Olive Sutton
You are probably wondering about the "assistance" which the Athens government and American officials claim the Democratic government and Army is getting from Albania, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia. The pity is that there has been no assistance at all.
The charges of assistance and invasions have been baseless howlings. And if there had been assistance, it could hardly be grounds for charging "threat to the peace," when the United States government is in fact feeding the fires of war with millions of dollars' worth of arms and equipment to the Greek quislings.
Let us examine the "evidence" the Athens government advanced for these charges when the United Nations sent its Investigating Commission to Greece. You will see that there is no evidence of any kind, and that the State Department has used the United Nations to promote its own designs in Greece, to cover its own provocations against the republics of the Balkans and the Soviet Union.
The Greek government charged that guerrillas came from Yugoslavia on September 16, 1946, and attacked the Royalist garrison at Sourmena, withdrawing again into Yugoslav territory under protective fire from the Yugoslav frontier guard.
A communique from the Third Army Corps of the Royalist Army published on September 22, 1946, said this of the incident:
The mopping up operations undertaken against the anarchist groups in the Doiran sector ended on September 20 when the above anarchists flew toward the Yugoslav border. Some of the figures published are exaggerated. The Yugoslav frontier guards did not open fire on Greek units…
Two Royalist Army officers, Captain Nikitas and Lieutenant Berovalis finished off the Greek government's charge. They told the U.N. Commission they personally had given the order to their units to shoot at the Yugoslav frontier post. So it turned out that there had been a "border incident," but it was Yugoslavia which had the grounds for complaint. The only other incident which the Commission considered worth investigating was shown to be similarly spurious. On the basis of such hoaxes are we asked to send arms and troops to Greece to "stop aggression"!
Both American and Greek officials have admitted these charges are faked. Last summer they told as much to a Hearst correspondent in Athens, Karl H. Von Wiegand.
Von Wiegand talked with George Papandreou and Demetrios Maximos, and to Dwight Griswold. This is his report:
Papandreou declared "there has been no invasion," reports to the contrary notwithstanding. Maximos had previously made the same statement to me in a lengthy talk I had with him.
Dwight B. Griswold told me very emphatically: "There has been no invasion of Greece. The rebellious bands are Greeks. No foreign uniforms have crossed any frontier…
Yugoslavia and Albania, meanwhile, have both sent notes to United Nations Secretary-General Trygvie Lie, recording assaults on their territory by the Greek Royalist forces.