Office of the Historian

868.01/466: Telegram

The Ambassador to the Greek Government in Exile (MacVeagh) to the Secretary of State

Cairo, March 13, 1944—3 p.m.
[Received March 14—7:55 a.m.]

83. For the President. The Greek Prime Minister has asked me to inform you that he has written the King13 on the basis of widespread advices from political leaders and other competent persons in occupied Greece that while it is not necessary for him to make any further public declaration beyond his letter of November 8,14 he should certainly and at once authorize the appointment of a Regent to exercise Governmental powers in Greece from the moment of liberation until a plebiscite may determine the question of the regime. “On this” the Prime Minister has written “there is complete agreement among all the parties without any exception the resistance organizations and the Archbishop”,15 who is proposed as Regent.

The Prime Minister wants you to know this, he says, because he believes you to be interested in the King’s fate and he emphasizes his hope that the King will consent. If he does not the Prime Minister believes the cause of the monarchy will be lost in the situation now prevailing which he describes as being “controlled by Leftist elements and the armed guerrillas in the mountains”. On the other hand if he does “the situation will finally develop in favor of Your Majesty”.

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It is clear that the Prime Minister fears that the King may again appeal to you this time in a question which lies not between him and the British as was the case when you were here but between him and his own Government. The Prime Minister said to me that the only people to whose advice the King will listen are you and Mr. Churchill16 and to a certain extent General Smuts.17 As the King is in London he will probably be consulting Mr. Churchill presently.

MacVeagh
  1. George II, King of the Hellenes.↩
  2. See Greek Series telegrams No. 110, November 23, and No. 128, December 12, 1943, and aide-mémoire from the British Embassy, December 22, 1943, Foreign Relations, 1943, vol. iv, pp. 155, 157, and 160, respectively.↩
  3. Archbishop Damaskinos of Athens.↩
  4. Winston S. Churchill, British Prime Minister.↩
  5. Field Marshal Jan Christian Smuts, Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa and Commander of the South African Defense Force.↩