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Next day EOKA, the right-wing underground terrorist outfit, issued its own communique. The EOKA announcement: it had hanged two British soldiers—Corporals Gordon Hill and Ronnie Shilton—in reprisal. The word was spread in leaflets scattered through Nicosia. EOKA warned: "We shall answer hanging with hanging and torture with torture." British troops caught one 19-year-old handing out the leaflets, shot him dead as he tried to run.
Building Resentment. Thus Cyprus' tragedy deepened, as relentlessly and starkly as if Aeschylus had written it, and mere humans could not change it. To the British the hanged Cypriots were terrorists; to the Greeks they were martyrs.
Athenian authorities ordered a marble plaque put up renaming the Athens street fronting the British embassy "Karaolis-Demetriou Street." A Cretan merchant offered a $300,000 reward for Sir John Harding's head, to match Harding's offer of $30,000 for information leading to the capture of Colonel George Grivas, the British-trained ex-Greek army officer reputed to head EOKA.
And the Manchester Guardian was reminded of a parallel: "In 1916 we shot the leaders of the Easter Rebellion. By 1921 more Irishmen than ever were fighting us in the name of Pearse and Connolly, and the resentment which our action aroused has not died away."
Many Britons asked themselves last week whether it was not time to go back and offer genuine democratic self-government to the Cypriots. Britain has long acknowledged that Cyprus is Greek; the great 19th century statesman, William Ewart Gladstone, said he hoped that before his long life ended he might see union of Cyprus with the Greeks. The policy of ironhanded repression, instead of deterring from violence, has justified it; it has inflamed the Cypriot nationalists, endangered Karamanlis' pro-Western government in Greece, damaged NATO ties, raddled feelings between Turk and Greek, and pinned down in distasteful duty the regiments whose instant readiness to fly to Middle East danger spots was supposed to be Britain's main reason for hanging on to the Cyprus base.
A Way Out. Britain's get-tough policy on Cyprus began abruptly last March within a week after the unceremonious ouster of Britain's Glubb Pasha from Jordan. Sir Anthony Eden and his imperial advisers decided to consolidate their hold on Cyprus at all costs, to defend their threatened position in the Middle East oil zone. This ugly situation jeopardizes NATO, which seeks new tasks for itself; yet NATO has sought to avoid trouble by ignoring it. Belgium's Foreign Minister Paul-Henri Spaak has proposed that NATO step in to supervise Cyprus' future self-determination, and at the same time see that the Greeks (who would undoubtedly win) give protective guarantees to the island's 20% Turk minority. Britain's needs in Cyprus would be amply served by a long-term lease guaranteeing free use of the sizable air, troop and naval base they are now building on the Episkopi Bay; NATO could underwrite a Greek guarantee so that Britain need not fear that one concession would lead to another, as in Egypt when the British were driven from the Suez Canal Zone.