had been made necessary. When the Germans arrived in Greece they were poorly equipped with clothing, and they even resorted to the seizure of women’s underclothing to supply their needs. Their acts of discipline also indicated a poor state of morale. Almost the entire personnel of the Greek Air Force, including the ground staffs, escaped to Allied territory in the Middle East, and some had taken part in the Syrian fighting. Aircraft previously ordered from the United States are now being delivered to them, but they needed more. Three-quarters of the navy and half of the merchant marine also got away, the rest being sunk. “Firebrand of the Balkans” M. Tsouderos described Bulgaria as “the firebrand of the Balkans during the last 20 years.” At least 60,000 Greek peasants had been' dispossessed in Western Thrace and Eastern Macedonia, and the familiar process of "Bulgarisation" was in full swing. Light was shed on Greece’s efforts to improve relations by M. Tsouderos’s revelation that during his visit to Sofia in 1938 he made an offer that Greece would finance a railway linking the Bulgarian system with Salonika, where Bulgaria might have a free port, but this generous effort had failed. The Greek Prime Minister, paying a warm tribute of respect and admiration to the gallant British, Australian, and New Zealand troops who fought with unparalleled heroism side by side with their Greek comrades in the battle of Greece on the mainland and in Crete, declared that their splendid courage had, more than anything else, cemented the ties of undying friendship which bind the two peoples.