INTERNATIONAL: More Squeezing

Last week it came the turn of the most ancient country in Europe to undergo the frightful courtship of the Axis. Greece began to feel the squeeze.

Afraid to announce that Greece was on the spot, Athens slipped word to Cairo, where Greek diplomatic quarters revealed the Axis price for peace: 1) immediate severance of economic relations with Great Britain; 2) cession to Italy of a strip of territory along the Albanian frontier; 3) cession to Bulgaria of a corridor to the Aegean; 4) permission to Italy to construct a military road from Albania to Salonika; 5) use of Greek air bases by Germany and Italy; 6) abdication of King George II and resignation of Premier John Metaxas.

Reports in Balkan capitals indicated that the Axis meant business, that three divisions of crack Nazi troops had arrived in Bari on Italy’s heel and were being ferried across to Albania.

Encouraged by the way Britain’s tough sea dogs were chasing Italy’s new warships to cover, Greece timorously voiced defiance, but with a stiletto prodding her left side and Nazi gunmen aiming at her head, her shouts sounded like a terrified squeak.

Peacefully Inclined. One country pledged to resist aggression against Greece was Turkey, keeper of the Dardanelles and sprawling impediment on the Axis overland route to the Suez Canal and oil wells of Mosul and Iran. Turkey’s astute little president, General Ismet Inönü, kept his ambassador lingering around the Kremlin in case Silent Joe Stalin should decide to speak encouragingly. Under Field Marshal Fevsi Cakmak, comrade under fire of the late great Kamal Ataturk and Commander in Chief of the Turkish Army, 400,000 troops crowded trains running to Adrianople, a few miles from the Bulgarian frontier. The press expressed measured defiance. “Turkey,” wrote the Government Party organ Ulus, “has no intention of changing existing friendships, is determined to defend her independence and still is peacefully inclined.”

But Turkey has not reacted to other Axis grabs in the Balkans, and anyhow the very word “Dardanelles” was taboo in the Axis press last week. There was the possibility that the Axis might by-pass the Dardanelles by way of the Dodecanese Islands and Syria in its drive to the East.

Minor Problems. Last week’s Greek squeeze was in the best tradition of courtship, firm but unhurried. The Axis even denied for the benefit of jittery Greeks that it had made demands. First there were the two minor problems of Bulgaria and Yugoslavia to be dealt with. Bulgaria’s Coburg King Boris was primarily pro-neutrality and then, oddly enough, pro-British, but most Bulgarians were ready to shout for the side that could produce the Dobruja and promise Thrace.

Strong man of Bulgaria is Minister of Agriculture Ivan Bagrianoff, onetime palace companion of Boris, whom he is privileged to address with the familiar “thou.” He was an officer in World War I, then turned his attention to large-scale farming on his estates near Razgrad. Grooming him to succeed scholarly Premier Professor Bogdan Filoff, the Axis called him to Berlin last week to learn the knack of dictating under orders, then on to Rome for further instructions.

Little trouble was anticipated in Bulgaria aside from a lack of highways, and Axis “experts” had Bulgarian peasants busy last week widening and repairing the dirt roads.

Defiance and Garlic. A different proposition was Yugoslavia, where tough, pepper-eating Serbs breathed defiance and garlic even at the Axis. But surrounded by seven nations, five of which want a slice of her territory, and stranded without a single guarantee, Yugoslavia was already on the griddle. Even if the South Slavs would fight, a brief Balkan war on the way south to Egypt and the Suez would do no more than relieve boredom in the Nazi ranks.

The heat on Yugoslavia began with the customary demands: 1) concentration on agriculture for the benefit of a hungry-Reich at the expense of industrial development; 2) preferential rights to Germany on all surpluses. Incidental demands included a 20% increase in the official exchange value of the reichmark in terms of dinars, added quotas of corn, copper and lead to replace the wheat Yugoslavia cannot deliver because of a disastrous harvest, and 600,000 tons of iron ore a year to bring the German supply up to the pre-air-raid level. Promised reward: an economic role in the New Order. The Yugoslav Government finally signed a watered-down economic agreement with the Reich and Foreign Minister Dr. Aleksandar Cincar-Markovitch announced that he was willing to collaborate economically and politically with the Axis. It was not collaboration but submission that the Axis wanted.

Rumania. Grey-green troops pouring down the Danube and over a dozen land routes rapidly brought the southward-moving Nazi “army of occupation” towards its announced strength of ten divisions (about 150,000). Three hundred tanks had arrived in the frontier zone opposite Soviet Bessarabia, and at Galati near the mouth of the Danube German naval experts were reported supervising the construction of a submarine base for underwater craft to be shipped from the Reich in sections.* To accommodate the Nazi influx, 120 trains were removed from passenger service on Rumanian railroad lines.

Rumanians agreed to eliminate “parasitic” industries, grow grain for Germany. British war equipment, sent to strengthen weak-chinned King Carol as an ally, will be shipped to Germany. Sharing the honor of Axis membership, Rumanians were also asked to share its fasting—three meatless meals weekly and practically no butter as large quantities were consigned to the butter-starved Reich. Germans guarding the Ploesti oil field saw three wells burn, firmly declared the fires were accidental, not sabotage.

Joe Stalin continued his game of seeming to keep both sides guessing. Some observers believed that it was merely to deepen the democracies’ puzzlement about Russia’s relations with Germany that the official Tass Agency rudely called Berlin a liar when Nazi Government quarters announced that Moscow was informed of all Axis moves. The Soviet press, including the Army organ Red Star, continued to praise the R. A. F., belittle by implication Hermann Göring’s air-war machine.

Those who believe that Stalin is just trying to give the democracies false hope hold there is no conflict between the Axis and Russia over the Dardanelles. What Russia would like to get out of this war in the way of further territory is not the Dardanelles but lands farther south on freer seas—Iran, Afghanistan and India.* Those lands are not yet the Axis’ to give away. Until they are, Russia can still play her great military weakness—and inability to do anything the Axis does not want her to—as silent strength. This might be her greatest contribution to the Axis, since it keeps the democracies wishfully thinking that one day the Bear will really walk like a man, and on that happy day come to their aid.

The question of whether the Axis would turn over part of the Eastern Hemisphere’s oil to hamstrung Russia for the benevolent neutrality, and how much good it would do her if the Dardanelles (and the Black Sea) were not under her control, was something for the U. S. S. R. to worry about.

*General Erich Ludendorff regarded a permanent submarine base at Lake Ramzin near the Danube delta as essential in the peace he intended to dictate. *Nevertheless, from Vichy last week came reports that European Turkey and the Dardanelles would go to Russia with Germany’s blessing.