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OPA Administrator Paul A. Porter speaking at a news conference.
Courtesy of the Harry Truman Library and Museum |
HellasFrappe urges all its readers to read the following speech that
was given by Paul A. Porter, a former US Presidential Emissary to Greece
in 1947 at a news conference. The speech which is courtesy of the Harry
Truman Library and Museum, may be have been written seven decades ago
but when compared with the present day political and social situation in
Greece it is as current as pie.
Corruption on a state
level, Greek oligarchs pressuring politicians that formulate laws which
accommodate this group, politicians who exploit situations to eliminate
their enemies, a mercantile and banking cabal that is determined above
all to protect its financial prerogatives -at whatever expense to the
economic health of the people- and a tax system rigged fantastically in
their favor. Also foreign aid that perpetuates the privileges of a small
banking and commercial clique which constitutes the invisible power in
Greece, and Americans afraid that Greek people will favor Russia over
the West. Moreover, internal warfare, politicians who are constantly in a
cat fight and do not allow the prospects for economic reconstruction to
occur, pressure on the government from the "social lobbies" of
Kolonaki, refuting Russian propaganda that the U.S. is financing a civil
war in Greece, the hopelessness of the Greek people, and the enigma on
how to solve two controversial situations - the civil war and the
(corrupt) Greek political system. If this is not current dear
Frappers... then we do not know what is. THIS IS A MUST READ.
By Paul· A. Porter
Former US Presidential Emissary To Greece
Collier's for September 20, 1947
Today an almost forgotten American mission has got to perform a miracle—or fail in its job. The miracle is to save Greece from economic disintegration and the inroads of Communism. The fight to save Greece is just beginning. The announcement of plans is not enough. What will go on in Greece this month and next is infinitely more important than are the debates which commanded the headlines last March and April.
Last January, I went to Greece as head of a mission charged with
reporting on the economic situation and with determining what outside
assistance would be necessary for the survival of the Greek nation. I
know at firsthand the complicated and discouraging conditions which
today are confronting Dwight Griswold and the American Mission for Aid
to Greece. And I feel strongly that the American people should know
precisely what these conditions are.
During a trip
through the lovely Greek countryside, a peasant I talked with typified
the Greek national psychosis. He was a weary and discouraged man,
prematurely old, his face lined and wrinkled, his hands upturned in a
gesture of mute despair.
"Four times
in my lifetime my home has been destroyed," he said, "—by the Turks,
the Bulgars, the Nazis and the guerrillas. Why should I build it up
again?"
This hopelessness is typical. The whole
country, from top to bottom, is in the grip of a gray, unrelieved,
profound lack of faith in the future--a lack of faith which produces
simple inertia for the present. From the large textile manufacturers in
Athens to the small shopkeepers and farmers in the northernmost part of
Macedonia, people are paralyzed by uncertainty and fear.
Businessmen
will not invest. Storekeepers will not lay in supplies. Peasants will
not repair their ruined houses. One official told me that 150,-000 homes
had been totally destroyed in Greece and that only 1,300 had been
rebuilt in 1946.
"All that the U.S.
mission to Greece has to do is end a civil war, eliminate corruption in
government ranks, rebuild the economy of a nation and revive hope in a
people sunk in despair. There's a chance they'll do it"
My
most depressing experience in Greece was a visit to Kalavryta, the
Lidice of Greece. This was the village high up a narrow gorge near the
Gulf of Corinth where, in December, 1943, a small band of Greek
resistance forces ambushed a squadron of Nazi occupation troops. The
German reprisal was an unbelievable act of horror and brutality.
The
1,200 men of the village were herded into an open field, where from the
vantage point of higher ground, they were forced to watch their homes
and shops burned from the incendiary volleys fired simultaneously into
each structure. When the conflagration reached its height and the Greeks
sought to break away from their Nazi guards, machine guns from
concealed emplacements massacred the helpless lot of them.
Meantime,
the women, old men and children were concentrated in the largest
building—a school. It was the last to be ignited. Legend has it that the
screams of the women and children were too much for an Austrian officer
and he shot the lock off the door. Liberated from the blazing school,
the survivors fled to the hills and returned later that night to recover
the bodies of their men on the hillside, and buried them in the village
cemetery.
