ABSTRACT
Neutralist impulses had already been in evidence, as the prospects for the Greek effort at the UN General Assembly did not look particularly bright. Before departing from Athens in late September 1954, Archbishop Makarios questioned the expediency of ‘unconditional alignment’ with the West, and asked for a foreign policy putting Greece’s interest first.1 In late October 1954, Georgios Rossidis (1892-1981), a member of the Cyprus Ethnarchy, suggested Greece’s withdrawal from the United Nations and NATO in case that the recourse on Cyprus was rejected.2 On the eve of the debacle, Kathimerini wondered whether it would be preferable for Greece ‘to revise her policy, in accordance with the view that the United Nations existed only in order to serve certain interests and nothing else’.3 Afterwards, it suggested ‘a certain useful self-interested’ approach in foreign affairs.4 ‘Little Greece’ ought to follow the example of the Egyptians who had kicked the British out of the Suez base, argued Dimitris Myrat (1908-1991), a dramatic actor of the Athenian stage.5 Christidis dismissed the ‘panic’ of those ‘well-to-do rayahs’, who, like Theotokas, supposedly saw only two options, the defection of Greece to the Soviet bloc or ‘her submission to the commands of the two Anglo-Saxon Governments’. There was a third road, Christidis implied in true Gaullist fashion, and the Greeks ought to do their best in order to get foreigners to realize that it was in their own best interest to respect Greece’s rights.6
