General Grivas and the Political Wars
EBON, MARTIN
GENERAL GRIVAS AND THE POLITICAL WARS Greek Cypriof hero may emerge as leader of extremists By Martin Ebon FOMR MORE than four years, General George Grivas lived a life of daring and color as...
...Now they are snickering at him...
...The balance achieved during the Zurich talks is an exceedingly delicate one...
...But retirement has never been much to Grivas' liking...
...Today, the Athenian political scene reverberates with echoes of the 62-year-old Grivas' dissatisfaction with (a) Archbishop Makarios, (b) the Greek Government of Premier Constantin Karamanlis, (c) the established political parties, (d) administrative developments in Cyprus, and (e) the general economic-political status of Greece...
...Grivas could certainly become a rallying point of extremist sentiment in Greece and Cyprus...
...As one patriotic young Greek put it to me in Athens recently: "Look, we loved this man...
...Or if he had just kept quiet...
...The world Communist movement suffered a severe setback when the dangerous Cyprus matter was settled...
...The struggle for this island, whose population is overwhelmingly of Greek ethnic origin, not only threatened Greek-British and Greek-Turkish relations...
...and he settled down in the fishing village of Porto Helli, in eastern Greece, to write his memoirs...
...While the Athens Radio is sure not to give the agreements prominence in its broadcasts beamed to Cyprus, they have been quoted fully by Radio Moscow and in Greek-language broadcasts from Prague and Bucharest...
...The smart politicians would like to use him, but even they are scared of what he might say or do...
...Then he came out of the mountains of Cyprus, stepped ofi a plane in Athens in his patchedup uniform, and we cheered our heads off...
...But Grivas is not keeping quiet.KARAMANLIS AND GRIVAS: 'THE DETERIORATION HAS BEEN PAINFUL dry up...
...His speeches and private utterances caused many listeners and visitors to shift uneasily in their seats...
...His return to national prominence began with increasingly frequent trips to Athens...
...GENERAL GRIVAS AND THE POLITICAL WARS Greek Cypriof hero may emerge as leader of extremists By Martin Ebon FOMR MORE than four years, General George Grivas lived a life of daring and color as head of the guerrilla forces that sought to oust the British from Cyprus and link it with Greece...
...Grivas, casting off his nom de guerre of "Dighenis," last spring made a triumphal return to Athens...
...The Greek Government promoted him to Lieutenant General, and Parliament voted him a special lifetime pension equivalent to the full pay of his new rank...
...In 1945, he retired with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel...
...He expressed disinterest in political affairs...
...Grivas, the man who had hidden successfully in the mountains of Cyprus for more than four years, and who had been a romantic and wise figure at a distance, did not benefit from on-the-spot exposure to the Hellenic political limelight...
...He added: "For myself, I prefer this solution—even though it is not the one we waited for, and the one which would have satisfied our aspirations—rather than have a national division, because in such a division we should lose all...
...Premier Karamanlis answered that the Athens Government, regardless of Grivas' change of heart, must "assume the responsibilities" of the Zurich agreement "fully and to their entire extent...
...Speaking of his own future, Grivas said at the time, "I am resolved not to mix in politics or public life, either in Cyprus or in Greece...
...Here he was, our hero...
...a decade later he emerged as the leader of the Cypriot guerrillas...
...However, disillusionment began to be two-sided...
...Cyprus riots may be touched off at any time, and Grivas is tossing matches near a leaking gasoline tank...
...It breaks my heart to see this happening...
...Into the controversy has entered a note of personal rivalry with Archbishop Makarios, who held the Cyprus limelight while Grivas was wangling with his ghost writer and literary agents about his unfinished memoirs...
...He personified all we had ever hoped to be ourselves...
...Now the island's self-government is evolving under the leadership of Archbishop Makarios, its religious and temporal head...
...He called it an effort to "enslave the Cypriot people...
...agreement "and who wish to continue the struggle, would not only divide the Cypriot people but possibly the whole Greek nation...
...The deterioration has been painful...
...Newspaper interviews were granted rather readily...
...In a leaflet distributed in Cyprus last March 9. Grivas stated that those who refuse to accept the Zurich MARTIN EBON, who has just returned from an extensive tour of Greece, is author of World Communism Today...
...He was our hero...
...it also disrupted the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the Balkan Pact, and the whole position of Greece in the effort to halt Soviet encroachment in the eastern Mediterranean...
...Turkish-Greek relations are being patched up, and this calls for maturity and true statesmanship on both sides...
...he received promising offers, notably from an influential British newspaper chain, for a series of articles on his experiences...
...If he had died a hero's death, we could have kept our glorious illusion...
...Grivas urged Greeks and Cypriots to accept the Zurich agreements, in order to assure peace and unity...
...He had won our victory...
...By careful and quiet negotiation, the matter was finally settled between diplomatic representatives of the various powers at Zurich...
...We had known right along, in our heart of On July 29 he "dissociated" himself from the Zurich agreement, saying that he would fight it "with all my strength...
...His social and economic ideas sounded shockingly naive...
...Porto Helli is a fine place for fishermen, but rather remote from the center of the public stage, either national or world-wide...
...Grivas issued a call "for harmony, unity and love, so that on the ashes of the glorious national epic, you may construct a new democracy...
...He added, "I am convinced that the interests of the nation, and of Cyprus specifically, were well served by the London agreements [which followed the Zurich talks], which secured, at the same time, a happy conclusion of General Grivas' fight...
...His notions of press freedom, for instance, give you the creeps...
...And now...
...A compromise solution, such as the Zurich agreements, can never satisfy the all-ornothing elements...
...Cyprus is going to be free...
...Greek politicians, who saw promise in his reflected glory, went on brief pilgrimages to Porto Helli...
...So here is a tragic paradox: Grivas, monarchist and anti-Communist, arch-conservative and patriot, threatens to trigger unrest and political confusion that must surely delight the Communists...
...Grivas is restive and frustrated...
...On September 15, Makarios, nettled by Grivas' long-distance interference, said that he rejected the ex-guerrilla chief's right to decide what was best for Cyprus, as this right "belongs only to the Cypriot people...
...Talk of a Greek Eisenhower or a Greek de Gaulle, or even of another General Alexander Papagos (Greek Premier from 1952 until his death in 1955) tended to hearts, that we couldn't have everything we wanted in one big swoop...
...Grivas may yet upset it...
Vol. 42 • October 1959 • No. 37