The despair in Greece today is crucial,
because our whole program of aid is based on the assumption that the
people will be able to snap out of the prevailing inertia. We are not
stepping up the amount of outside assistance enough to make the future
much different from the past.
During 1946, Greece got
about S330,000,-000 from UNRRA and the British; our aid of $350,000,000
barely exceeds this. And, at the same time, we are banking on the
ability of the Greeks to more than double their exports. So, far from
having too liberal an amount of money for use in Greece, we are
operating on an exceedingly narrow margin. Indeed it may soon become
apparent that estimates of $350,000,000 which my group made are too
conservative, and that additional funds may be necessary. Mr. Griswold
will find that conditions have rapidly worsened since the first mission
went out last January.
There has since been a
widespread drought which has. substantially reduced local grain
production. The military activity has been stepped up. And our own price
level has risen to shade the value of the dollars Congress has made
available. The $350,000,000 loan will not go as far as we had hoped and
planned. At best, we will get up to the minimum reconstruction level. At
worst, we may have trouble maintaining a level of decent subsistence.
If
the American mission is to end this deep sense of national
hopelessness, it must resolve two controversial situations—the civil war
and the present government.
One winter day in
Macedonia, as I was standing on a riverbank, hundreds of low-flying
geese suddenly appeared out of the clouds, flying in formation and
honking wildly as they came. I remarked casually to a Greek standing
with me that they must have fine shooting in Macedonia.
"Men have been so busy shooting one another in this part of the world,"
he answered sadly, "that they have had no time for the geese."
So
long as this state of mind continues, the prospects for economic
reconstruction are dim. You cannot devote your full energies to
repairing docks, building bridges and maintaining roads when you are
likely to be shot in the back any moment.
The greatest
obstacle to the reconstruction of Greece is the continuance of the civil
war. There can be no permanent solution of Greece's economic future
until the present military burden is reduced—until money and men are
released for productive purposes. There can be no permanent solution of
Greece's psychological paralysis until the menace of external aggression
is removed.
I am convinced that the Russians know this
even better than we do. The Communists know that the revival of
guerrilla warfare will put us badly on the spot in Greece—so they are
working overtime to revive it. That is why, it seems to me, Russia's
U.N. delegate Andrei Gromyko vetoed the U.S. proposal to establish a
semipermanent frontier commission in the Balkans. The plain fact appears
to be that the U.S.S.R. does not want a pacification of frontier
conditions in the Balkans. For such pacification will be an almost
indispensable condition for American success in helping bring about
Greek economic recovery.
This brings up the question of
the Greek government. The present regime obviously must constitute the
set of tools through which we work. We cannot kick off by naming a new
team. Adoption of these means would contradict the ultimate ends we wish
to accomplish in Greece and elsewhere; furthermore, blatant
intervention of this kind would supply potent ammunition to Soviet
propaganda about American imperialism. But we can—and must—do something
to sharpen these tools.
Chief among these tools is the
Greek civil service. The late King George of Greece, in my first talk
with him, referred to many government employees as "camp followers" and
"coffeehouse politicians" and described the whole civil service as a
kind of pension system for political hacks. These were harsh words, but
not unwarranted.
The civil service is over expanded,
underpaid and demoralized. The low salaries have been augmented by a
completely baffling system of extra allowances by which a few civil
servants probably get as much as four times their base pay.
At
the same time the bulk of them do not get a living wage. Many of them
are forced to supplement their government pay by taking outside jobs.
Imagine the effects in Washington if officials in government departments
worked part time for local lawyers or lobbyists or industrialists. The
curiously short working week— usually 33hours, consisting of mornings
only 'for 6 days a week—facilitates the economic double life which so
many government workers lead.
The result is complete
disorganization. I have never seen an administrative structure which,
for sheer incompetence and ineffectiveness, was so appalling. The civil
service simply cannot be relied upon to carry out the simplest functions
of government— the collection of taxes, the enforcement of economic
regulations, the repair of roads.
