19

A Glorious Experience in the
Springtime of My Career

Following World War II Greece was in a state of political turbulence. It had gone through a four-and-a-half-year period of dictatorship during which usual political activity was forbidden, followed by the Axis occupation, and then more than a year of civil strife between the forces of the Left and the Right. It was alleged that the Communists were pouring a good deal of money and support into the country in order to try to take possession of it. Historians and Russian experts agree that a longtime objective of Kremlin policy had been to gain an outlet and a year-round, warm weather port on the Mediterranean, and Greece offered the best possibility for this. After all one of the southernmost Soviet republics, the state of Georgia, is partly of Greek origin and the Georgians are closely allied with the Greeks in culture and attitude.

The Greeks were convinced that a democratic election had to be held soon and that they would need help from the outside to ensure the fairness of the process. Already the Soviets were charging the British military in Greece with intimidation and covert activities. At Yalta the Allies had pledged themselves to help the liberated countries reestablish their democratic institutions. In line with this pledge and upon the invitation of the Greek government, the United States, France, and Great Britain agreed to create a tripartite commission to observe the Greek election and to report to the world on its fairness and adequacy. The South Africans associated themselves with the observations as an international gesture and because of the large number of Greek immigrants in South Africa. The Russians, though pledged at Yalta, nevertheless declined to participate, using the excuse that the mission would interfere with the sovereignty of an independent state.

Henry Grady, whom I had known in Washington and who later became president of the American President Lines, Ltd., was named chief of the United States Mission with the personal rank of ambassador, and I was invited by Acting Secretary of State Dean Acheson to join it. The U.S. Mission consisted of six men in addition to Ambassador Grady and me: Harry J. Malony, Major General, U.S.A.; Joseph Coy Green, a State Department career officer; Walter H. Mallory, executive director of the Council on Foreign Relations; James Grafton Rogers, a lawyer, educator, and former assistant secretary of state; William W. Waymack, editor of the Des Moines Register and Tribune. Each of us was given the personal rank of minister for the duration. It proved to be a congenial and effective team.

Our official instructions read, in part, as follows:

It has been agreed among the participating Governments that the three national groups will be organized into an Allied Mission to Observe the Greek Elections and that the observation will be conducted as a combined Allied operation . . . . During a period of three weeks prior to election day these teams will inspect and report on the status of the electoral registers and of the provisions made for the election. On election day the teams will be sent to a sufficient number of representative polling places throughout Greece to give a valid sample of the effectiveness and integrity of the polling.

We were advised that we were going there to observe and to report, not to supervise. We were cautioned to be fair and objective in our reporting and to make sure that the Greeks themselves ran their election as free from intimidation as it was possible for an election there to be run.

The members of the U.S. mission were assigned a substantial staff of experts drawn from the State Department and from the ranks of scholars specializing in the Greek world. Our preparation began in Washington, D.C. on January 14–15, 1946. The six of us were briefed by the experts in the various government departments: State, War, Commerce, and so on. We were also given a stack of background papers to absorb. At the conclusion of the intensive briefing, we were asked to meet with President Truman in the Oval Office. We all went expecting a perfunctory kind of meeting, a mere well-wishing on our appointed task. The opposite proved to be the case. After we were ushered in, introduced, and seated, the president gave a brilliant review of the historic political aims of the Russians and the geopolitical significance of our undertaking. He did not refer to a single note nor did he hesitate for a word. We learned more in that hour than we learned in all our briefing sessions and from reading our background papers. In fact, he expounded what came to be known as the Truman Doctrine for the Eastern Mediterranean.

Outside the Oval Office, we looked at each other in amazement. The man we had met seemed utterly different from the person that the press had depicted as a bankrupt haberdasher from Kansas City who occasionally made extravagant statements and fussed with the music critics over their criticism of his daughter’s ability as a vocalist. The press at that period seemed to be intent on picturing him as a petty, impulsive, and weak president. History has now proved how wrong that appraisal was, but for us the discovery occurred in our session that afternoon.

