Reprieve

Mark Ethridge of Louisville and representatives from eleven nations arrived in Greece. They were just another U.N. committee charged with compiling a complicated report. Nobody expected to hear from them until the Styx froze over.* But almost before they had time to unzip their briefcases, they were neck-deep in an impassioned Greek controversy, stood accused of meddling in Greece's domestic affairs, and had snatched five Greek Leftists (including a 15-year-old orphan named Odysseus Doukas) away from a firing squad.

Ethridge and his colleagues on the U.N. Balkan Investigating Commission were instructed to check on charges and countercharges of frontier violations, provocations, guerrilla fighting and general hell-raising along Greece's frontier with her northern Communist neighbors (Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Albania). The Greek Left, as well as the Russian members of the Commission, promptly sought to divert the Commission's attention from the neighboring countries to Greece's tragic internal situation. The five Leftists, condemned by Greek Army court-martial of plotting rebellion against the King's Government, looked like the perfect bit of drama to accomplish just that (though they were in no way different from 121 Leftists executed before them, or the 46 scheduled to be executed after them).

Party Clothes. One night last week, Ethridge left a party aboard the French cruiser Georges Leygues (which had carried him to Greece) and returned to the Hotel Acropole Palace, the Commission's headquarters. There, Commission Secretary Roscher-Lund, a Norwegian, excitedly confronted him with piles of petitions asking the Commission to intercede for the condemned five. Some were signed by families, many by carefully organized Leftist groups. Ethridge and Lund called up Alexis Kyrou, liaison man with the Greek Government, who arrived in a state of urbane sleepiness; they told him "unofficially" that it might be a good idea to postpone the five executions, because the condemned might be important witnesses for the Commission. Kyrou returned at 1 a.m. to report that his Government had agreed.

Next night Greek Leftists, supported by the Russians on the Commission, pressed for a second intervention for six more condemned men. While the Commission deliberated, Kyrou--all set for a party, in white tie & tails--nervously paced the corridor. At 11 p.m. the Commission finally decided to ask the U.N. Security Council back in New York for guidance. Meanwhile, the Greek Government executed the six. It then complained formally that the Commission had interfered in Greek domestic affairs by requesting a reprieve for the first five. The Security Council, by unanimous vote (with Russia and Poland abstaining), instructed the Commission henceforth to keep hands off death sentences, except in special cases where the importance of condemned men to the Commission's work could be clearly shown.

Best Behavior. The Commission had brought an uneasy reprieve to all of Greece. Everyone was on his best behavior. Fighting had died down. Leftist crowds that demonstrated in front of the Acropole Palace Hotel politely applauded Commission members who showed themselves at the windows, while agitators distributed leaflets: "No more blood! . . . The British must go!" The British themselves announced that they would withdraw half their troops shortly (London estimated that this meant a few weeks).

Greek reaction to the British statement was typical of the country's splits and fears. A Communist merchant seaman told a TIME correspondent in Athens: "Until the British leave completely, there will be a monarcho-fascist regime." Said a moderate Republican: "What does it matter whether they take away half or three-fourths--as long as there are token troops here it will keep our northern neighbor from attacking us openly."

-Ethridge's report to the U.S. State Department on Rumania and Bulgaria was handed in in December 1945, has not yet been released.

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