Figures in the Foreground

THE CRACK IN THE COLUMN (370 pp.] --George Weller--Random House ($3).

As a foreign correspondent of the Chicago Daily News, George Weller watched the British retreat from Greece in 1941. When the British returned in 1944, so did Weller; like many another correspondent, he developed a deep affection for the country. The Crack in the Column, an admirably objective novel beginning in the days of the Nazi occupation and ending with the outbreak of civil war, is the product of George Weller's fondness for Greece and its hard-pressed people.

Actually, his story is too diffuse and impersonal to be read as an ordinary novel of character and situation. It is rather a chronicle of events, told through the actions of characters who themselves seldom understand and never control the events: British Major Michael Walker, who directs an Athens underground during the Nazi occupation; U.S. Airman Tommy McPhail, whose plane has been shot down over Greece and who wants to be gotten back to his base; royalists and Communists; patriots and plotters; Greek girls and English girls, and one calculating American number in a Red Cross uniform.

Train the Cadres. The book shuttles from one locale to another, from the headquarters of Major Walker's underground to the northern mountains where zealous Greek Communists train their cadres and build their armies, and back to the bloody streets of Athens.

In the political maelstrom, personal lives veer crazily. In the underground days, for instance, Major Walker makes the Greek cause his own. At first, he disapproves of the stern British tactics against he Communist-liberal coalition, ELAS. He tries to argue with his superiors ("What are you after," a Brigadier asks, "a Greek army that reads the Statesman and Nation?"). But the major slowly suppresses his disapproval, just as he suppresses his feeling for Nitsa, the Greek girl who has worked beside him in the underground. As the civil war bleeds Greece, Walker's ife begins to seem flat and inadequate. In Author Weller's scheme, he represents decency, and mere decency is not enough for coping with civil war.

Throw Some Weight. Weller, who connects the threads of action with asides of lis own, has a prescription for defeating he Communists and rebuilding Greece: "To make the left stop increasing, you must throw some weight against the right."

No one, however, need read The Crack in the Column as a political guidebook; it is enough that it skillfully portrays the tragedy of a nation, and offers a few memorably sketched figures in the foreground. It is not a simple story, but it is a good one. Greece has deeply affected George Weller--as he says of one of his characters, it has unfitted him for simplicity.

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