Exile Comes to the Archbishop

In the House of Commons last week, Colonial Secretary Alan Lennox-Boyd announced that the British government had lost patience with Cypriot insurgents on the British-held Mediterranean island of Cyprus. Said tall, tough Lennox-Boyd: "As to the future, the first and most important duty is to restore law and order. For this we have the resolution and the forces, and it will be done."

After five months of negotiation, Archbishop Makarios (see box), ethnarch and spiritual leader of the Cypriot Greeks, had flatly rejected a final British offer of self-government (with the British retaining control of the island's security, defense and foreign affairs until a constitution could be worked out). Foreseeing a drastic British response, blackbearded Archbishop Makarios decided that the time had come to consult with Athens.

As Makarios' limousine stopped at an R.A.F. check point at Nicosia airport four days later, a British security officer quietly took Makarios into custody. In his flowing black robes the archbishop was led into the airport, past the Greek Airlines plane waiting to take him to Greece, to another corner of the tarmac where an R.A.F. Hastings transport plane was parked. Already in custody beside the Hastings were three other Cypriot clerics, including Kyprianos Themistok-leous Kyriakides, Bishop of Kyrenia. At 4:30 p.m. the Hastings took off for Kenya, where the Cypriots were transferred to H.M. Frigate Loch Fada, which set out for the Seychelles Islands, a British crown colony in the Indian Ocean about 1,000 miles east of Kenya, and just south of the Equator. Here the archbishop will be confined to a small bungalow, 1,800 feet above the sea, which Lady Addis, wife of the resident British governor, describes as "a delightful place--sunny, peaceful, beautiful, but rather lonely."

A Question of Terror. Simultaneously in Cyprus and London, the British government issued a statement by Field Marshal Sir John Harding, Governor of Cyprus. Said Harding: "[I reached the] decision to order the archbishop's deportation in the light not only of his overt seditious activities, but also of a large volume of evidence indicating that the archbishop has himself been deeply implicated in the campaign of terrorism." Harding cited a recent "dastardly attempt" to sabotage a British plane carrying soldiers and their families. In substantiation of Harding's charge, British troops, searching the Makarios residence after the archbishop's departure, said they had uncovered a cache of arms (one gasoline bomb, ten unfilled bombs and 18 rounds of ammunition).

If the British thought that such documentation would numb the shock which the deportation caused at home and abroad, they were mistaken. Cried British Labor Leader Hugh Gaitskell: "This seems to me an act of folly." Echoed the Liberal Party's Leader Clement Davies: "An act of madness." While imperialist-minded newspapers like Lord Beaverbrook's Daily Express approved, the Manchester Guardian editorialized: "By this action the British government will have made Archbishop Makarios more than ever the leader of his people . . . Now there can be no settlement."

An Answer in Anger. As soon as he was in the air, the pilot of the Greek Airlines plane which had waited for Makarios at Nicosia airport radioed the news of the arrest to Greece. In Athens Premier Constantine Karamanlis called together a government council, which decided to recall Greece's Ambassador to Britain and in structed Greece's permanent representative to the U.N. to register a protest with the U.N. As the news traveled through

Athens, thousands of Greeks surged through Constitution Square, bearing aloft Greek flags and shouting anti-British slogans. The entire Athens police force (3,000 men) could not prevent angry Greeks from smashing windows and tearing down signs from British buildings or ripping the tires of the British-owned municipal trolleys.

Meeting in emergency session, the Greek Orthodox Church's Holy Synod cabled appeals to churches throughout the world, including its "sister church of Russia," which it called on to "display its traditionally strong protection, and use every power and influence" to end Makarios' exile. A general strike paralyzed Cyprus, while British paratroopers broke up small demonstrations with tear gas.

In London British military men confided to newsmen that the Eden government had made its move in the conviction that Israel and the Arab states will be at war within 90 days and that Cyprus must then be transformed into a vital military base. It would need a turn of events of this magnitude to justify what now Deemed to be one of the most muddleheaded decisions of Prime Minister Eden's indecisive tenure.

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