868.00/12–2744: Telegram
The Ambassador in Greece (MacVeagh) to the Secretary of State
[Received December 28—7:10 a.m.]
190. For the President. I communicated your message70 this morning to Mr. Churchill, who expressed his appreciation, and this afternoon had a long talk with him. He is clearly deeply disturbed over the situation here, and its dangers for British prestige and his [Page 173] own position, but is also determined to persist in military operations until Athens and its surroundings are cleared, unless the present Greek negotiations for a settlement of the governmental issue, which he himself set in motion yesterday, bring about an earlier acceptance of General Scobie’s terms. After that he appears to be thinking of the possibility of composing matters in the rest of Greece through the medium of a commission of the three great powers, somewhere along the lines of my suggestion to you in my letter of December 8.71 He showed himself to me, both yesterday and today, to be resentful of American press criticism of his Greek policy and deeply disappointed over what he feels to be our Government’s lack of understanding of his attitude and its failure to support him. I asked him if he wanted me to send you any message and he replied
“Tell him that I hope he can help us in some way. We want nothing from Greece. We don’t want her airfields or her harbors—only a fair share of her trade. We don’t want her islands. We’ve got Cyprus anyhow. We came in here by agreement with our Allies to chase the Germans out and then found that we had to fight to keep the people here in Athens from being massacred. Now if we can do that properly—and we will—all we want is to get out of this damned place.”
While I was talking with him word came in from the Archbishop that the Insurgents insist on a Regency as a prerequisite for continuing conversations and that the other members of the Conference initiated yesterday but now including a larger number of political figures have all voted for a Regency to be set up under the Archbishop either now or after the cease fire has sounded. Mr. Churchill said that he would probably leave here tomorrow and have another go at the King on this question.