We departed Washington on February 15, 1947, about 4:30 P.M. on an air-transport command plane, as I remember it a DC4, which others characterized as “old groaners” because of the peculiar groaning sound of the motor. At long last I was to visit Europe, even though just one small part of it, and my anticipation was high. It was also my first transatlantic crossing, and by air at that. Ambassador Grady, an old hand, having already made eleven such flights, counseled, “Now, Herman, since you’re new at this business of international air travel, I want to give you some advice. There are two indispensable aids to maintaining health and efficiency when changing time zones rapidly. They are sleeping pills and milk of magnesia. With them you can make nearly immediate adjustment to any new time zone in which you find yourself.” That has been one of the best bits of practical advice for travel that I’ve ever had. Of course, since that time I’ve made innumerable trips across the Atlantic by air and by ship, more than a hundred by now, and also many trips across the Pacific, all of which have involved great differences in time zones.

After a journey that included stopovers at Bermuda and Casablanca, where we were treated to superior hospitality and sightseeing visits to historical and scenic spots, we arrived in Naples, Italy. There we were billeted on the waterfront at Parker’s Hotel, operated by the U.S. Army. Our junior staff and our support staff, consisting of military personnel still stationed in Europe, were quartered just outside Naples at the Bagnoli military base. The military had been charged with furnishing the logistical support for our stay in Greece. The hotel, like all in Italy at the time, was cold; only in the lobby was there a little heat. The tile floors in the rooms intensified the chill.

Busy days followed for us—attending lectures in the morning, doing some sightseeing in the afternoon. We were even able to crowd in an attendance at the opera, where we sat in the royal box. I remember that the performance of Carmen was surprisingly good, considering the times. I found Naples quite picturesque. The magnificent stone buildings faced in pompeian colors, the crooked streets, the little shops with meat hanging in the open, Vesuvius looming over the bay—all were a delight to me. I took special pleasure in the sights, sounds, color, and smell of Naples because this was, as I mentioned, my first exposure to the beauties of Italy and of Europe. One afternoon we drove to Pompeii with just enough time to have a quick look at the ruins. Even that cursory viewing made a profound impression on me. The only discordant note was the threadbare state of the Italian people, who no doubt were hungry as well because of the terrible inflation. At that time shoes cost about fifty American dollars, and other necessities were proportionately high.

On the fifth day of our stay in Naples, we drove to Rome to call upon our ambassador to Italy, the Honorable Alexander Kirk, a longtime career diplomat. Leaving early in the morning in the company of Ambassador Grady, we had a beautiful drive through the countryside, seeing the olive groves, spring crops, and some quaint villages, which contrasted sharply with others that had been ravaged by the war. We arrived at the Excelsior Hotel in Rome about noon, and I had my first view of that admirable establishment, enhanced by lunch in Ambassador Grady’s suite. A drive around the city afterward introduced us to the principal sights including the Colosseum, St. Peter’s, the Forum, the Borghese gardens, and other spots. These sights were thrilling to me then, as in truth they still are after many subsequent visits.

That evening we all dined with Ambassador Kirk at the Barberini Palace, which was then the U.S. embassy residence, one of the most imposing of the ancient palaces in Rome. Because of wartime austerity the dinner could not be elaborate, but the setting was magnificent—a beautiful table with elegant china, crystal, and silver, and a huge staff to serve the dinner. As I remember, a footman stood behind every chair—or perhaps every two chairs.

There was much talk of the geopolitical situation in Southern Europe and of the plans for reconstruction and rebuilding of Europe after the tremendous devastation of the war. Also, there was a great deal of discussion of our Greek assignment because, during part of the war, Ambassador Kirk had been assigned to the king of the Hellenes in exile and therefore was fully informed about the complexity of Greek politics and the importance of establishing a stable and representative government in Greece.

On our return from Rome we took another route, via Monte Cassino, where we had a glimpse of the terrible destruction that had occurred when Italy was liberated. The drive back was otherwise a great pleasure because everywhere were little gay carts, horses with tinkling bells, people strolling along the roads, fields green with spring planting at the base of majestic mountains—an indelible experience.

After our planning and orientation in Italy, the mission was moved to Greece on February 25. Greece was prostrate after the war, economically bankrupt, politically disorganized, and filled with tensions and rumors. “In every village,” I wrote at the time, “there are those who hate others until it is almost impossible to weld any village into a cohesive community.” The Germans had done their work of setting class against class with diabolical cleverness. It had been ten years since there had been an election, and hardly anyone could remember how an election was conducted. Even simple things such as registration and pollbooks were nonexistent so it was an immense undertaking.

