GREEK UPHEAVAL

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 21634, 10 February 1945, Page 4

GREEK UPHEAVAL

E.L.A.S. JNDICTED BRITISH LABOUR VIEW

PACIFICATION NEEDED (By Telegraph—Props Assn.-—Copyright.) LONDON, Feb. 8. The political and economic conditions which have led to a great disturbance of life in Greece will have to be much more normal and tranquil than at present . before the British troops can withdraw and the Greeks left to settle their own problems'. This opinion was expressed by the Trade Union Congress delegation in a 5000-word interim report on its investigations. The delegation said that it was impressed by the universal opinion of British troops and that it they had not been ordered into action against the E.L.A.S. there would have been a wholesale massacre in Athens. The troops stated that practically all the E.L.A.S. forces wore civilian clothes and it was almost impossible to tell who were civilians and who were not. Many women, including nurses, concealed and carried weapons. The soldiers considered the E.L.A.S. more concerned with returning to Athens to seize power than with pursuing the Germans. The report stated that the troops were of the opinion that the E.L.A.S. were the dirtiest fighters they had encountered. The troops showed deep reesntment against the British press and, in particular, members of Parliament at what they considered an unfair presentation of the events in Greece. The delegates had no means of checking statements that during the German occupation the E.L.A.S. used arms captured from the Italians while those dropped by the British were hoarded, “presumably for other purposes.” So far as the delegation was able to judge, there was little actual lighting as distinct from sabotage between the E.L.A.S. and the Germans.

E.A.M. Disintegrating

“It would appear that the E.A.M. is in the process of disintegration,” the report stated. “It is possible that resignations would have taken place earlier in certain cases but for the fear of renrisals.” The E.L.A.S. seemed more under the domination of the Communists, though the delegation was informed by a high military authority that, in the beginning, it contained officers and men of good military qualities, with high national ideals. The delegates had heard “horrible stories” of atrocities committed by a section of the E.L.A.S., named 0.P.L.A., and saw the exhumation of about 250 bodies in an Athens suburb. “There seems no reason to doubt that practically all the dead were victims of organised murder,” stated the report. “All had been executed at close quarters. The Regent indignantly denied a suggestion that the Greek Government had arrested a large number of people whom it was holding as hostages.”

Greece was in need of extensive supplies to restart economic life. There seemed to be a universal desire for full democratic expression of both industrial and political ideals. Reuter’s correspondent in Athens reports that 13 bodies were brought to Athens to-day after exhumation in a village north-west of Athens. They included those of former leading personalities in Greece. Among them were the former Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, M. Tricuopis, a brother of the ex-Premier. Koryzis. the ex-Governor of Crete. Uiakis, and Generals Gortzas and Katsiyanakis. They are stated ■to have been marched off by the E.L.A.S. as hostages.