Plans & Fears

About once a week, the Greek government declares all-out war on the Communist guerrillas. But last week, Greece's 88-year-old Premier, Themistocles Sophoulis, seemed grimmer than usual. He signed an emergency decree empowering the government to requisition houses and factories, conscript any man or woman, including doctors and nurses. Nightclubs were closed. Execution of some 1,500 jailed and condemned rebels got going in earnest.

The government was planning a spring offensive. The great fear was that "General" Markos Vafiades, the rebel cornmander, would attack first, knocking the government campaign off balance. In Washington, the State Department heard that a ragtag "international brigade" of 30,000 Greeks, French, Italians, Czechoslovaks, Poles, Germans and Spaniards was poised to strike from Albania and Yugoslavia. In Rome, Italian Communists announced formation of a "Greek Liberation Committee" which would send "food, clothing and medicine" to Vafiades.

Having failed last autumn to win Konitsa for a capital of his "free Greek" shadow state, Vafiades was now expected to try for loannina, capital of Epirus. He was also expected to attack Salonika; 30 miles from that strategic port, a village was seized last week by 350. guerrillas. Two important tobacco towns in Thrace, Xanthe and Komotine, were shelled for the first time by guerrilla guns. In Thrace, and other parts of the fighting zone, Communist-laid road mines were making serious trouble. General Alexander Assimak-opoulos, able commander of the government's Seventh Division, was killed when his car blew up on a road mine. Athens police were alerted by a report of Communist forces only 15 miles from the capital. This, however, turned out to be only a small band plundering a sanatorium for food.

King Paul I gave a gallant but somewhat naive interview to" a newsman from the Cleveland Plain Dealer. "I don't think a [general] war will take place in the near future," said the king. "But in the unforeseen event of foreign aggression, Greece will defend herself to the last man independently of outside help, and if we have to fight alone we will do it."

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