The general headquarters of the U.S. mission was set up in the Grande Bretagne Hotel in Athens, and the French and English counterparts of our general staff were housed in separate quarters. The country was divided into five districts with a central board in Athens, and personnel were assigned to each of these regions. I was selected from our mission to be in charge of northern Greece at Salonika, which was the area of greatest unrest. The United States had the great good fortune to have initially as the secretary general and counselor for the embassy at the central board Foy D. Kohler. Kohler was then a young Foreign Service officer, later to have a distinguished career in the State Department serving as ambassador to a number of major foreign countries including Russia, where he earned a reputation as one of our great Russian experts. He was already revealing by his industry and knowledge the qualities that were to carry him to the top of the Foreign Service. Our group included two scholars who later joined the staff of Indiana University: Jim Clark and B. R. Davidson, Jr.

At Salonika I was chief of our mission, as I mentioned, and there was a chief for the French, Roger Fabre (who had to leave in late March because of the death of his father), and one for the British, J. W. Horan. This was the pattern for each region, except that in Salonika we had in addition a South African representative, Major P. J. Strydom. We were to coordinate our efforts as best we could. I was aided as well by the very competent U.S. consul general in Salonika, William M. Gwynn, a career man who knew the region well. My personal assistant was Peter William Topping. He had come to Salonika nearly a month prior to my arrival to organize our arrangements there and particularly to select interpreters and other staff members with Greek-American competence for our headquarters office. His complete mastery of the Greek language was an enormous benefit, and along with it he had qualities that made him an admirable aide and colleague: an amiable temperament, a regard for accuracy, and a habit of close attention to detail. He was in fact my right arm during my stay in Greece. Since then he has had a notable career in the field of scholarship, in recent years as Charles Phelps Taft Professor of History and Later Greek Studies at the University of Cincinnati, and now senior research associate in the Center for Byzantine Studies at Dumbarton Oaks.

Many of our physical needs were cared for by the American Farm School, located outside Salonika, which had been largely dismantled during the latter years of the war but which was beginning to resume its program of training Greek youths for life on the peasant farms. We were fortunate to be able to have fresh eggs, good milk, cream, butter, and produce furnished us as needed from the American Farm School. We reciprocated by channeling to the school such surplus items of transport and other useful equipment as were available. There was in Europe so much surplus materiel, which was impractical to send back to the United States, that we could take care of many of the American Farm School’s urgent needs without difficulty. Also, some of our young soldiers were interested in assisting the school and in off hours helped to put the buildings and the farm back into operation.

I was quartered on the fifth floor of the American consulate building, which was located on the waterfront promenade in Salonika. The apartment was quite comfortable, and the scent of the powder and perfume of the occupant just before me still lingered in the rooms: Gracie Fields, the famed British comedienne, had stopped there during a tour through Greece to entertain the soldiers. The war had been hard on Salonika. The city was largely in ruins, and the waterfront harbor was filled with sunken ships. Since Salonika had been one of the important shipping points for supplies to Yugoslavia and the Balkans, the harbor had been bombed until it was useless. By the time of our arrival, however, men were in the process of clearing the harbor sufficiently to allow relief supplies for the Balkans to be shipped there, then to be loaded onto trains and sent to Belgrade and elsewhere, following the historic supply route.

Protocol demanded that I make certain calls upon my arrival. First, I made contact with the U.S. consul general and then, under his direction, arranged to call upon the principal leaders of the community: the governor-general of northern Greece, the mayor, the governor of the department of Central Macedonia, the top leaders in each of the political parties including the Communist Party, and finally the archbishop. In Greece the custom in formal calls is for a host to send for Turkish coffee immediately upon his guest’s arrival. This very strong coffee is passed around and consumed in little cups ceremoniously. Because my calls were made seriatim in one day to avoid the appearance of favoring one person over another, I had about a dozen cups of coffee in a relatively short period of time, two or three hours, and found that this kind of coffee drunk in such quantities can be nearly as intoxicating as alcohol. I remember little of the personalities I called on that day except for Archbishop Spyridon, one of the most noted and influential members of the Greek Orthodox hierarchy in the country. A handsome old gentleman, he had a beautiful white beard and was splendidly robed. In addition to coffee, he offered me the other traditional gesture of hospitality, a spoonful of delicious candied fruit in syrup.