Thus the drastic
reform of the civil service is an indispensable condition to getting
anything else done in Greece. But the civil service is just the
beginning. There is the far more intricate and explosive question of the
political leadership of the country. Candor will compel me to make some
frank statements about this government, but what would you have America
do? Would you have prayed with Henry Wallace for the, defeat of the
Greek aid bill so that you could exchange the present inefficient,
right-wing regime for a police state on the Tito model?
I
rather doubt it. Because whatever it is, the present Greek government
is not a totalitarian dictatorship, and besides, it does not seem to me
that the nature of the government is relevant to the question of
external aggression. We can't take the position that it is all right to
commit acts of aggression against governments we do not like, and only
bad to commit such acts against governments we approve.
There
is within Greece a vigorous and critical political opposition. There is
a free press. The Communist paper is published daily in Athens, and
each morning in my mailbox I received an English translation of the
mimeographed bulletin of the EAM bitterly denouncing the present regime.
It
is not at all a liberty-loving regime in the American sense, but it is
paradise next to its neighbors of the north and their much vaunted "new
democracy." Obviously the existence of freedom of expression is no
excuse for other governmental delinquencies. But it does signal the
possibility of peaceful and democratic change.
On the
other hand, the fact remains that this present government has not, on
the record, shown any affirmative philosophy or any inclination to do
the things necessary to end their nation's travail. On my first day in
Greece, I had a talk with General J. G. W. Clark, the intelligent and
somewhat sardonic head of the British Economic Mission.
"When visitors on arriving in a new country," he began by saying, "run
into a sandstorm or a hurricane, they are always told how unusual the
weather is. But the situation you are running into here in Athens-the
monetary crisis, the possible civil service strike, the pending fall of
the government—is the normal postwar political climate of Greece.
So
far as I could see, the Greek government had no effective policy except
to plead for foreign aid to keep itself in power, loudly citing
Greece's wartime sacrifices and its own king-size anti-Communism as
reasons for granting the foreign aid in unlimited quantities. It
intends, in my judgment, to use foreign aid as a way of perpetuating the
privileges of a small banking and commercial clique which constitutes
the invisible power in Greece.
The reaction to
President Truman's speech of March 12th, calling for aid to Greece, was
characteristic. In January and February of 1946, desperation had
produced a spate of good intentions and noble resolutions within the
Greek government; but the instant effect of the assurance of American
aid was not to stimulate the government to further efforts, but to give
it the relaxed feeling that it was delivered from the necessity of
having to do anything at all. So it declared a national holiday; there
was dancing in the streets. And at the same time it shelved a plan for
the immediate export of surplus olive oil—a plan which had stepped on
the toes of some private traders.
Demetrios Maximos,
the present Prime Minister, is a kindly, well-intentioned old man, with,
I think, an earnest desire to help his suffering people. He is very
small and frail, with a mustache and a goatee, carefully dressed and
wearing old-fashioned button shoes. He speaks English with precision and
is something of a scholar. But, though a man of good will, Maximos is a
prisoner of the errors of his predecessors and of more forceful men in
his own cabinet.
The Influential Tsaldaris
Pre-eminent
among these is the Vice-Premier and Foreign Minister, Constantin
Tsaldaris. A Greek politician of long standing, Tsaldaris has avowedly
embraced the principles of a generous amnesty policy toward the
guerrillas, has constantly urged the fullest participation by the United
Nations in Greece's border difficulties, and in general has been a
persistent pleader abroad for the Greek cause. Yet his conduct of
internal affairs when he was Prime Minister was not such as to advance
Greek recovery significantly. His administration was characterized by
the abandonment of measures of domestic economic policy which might have
been of some real benefit to the masses of Greek people. But even
Tsaldaris advocates another election in Greece when and if the border is
stabilized.
He professes to recognize that the Greek
people are weary of the game of political musical chairs, where the same
personalities merely shift their positions when a cabinet crisis
develops. There have been seven changes in the Greek government since
liberation, but Tsaldaris and his Populist (extreme right) cohorts
remain dominant.
An even more controversial figure is
General Napoleon Zervas, the Minister of Public Order. During the war
Zervas ran a small "resistance" group around whose activities hangs the
smell of Nazi collaboration. Today Zervas is foremost among those who
want to exploit the present situation, not only to eliminate
Communist-inspired aggression from across the borders, but apparently to
rub out everyone in Greece who is critical of the present government.
