POPULATED BY GREEKS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 October 1943, Page 4

POPULATED BY GREEKS

DODECANESE ISLANDS. DEMAND FOR LIBERATION. Liberation of the 12 Greek islands of the Aegean following the collapse of Fascism in Italy, is expected by the Dodecanesian National Council “within a few weeks, if not days,” it is announced at the Council’s headquarters, a New York correspondent of the “Christian Science Monitor” wrote recently. Meanwhile, members of the council are apprehensive over dispatches received here from Europe that the control of the Dodecanese would be turned over to Turkey as a bait to her to join the United Nations, and that Turkey needs the islands for her security, both of which suggestions were rejected. “These gratuitous offerings to alien rule of Greek populations for supposed advantages to the United Nations appear to forget entirely the principles of post-war settlements announced in the “Atlantic Charter,” the statement by the council says. The council stresses that the population of the Dodecanese islands is overwhelmingly Greek, declaring that 98 per cent of their population is Greek in language, religion, tradition and sentiment. The Dodecanese National Council is a federation of societies composed of Dodecanesians, organised in the United States, Australia, Egypt, South Africa, Greece and elsewhere, which has been working for the liberation of the islands ever since their occupation by Italy in 1912. Dr. N. G. Marvis is secretary general.