After I finished these calls, protocol required that I return immediately to my office, there to await the return calls of each person visited that morning. They came one after another to my office. I assured each of the privilege we felt in being in Salonika, of our awareness of the importance of the election, and of our dedication to being impartial observers and reporters to the world.

Early in the development of the mission, it had been decided to send with us to Greece some young American scholars who were in the process of developing a sampling technique for polling public opinion. This now common procedure was then in its infancy and its accuracy was as yet unproved. One of the leading exponents of this method was Raymond J. Jessen from Iowa State College, who headed our technical team and brought with him a number of men who were trained in this system of data gathering. It is my understanding that the poll they conducted in Greece was the first wide spread use of public-opinion polling by the sampling technique. Their work proved to be invaluable to us, and their predictions, as I shall relate, to be quite accurate. We brought with us also a number of distinguished archaeologists and scholars in the field of Greek language and literature who knew Greece intimately. The archaeologists were particularly helpful because of their knowledge of the countryside. Scholars such as Carl Blegen of the University of Cincinnati and his associates, Frank E. Bailey of Mount Holyoke College and Shirley H. Weber of the American School of Classical Studies; Alison Frantz, a leading member of the agora excavation in ancient Athens; and others gave us valuable insight into the Greek character and into the land that had helped to form it.

We quickly went about establishing our apparatus for the observation of voting places, which was an urgent matter since the election was to be held within less than four weeks after we arrived in Greece and since I had a staff of only 1,200 to cover the whole of northern Greece. We also attempted to assist the Greeks with their election machinery without in any way intruding upon their politics. As the weeks went on we began to feel that our observation system would be adequate and effective. Of course, all our efforts had to be coordinated with our partners in the French and the English missions. The working relationships among us were easy. The other missions had very small staffs and relied on our field staff for the most part.

In due course we started to take soundings of public opinion through area sampling. Sampling teams were sent into the remotest villages, many of which were far from roads. At that time, only 1.5 million of the 7 million people comprising the Greek population lived in cities and the remainder in villages. There were then about 10,000 villages in all, and for the most part the families in these villages had lived in the same place for centuries and thus had come to know each other intimately. Many villages had been consolidated into one precinct or polling place, and at the time of the election there were approximately 3,400 of these in all of Greece. The sampling teams talked to leaders of the different parties in the villages concerning the adequacy of the registration lists and the possibility of fair elections. The teams then selected names randomly from the lists and sought to find out whether those individuals were current residents.

The sampling results, which made us feel hopeful for the democratic forces, we kept to ourselves lest they might in any way influence the outcome of the election. However, the Communist forces began to be observably more active. Then some incidents of terrorism took place within the district. The territory that was my responsibility stretched all the way from Kavalla to the Balkan borders and was in the mountainous, relatively wild part of Greece that was inclined to be turbulent anyway. The turmoil increased, however, and looked suspiciously as though it were being inspired by the Communists as a way to scare people away from the polls when election day came. The Communists may well have realized that the tide was running against them. Predictably, a week or so before the election was to be held, the Greek Communists ceremoniously announced to the world that the election was being rigged and urged all Leftists to abstain from voting. Their statement created a great deal of tension, but the Greeks pressed ahead with their election. On the appointed day, March 31, the democratic forces won a clear victory.

On election day the sampling teams observed the polling places, and after the election they checked to find out whether people voted or refrained from voting as indicated by the registration lists. They then tried to ascertain from the nonvoters the reasons why they had not participated. The results of the observation and sampling led our Allied mission to the conclusion that, whereas there were serious difficulties with the election, as there were bound to be under the circumstances, nevertheless on the whole it expressed the will of the people.