He is undoubtedly the figure behind the recent wave of arrests which
took in not just Communists, but, according to informed observers in
Athens, anti-Communist liberals as well.
I was told in
Washington recently by a well-informed Greek friendly to the present
regime that these after-dark roundups of Zervas' were not the repressive
tactics of a police state, but only legitimate precautions of
self-preservation. Of the 1,600 arrested in this last raid, more than
500 were subsequently released, he told me with great pride, because
there was no basis for the charges against them.
Then,
behind the government, is a small mercantile and banking cabal, headed
by Pesmazoglu, governor of the National Bank of Greece and a shrewd and
effective operator. This cabal is determined above all to protect its
financial prerogatives, at whatever expense to the economic health of
the country.
Its members wish to retain a tax system rigged fantastically in their favor.
They
oppose exchange controls, because these might prevent them from salting
away their profits in banks in Cairo or Argentina. They would never
dream of investing these profits in their country's recovery.
The shipping interests are in a particularly scandalous position.
Today
the Greek merchant marine is enjoying a boom, and the shipowners are
raking in the profits. But the bankrupt Greek government is benefiting
almost not at all from this prosperity. Seamen's earnings continue to
come into Greece, but owners' profits for the most part are locked away
elsewhere.
Any enterprise should be expected to pay a
fair amount of taxes to the government under whose protection it
operates —and particularly in this case, where the Greek shipowners are
making most of their profits out o! Liberty ships sold to them by the U.
S. Maritime Commission after the Greek government had guaranteed the
mortgages. The yearly earnings of a Greek-owned Liberty ship will
probably run between $200,000 and $250,000. Of this, only the
ridiculously small amount of $8,000 goes to the government in taxes.
Foreign
experts have urged the government to raise the tax requirements to
about $30,000. But the political strength of the shipowners has
prevented any effective action.
It will be the job of
our mission to get action out of this government. In then-efforts, the
members of the mission can expect that the book will be thrown at them.
They will receive every conceivable excuse and will be held up by every
conceivable form of bureaucratic obstructionism and incompetence..
General Zervas will cry that the big thing is to fight the Coram unists
by arresting every liberal, and the Communists will help him by spurring
on the civil war.
And another, more insidious, form of
pressure will be brought against the members of the mission. The social
lobby—the smart international set, with its headquarters at Cannes, St.
Moritz and the Kolonaki Square of Athens— will begin to operate.
Many
of them are charming people, speaking excellent English, who will be
genuinely anxious to be of service to the American mission, but who,
above all, will seek to convert the mission into another means of
safeguarding their own prerogatives.
I still remember
one ornate dinner when a leading banker entertained me in his luxurious
Athens apartment. There were three liveried butlers, several magnificent
wines, astoundingly good food. One guest during dinner became
rhapsodical over the beauties of marine life and the high sport of
spear-fishing under water with goggles. The contrast between the superb
feast in the apartment and the starving children in the streets was
simply too pat and cruel.
These are the obstacles which the American mission faces in Greece. Can we succeed in achieving our objectives?
Such
a prophecy depends on how we measure success, and will require a great
deal of elaboration of what really constitutes our objectives. We cannot
evaluate progress in Greece by usual Western standards. There will be
no quick or easy solution of the many social or economic maladjustments.
My own brief experience in Greece convinces me that the American people
will be greatly in the debt of Mr. Griswold and his colleagues if an
atmosphere can be created and maintained wherein the Greek people have
an opportunity in the near future for free political choices.
This raises the delicate problem of the intervention by one nation in the internal affairs of another.
We
have to face that question frankly. British officials freely admitted
to me that the British Economic Mission served no useful purpose because
its functions were merely advisory and it had no sanctions with which
to enforce its recommendations. "Our fatal error," said one official,
"was to condone incompetence because of political considerations." Yet
obviously we cannot treat Greece as if it were a colonial possession or a
conquered country.
