Office of the Historian

868.20/5–347: Telegram

The Ambassador in Greece (MacVeagh) to the Secretary of State

confidential
Athens, May 3, 1947—noon.

620. Department will have observed from my telegrams 606, April 30 and 618, May 21 that, while Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs have agreed with me as to inexpediency of proposing any permanent army increase at this time, there is still the question of a temporary army increase which would be brought about by recruiting of 30,000 for relief of older age groups (considered justified from military standpoint by MA, see Embassy’s telegram 570, April 242) as well as the question of augmenting gendarmerie by 6,000 (Embassy’s telegram 599, April 293 and previous). On these specific proposals perhaps Department will be good enough to instruct me. Meanwhile, [Page 160] British Charge has been instructed to inform Greek Government that British Government would “deprecate” such steps before official US views on matter are known.

In this connection, Chargé explains privately that in opinion of British FonOff it is duty of UK to “hold the fort” until US takes over here in order to prevent our being faced with fait accompli. He has promised to provide Embassy in next few days with estimate of cost of proposed increases, but believes off-hand that additional expenditure for temporary army increase alone might be as much as 100 billion drachmas (20 million dollars at official rate). Patterson (now returned from Turkey) states that he and Gregory feel that proposed army and gendarmerie increases would be “extremely dangerous” and possibly “disastrous” from financial viewpoint. He adds that Currency Committee has not been approached on matter by Greek Government, except for Prime Minister’s unofficial remark to Gregory, but that it could not in any case consider question of such magnitude without prior clarification of official US attitude.

MacVeagh
  1. Latter not printed; it stated that on May 1 Ambassador MacVeagh had urged Foreign Minister Tsaldaris “that there be no more official talk of increasing army numerically” and “that strict financial economy be observed in this critical period.” (868.00/5–247)↩
  2. Not printed; but see footnote 1, p. 152.↩
  3. Not printed.↩