From our observations and polling we could report reliably on important aspects of the election. As many as 71 percent of the names on the registration lists had been found to be valid. Electoral preparations had been reasonably adequate. There had been freedom of the press throughout. Of eligible voters 93 percent were registered and 60 percent of these had voted. Although the Left claimed all of the remainder, we found by our checks of registered voters that only 9.3 percent abstained for party reasons, that 22,000 votes were cast illegally, and that only 11,000 persons were prevented by intimidation from voting. Since the British officers and troops had been confined to quarters on election day, they could not be accused by the Left of intimidation. Intimidation by both Rightists and Leftists did exist, and there was much squabbling related for the most part to old feuds, but the general atmosphere on election day was largely one of dedication to patriotic duty.

We had some reason to be confident of the statistical accuracy of our findings, moreover, because on the night before the election our teams had reported to us that 1,000,000 citizens would vote the next day; the estimate missed by less than 10,000—an amazingly accurate prediction. It was evident that the political machinery in Greece had been rehabilitated and reconstructed along democratic and representative lines.¹

Not all was grim, determined pursuit of a fair election. On the eve of the election, I gave a party for the Greeks who had helped set up our election machinery in appreciation for their efforts. The air was that of a group cautiously optimistic because of the soundness of their effort.

On election day, Sunday, March 31, Peter Topping and I, accompanied by Major Strydom of South Africa, spent the day observing for ourselves exactly what was happening in certain representative polling places. In the morning we drove to Hagia Sophia, Nea Menemeni, and Eykarkia. In each of the three places, voting was quiet and orderly. In the afternoon we observed two more city polling places and then visited one in the outlying village of Adendron. I remember still the care being taken by those in charge of the polling places to carry out their duties impartially and meticulously. Throughout the work of our mission we maintained central direction and coordination in Athens. Our contact with headquarters was by regular flights between Athens and Salonika, which carried dispatches and information. I attended staff meetings about once a week in Athens.

On one such trip to Athens, I took occasion to visit the great dam that created the Athens Waterworks. It was built of marble and was a beautiful sight to behold. By reason of its creation, Athens had one of the few pure water supplies then available in that part of Europe. The dam had been built by Henry Ulen, a poor boy from Lebanon, Indiana, who left to seek his fortune after finishing high school and who had become a great international contractor for the building of waterworks, railways, bridges, and so forth in various parts of the world. He also was quite a wizard in financing those projects in the New York money market. Late in life he retired to Lebanon, Indiana, founded the suburban village of Ulen, and started the Ulen Country Club. The Greeks all knew the Ulen name and revered and honored it. They were grateful for and proud of their great marble dam. In contacts with Greek friends, I could say that I was from Mr. Ulen’s hometown in Indiana and knew him. Thus I acquired a bit of prestige that I would not otherwise have had.

I also visited the Gennadeion Library in Athens. Shirley Weber, director of the library, who guided Peter Topping and me on a tour of the collection, called my attention to a copy of Histoire Picturale de la Guerre de l’lndépendance Hellénique, par le général Makryjannis, which he said was a rarity and available at the excellent price of one hundred fifty dollars. As he felt certain our Indiana University Library would not have a copy, I purchased it and upon my return presented it to the library.

Northern Greece being mountainous, with many inaccessible villages and with what few good roads there were having been either neglected or largely destroyed during the war, transport in the countryside was very difficult. However, I had been assigned a comfortable car that could be used in the city, and in the country we traveled for the most part by jeep or by a small plane, a c 5 I think it was, that could land in almost any pasture. In this way I saw much of northern Greece, a beautiful and interesting area, all the way from Yannina to Kavalla. On occasion I was also able to fly to some of the Greek Islands. I remember particularly visiting Crete just before our departure from Greece and seeing some of the magnificent archaeological ruins there. I had hoped to get to Mt. Athos, which was in my assigned district, but such a trip proved to be impossible because of lack of time.

I well remember a drive from Kavalla on the Aegean Sea, the center of the tobacco-growing industry of Greece, back to Salonika. It was an early spring day, late in the afternoon, and the drive, as I described it then, was especially beautiful:

Out across the plain, the freshly plowed soil was a chocolate brown, splashed with the bright green of new wheat and the pink of blossoming almond trees. You could see people with their donkeys silhouetted against the horizon, and furnishing a backdrop for it all was the beautiful, snowcapped mountain, Mt. Pangaeus, from which Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great, obtained the gold to finance his conquests. . . .

