Volume 23, Number 10 · June 10, 1976
Gifts to Greeks
By David Jackson
The Greek Adventure: Lord Byron and Other Eccentrics in the War of Independence
by David Howarth
Atheneum, 253 pp., $10.00
Byron's Greece
by Elizabeth Longford, photographs by Jorge Lewinski
Harper and Row, 183 pp., $19.95
Beware of bearing gifts to Greeks. On a boulevard in Athens, called (for the present) King Constantine, is a small landscaped tribute to Harry Truman, one of the many Saviors of Greece in its past 155 years. Harry in bronze stands there, his coat ruffled by wind, in memory of the Truman Plan which rebuilt the Greek economy after the ravages of its most recent civil war (1945-1949). Not far away is the US embassy, a large, columned, glassy building by Gropius. Among the many gifts it has supplied Greece, since the Truman Plan, have been NATO, the CIA, a certain connivance with Greece's last dictatorship, and most recently the curious withdrawal of support from Greece's ambitions for Cyprus. Things for which poor Harry T. can hardly be blamed, but is he spared his splash of red paint as the Greeks march on the embassy to smash the Gropius windows? No. Other embassies have lately come under attack: British, Spanish, even Russian (oddly enough not the Turkish). One might suggest to the foreign diplomat in Greece: build your embassy like a fortress, and if your government has just granted aid or loan to Greece, request a transfer.
Review, 2848 words
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