Crucial Plebiscite

Greeks voted in a crucial plebiscite last week. Nominally, they were voting whether or not to bring back King George II from British exile. Actually, they were deciding whether Greece should remain the only Balkan country uncontrolled by Russia, or become a Soviet satellite, as would surely happen if leftists won. At week's end, not all the votes had been counted. But the result seemed certain: Royalist victory.

Both Left and Right were malodorous in Greece (armed struggle between the factions left 50 dead on election eve). But Britain, and by implication the U.S., were committed, in the nature of the bigger world issues, to support of the Right. Both Governments squirmed with discomfort, for both had failed to make clear to their people the necessity of their unpleasant choice.

It was pointed up by the approach of the U.S. aircraft carrier Franklin D. Roosevelt to Piraeus on a timely goodwill tour (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS). For behind the issue of Greece lay a cognate issue: U.S. and British determination that Russia should not control the Dardanelles and hence the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East. And beyond the issue of the Dardanelles loomed the biggest issue of all: the struggle between the U.S. and Russia for the control of Germany.

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