As you drive along the country roads, you can see the shepherd with his flocks, tending those flocks in exactly the type of costume his ancestors of two or three thousand years ago wore.

I think I have never seen a more captivating spring scene, made all the more so for me because of the fact that I was traveling the exact route that St. Paul had followed when he landed at Kavalla and then proceeded to Salonika to bring his gospel to the Philippians. Salonika is an important center of Byzantine churches and antiquities. Peter Topping arranged for Professor Xyngopoulos of the University of Thessaloniki, an expert on Byzantine antiquities, to conduct us on a tour of Salonika’s treasures, accompanied by his colleague, Professor Kyriakides, dean of the Greek folklorists, who spoke highly of the work of Indiana University’s Stith Thompson. As I had decided that I should call at the University of Thessaloniki before I left, it was arranged for me to meet with the rector and the university senate on April 2. Prior to that visit, a delegation of students had waited on me complaining about their lot at the university. In particular they were incensed by the poor quality and high price of the food and by what they considered to be insensitive treatment of students by the faculty. I related this incident to the university senate and told them to their amusement that these student complaints were so similar to what I would be hearing if I were at my university, I felt right at home there in Salonika.

Another reminder of home came with the arrival on March 11 of the December issue of Life magazine. In it was a picture of Alvin “Bo” Mc-Millin embracing me after Indiana University had won the Big Ten football championship the previous fall. This different glimpse of the American-in-charge in Salonika caused a stir as the magazine was passed from hand to hand for everyone in headquarters to see. A fortnight later we held a reception for some U.S. reporters and a Life photographer. Among the guests was M. W. Fodor of the Chicago Sun, then one of the leading international journalists.

The University of Thessaloniki was at that time second only to the University of Athens in importance in the country and now has grown to such preeminence that it is perhaps the most important university in Greece. I shall always remember my call at the university. It was early spring, it was cold, there was little heat indoors, and much of the university was in shambles. Nevertheless, the university senate had assembled in full regalia in the beautiful, formal senate room, where the members received me with appropriate greetings. I replied as best I could, identifying my educational background and pointing out that my visit had been enriched by association with some of their colleagues. They asked me many questions and were deeply interested in our mission’s undertaking.

Another of my treasured memories of Salonika was the spirit of youth. The apartment that Peter Topping and I shared looked out on the great esplanade on the waterfront with a full view of evening activities there. It was a custom at night for the Greek youth to parade back and forth, especially on pleasant evenings and on moonlit nights of spring. They sang songs the words of which I could not understand, but I enjoyed the melody—singing, singing, singing until the wee hours of the morning. They were probably cold and hungry, and their town was devastated, but the eternal spirit of youth that is part of the Greek heritage was expressing itself in exuberant song.

An amusing incident, which has helped me to maintain a realistic view of what is possible in international communication and to remind me that good intentions are not enough in the establishment of international harmony and peace, is worth recounting. Toward the end of our stay in Salonika, one of our young career officers came to me to say that the harbor had been cleared sufficiently to allow the docking of a freighter filled with wheat for the relief of the Yugoslavs and the Balkan region. It is to be remembered that, while the rail route through Salonika to Yugoslavia was an important supply line before the war, historically there had been great tension between the Thessalonians and the Macedonian Yugoslavs, the largest remnant of the Macedonian culture.

The officer said that the wheat would be loaded onto freight cars and on a certain day in the following week the train was to move over the rebuilt tracks to the Yugoslav border to deliver the wheat. The one workable passenger car still in the yards at Salonika was to be attached at the end of the train to carry our official personnel to the border, where there was to be a ceremony, involving the official Yugoslav personnel on the one side and the American and other international personnel on the other, to mark this important event: the delivery of the first United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) wheat. The officer stated that if I were free he would be happy to include me in the official party. As this participation seemed to offer an interesting prospect, I joined the party for the trip. While the train went chugging along through Greece, we enjoyed the beauty of the countryside and the comforts of our combination diner and parlor car, a relic of the famed Orient Express, which had operated in prewar times through Salonika.

