ELECTIONS AND FOREIGN BAYONETS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 391, 20 December 1946, Page 16

ELECTIONS AND FOREIGN BAYONETS

Sir,-We have heard much recently about the Greek élections; how they had been conducted under British bayonets, and the general iniquity behind those bayonets. Anyone who is prone to listen to these allegations should stop and ask himself or herself just what the result of those elections would have been without those bayonets; or to carry the question a step further, what it would have been under Russian bayonets. One tan compare those elections that have been held behind the "Iron Curtain," the results of which all seem suspiciously the same, with those that were held in Greece, where the presence of British troops enabled them to be conducted freely and openly under the scrutiny of an Allied commission which has reported favourably on the *way in which they were conducted. There were no mysterious arrests of party leaders which seem to precede any election in the Rus-jian-dominated areas, no intimidation of parties or voters, and none of the irreguarities in the recording and counting of votes that were reported in the recent slections in Poland and Bulgaria. There

was none of this sort of monkeying with popular vote for the simple reason that those who would have gained from the use of such methods were prevented from doing so by the presence of the much-maligned British bayonet, which ensured that the elections were conducted as they should be without the employment of such "aids to power" as Left-Wing extremists in Eastern Europe seem to favour. The history of British intervention in Greece since November 1944 has not been a happy one, least of all to the British forces concerned, but no reasonable person can deny that it was decided on and carried out with a straightforward purpose, to prevent the country from falling into the hands of a small but well-armed and highly organised Communist minority which hoped, in the existing state of confusion in the country, to seize power and hold it until they could place themselves, and Greece, under the "protection" of the advancing Russians. There is little doubt that they would have done this had it not been for timely intervention of British forces which arrived before things had gone too far. The heavy adverse vote against the Communists shows just how much

national support they really had, and explains why they were so anxious to ‘seize power for themselves before such a calamity as a free election should fall upon their hopes.

OBSERVER

(Palmerston North).

( Abridged.- Ed. )