My own answer to that question is
provisional and pragmatic. I feel that the Greek state, in having
requested assistance and supervision, is to that extent setting a
limitation on its own sovereignty. If we are to make a heavy investment
in Greek recovery, it is common sense to suppose that this implies the
means to make the recovery effective. These actualities have been
recognized by the Greek government and embodied in the Greek note of
June 15th to the United States and the U.S.-Greek aid agreement of June
20th.
The note and the agreement spell out specific
objectives of reform and reconstruction. It will be the legitimate
business of the American mission to take all the steps necessary to
secure compliance with the terms of the contract. To get down to cases,
if a Greek minister resists or obstructs measures necessary for Greek
recovery, or perverts American aid to antidemocratic purposes, I cannot
believe that our mission would stand by impotent.
"The mission should make sure that the Greek people are kept fully
informed of American aims and efforts and of the nature of the
difficulties encountered," one of the wisest of living Greeks said to
me.
"If the practice followed up to now is continued—that of
shielding the incompetence and unwillingness to cooperate of Greek
ministers behind a veil of secrecy—the mission may lose the initiative
in Greece. The mission must establish direct contact with the Greek
people from the very beginning and appeal to public opinion for active
support. I see no other means of exerting pressure for necessary
measures that are bound to be strongly resisted by the present Greek
regime."
The first step, of course, is to bring an
end to the present internal warfare and to refute the Soviet propaganda
line that the U.S. is financing a civil war in Greece.
The
best available means of doing this is to have a real amnesty. The
Maximos cabinet was finally prevailed upon to adopt an amnesty program
which looked plausible on paper; but, as a member of the Greek cabinet
told me, the appointment of General Zervas as Minister of Public Order
completely destroyed any one's inclination to take the programs
seriously. The amnesty must have enough safeguards to bring out of the
hills everyone who is not an outright Communist agent.
Then
we must follow through on the program of economic reconstruction. The
American mission will supervise closely the money spent for this.
Then,
over a longer period, will come political democratization. A program of
political reconstruction and reform cannot, in its nature, be put into
effect overnight. It is dependent on the restoration of economic
stability, and so must be a step-by-step process. Once the economic
program begins to roll, we can do our best to foster and develop
elements of the center and the non-Communist left.
There
are democratic resources in Greece which have not yet been fully
tapped. Damaskinos, the archbishop of Greece, a man with a massive,
disinterested wisdom on political conditions, carries great moral force
in all camps.
Sophoulis, the head of the Liberal party,
though past the prime of his active political life, also has great
moral stature in the country. Varvaressos, the Greek representative in
the International Bank, is a man of conspicuous ability; and some of the
younger politicians, like Kanellopoulos and the younger Venizelos, show
promise.
These Elements Inspire Hope
There
are forces of real democratic vitality in the country at large. The
agricultural co-operative movement seemed to me an unusually robust and
promising movement. The student movement has vigor; and, if Clinton
Golden, formerly of the C.I.O. and now on Dwight Gris-wold's staff, can
free the trade-union movement from the grip, on the one hand, of
government stooges, and, on the other, of Communists, that may well
develop into a bulwark of democracy.
We are facing a
situation unprecedented in our history," and we will simply have to
develop a new and American means of coping with it. The British formula
in such eases was always collaboration with the native ruling classes
—buying their support by confirming them in their power to exploit the
masses, and relying upon them to hold the people down with gendarmery
and whips.
This formula is not only repugnant to
American traditions. It is also impractical. No system would deliver the
Greek people more speedily into the arms of the Russians. We must work
out a formula for starting from the bottom and working up—not starting
from the top and working down.
Russia is standing
patiently by, hoping to get into Greece by a base on bails. It is
confident that Greek incompetence and Greek reaction, combined with
American inexperience and American gullibility, will doom the efforts of
the American mission. We will soon be so frustrated by inefficiency,
vacillation and simple knavery, Russia hopes, that we will grow
disgusted and indifferent and finally walk out. Then guess who will walk
in!
I think Americans have enough resourcefulness and
perseverance to lick the problem. If we are defeated in Greece, it will
be a crushing moral and strategic blow to our new international-role
solar plexus. But, if we can leave Greece in a state of economic and
political health, we will have brought new hope and new faith to
freedom-loving people everywhere in the world.
The End
The similarities with what Greece is experiencing today in its economic, political and social structures are astounding.
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