When we arrived at the border, protected except for the actual track itself by high barbed wire, we found a great many Greeks on the Greek side and a great many Yugoslavs on the Yugoslav side. Bands on each side were trying to outplay each other. At intervals, when the bands were not playing, the Greeks would hurl insults at the Yugoslavs, and the Yugoslavs would hurl insults at the Greeks. Ironically, traditional rivalries were manifesting themselves in the midst of this dramatic gesture of international cooperation and friendship.

Just as the train pulled up to the border, a young Yugoslav colonel who had been sent down from Belgrade to greet us came into our car to check our papers. Since I had been added to the United Nations party at the last minute, the necessity of my having papers had been overlooked, or perhaps it had been assumed that I would not need any. When the Yugoslav officer, very much impressed with his authority and the importance of the occasion, found that I had no papers specifically for this event, he announced that the car could not cross to the Yugoslav side where the ceremony was to be held and the luncheon to be served. This incensed our State Department personnel, who pointed out that I was the highest ranking American official in the entourage; they had tacitly agreed that a refusal to let me participate in the ceremony would be an insult to the United States, an insult they were not prepared to accept. To ease the situation I offered to get off and mingle with the Greeks, allowing the ceremony to proceed. But the young State Department staff members—our diplomats-to-be—were as adamant as the young Yugoslav. Their indignation was all the greater because it was American wheat that the UNRRA mission was delivering for the relief of the Yugoslavs. The argument went on for at least half an hour and finally it was resolved in the following amusing fashion:

Our railroad car was pulled across the line, half resting in Yugoslavia and half remaining in Greece. The Yugoslavs sat at one end of the car and the United Nations personnel, including the Americans, sat at the other. The ceremonial speeches were given, toasts were drunk, and we enjoyed a delicious five-course luncheon. The honor of the United States was upheld, the dignity and authority of the young Yugoslav colonel were preserved, and all was sweetness and light. Afterward, a Yugoslav engine came to pull the wheat into Belgrade, and our engine returned us to Athens. This little incident out at the periphery of diplomatic and strategic events in retrospect still brings a smile.

My stay in Greece as well as the intensive briefing that I had received in Greek matters stirred the beginnings of my long love affair with Greece, its history, and its people. I gained a new appreciation of and friendship for our Greek-American colony in Bloomington. While I was in Greece I visited some members of their families.

Somehow on my returns to Greece through the years I had not managed to visit Salonika again. However, in February, 1975, after attending a meeting of the board of trustees of the American University in Cairo, I decided on the spur of the moment to stop over in Greece and spend a few days exploring what I wished to see, without notice to any friends there, even those in the American School of Classical Studies. I had visited the school on other occasions because we had established a warm bond with the staff and because some Indiana University people had worked there, but this time I wanted to visit Greece on my own terms and in my own way.

I particularly wanted to see one of our Indiana University excavations, although I knew it to be closed at this season, and I wished to revisit Salonika.

I made the trip to the excavation and relished the on-site view of the dig. I visited numerous places on my own and absorbed again—quietly, without the distraction of others—the sights and atmosphere of that beautiful land. As before, it was early spring, so early that hardly any tourists were around. In due course I flew up to Salonika and spent a long and gratifying day there. I was astonished to see that the city had been completely rehabilitated and had grown enormously; only a few old landmarks remained. It had become a handsome, modern European city. In fact, I know of no European city in which the extent and quality of its postwar rebuilding have excelled Salonika’s. There were not just fine-looking new apartment houses, business buildings, streets, beautiful parks, an impressive new university campus, and a completely rebuilt modern harbor, but also a handsomely designed new museum specializing in the antiquities that are being recovered from the archaeological excavations in that area. Greece has set a policy of establishing regional museums to receive artifacts from within each region as they are unearthed. In this setting one gains an added sense of the significance of the artifacts. The disadvantage of such a system is that, to view very many of the treasures, one must travel throughout Greece; yet, if the artifacts were all gathered in Athens they would lose something of their regional significance, and their very mass would make it difficult for the public to appreciate them in the way that smaller displays in the regional museums allow.

I found the new museum in Salonika, which I visited with a good Greek guide-driver—a young woman who had just graduated in archaeology from the University of Thessaloniki—fascinating. She was a superb interpreter of the region and intensely interested in my earlier experience there from a period that she was too young to have experienced but that she knew of from her reading. We concluded the day by a visit to the American Farm School, which was flourishing again, and to the girls’ school affiliated with it. I was delighted to see that these excellent institutions were again thriving and teaching young Greek boys and girls scientific ways of agriculture that are adaptable for the peasant farmer to use.

My initial experience in Greece not only gave me a new comprehension of the historical, political, and social forces at work in that part of the world and of what can be accomplished by peaceful diplomatic means, but also it broadened my acquaintanceship. There were, of course, new friends among the Greeks and even more among the American professional diplomatic corps and the young men and women in the U.S. Army who were later to make their careers in the diplomatic arena or in the international organizations that were then in the process of being formed. Through the years, as I have had other international experiences, I have been delighted to find from time to time acquaintances that I had made on the Greek mission serving in the United Nations Central Administration, in career positions in international organizations, and in United Nations offices elsewhere.

The Greek experience also heightened my respect for archaeology as a science and as a scholarly discipline. I think our mission could not have been successful without the knowledge that the archaeologists imparted to us about Greece, both ancient and modern. In truth, American archaeologists became our most important informational resource in observing the Greek elections. The happy outcome of this delicate and significant task represented America’s first diplomatic victory on behalf of the West in the series of Cold War events, diplomatic initiatives, and skirmishes that have characterized the period from World War II to the present between the forces of Communism and the forces of the free world.

I am sure that my own interest in and support of Indiana University’s efforts to engage in archaeological work grew in no small part out of my Greek experience. I found the Greek antiquities indescribably beautiful and awe-inspiring. Coming early in my life as this experience did, when I had had little exposure to cultures other than my own and had not traveled at all in the ancient world, it made a profound impression upon me. It helped to make me conscious of the importance of our cultural heritage from the Greeks and the necessity of preserving and protecting it.²

I also found the Greek people a joy. They are handsome, talented, vivacious, and gregarious. They have a natural love of politics; wherever two Greeks are together you can be sure that they will be engaged in an animated discussion of some matter, most likely politics. The emigres from Greece to the United States have greatly enriched our culture and have introduced into the American population structure highly desirable qualities. They have helped promote the economy, support cultural activities, and develop a vigorous professional class.

In remarks I made to the Indiana Bankers Association on May 16, 1946, shortly after resumption of my university duties, I described a moving experience I had had just before leaving Greece:

Just after we had finished our report and were waiting for a plane to bring us home, the great Missouri came to the harbor of Athens, and Admiral Hewitt gave a small reception one afternoon. We went out to that reception and when it was over we started back. Night had fallen, and as I looked up at the city of Athens, I saw that the Parthenon had been flooded with lights in honor of the Missouri’s visit. There the Parthenon stood silhouetted against the black sky. It is perhaps man’s most perfect physical expression of all that is good in him, of his eternal search for truth and beauty. There that beautiful building stood, looking down upon Athens as it has now for two thousand years—land of ancient achievement, land of promise for tomorrow!

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1. The official report of the mission concluded thus:

“The Mission finds that the proceedings of election day were orderly and satisfactory. The registration lists in large areas contained irregularities but there was no significant amount of illegal voting. Intimidation existed in some degree, from both extremes, and was even on occasion given countenance by members of the gendarmerie, but it was not extensive enough to affect seriously the election. The practice of deliberate abstention did not reach large proportions.

“The Mission therefore concludes that notwithstanding the present intensity of political emotions in Greece conditions were such as to warrant the holding of elections, that the election proceedings were on the whole free and fair, and that the general outcome represents a true and valid verdict of the Greek people.”

2. I gained a great respect for our American classical scholars and the work of the American School of Classical Studies. Late in my career as president I rejoiced at the opportunity to encourage Professor Norman Pratt, chairman of the Department of Classics, to expand into classical archaeology and accept the invitation of the University of Chicago to become a partner in the excavation of Kenchreae, one of the harbors of ancient Corinth. I recently represented Indiana University at the opening of the new regional museum at Isthmia that houses the artifacts from the excavations, including glass panels from an ancient sunken ship that represent a unique contribution of our effort.