What underlies this interview is an ominous jingoism. Pattakos asserts that Greece's entry into the Common Market is not as important to Greece as it is to the Common Market. He says that tourists and their money don't matter, but that they can benefit by absorbing the Olympic spirit of Greece. Greek politics during the past century and a half since Greece's independence from the Ottoman Empire has been dominated by the recurrence of the so-called Megale Idea or Great Idea-the notion that Greece will take back all the lands which were once Greek. These lands include Istanbul and Asia Minor. Although Greek military strength, particularly her naval strength, is far inferior to Turkish military might, it is not inconceivable that the junta will build up Greek forces with a view to moving coastward. Greece tried to take "the city" after World War I with disastrous results. Nothing is impossible in the Balkans.
When I was sitting in a coffee house in Athens, around the corner came a platoon of about 400 Greek school children, aged about 10 to 16, all wearing T-shirts bearing the junta emblem and marching in perfect step. It is unsettling to speculate where this excess youthful energy might be channeled.
Pattakos says that the Greeks are free to express their ideas. Another story from Greece: In the Byzantine Cafe in Athens, a customer ordered lobster, which is astakos in Greek. The waiter changed the wording slightly and ordered "Pattakos." He was jailed for three days.
Censorship of the press has been heavy and absolute. If any newspaper strays from the party line, the editors are tried or else the government makes sure that the paper no longer has the supplies it needs to continue publication. A few days ago, the junta issued an edict which imposes a three-year jail sentence and a $6500 fine for any Greek journalist, whether he writes for Greek or foreign papers, who "spreads false rumors."
After the interview, Pattakos treated us to an enormous platter of roast lamb. At dawn the next day he flew off. We were confident that Pattakos' word on our filming would be taken as law, but we were wrong. The local military authorities acted on the orders which they had received from Athens. We had already given them 200 feet of film and twelve rolls of color slides, assuring them that was all we had taken. We hid the rest of the film in the woods. Whenever they asked for more film, we simply gave them a roll of dud film which we couldn't use anyway. Every time we asked for the film, they said they would definitely return it the following day, but in fact they had sent it down to Athens for inspection. They even asked to borrow the book we were using-a 1913 edition, now out of print, of The Nomads of the Balkans -promising to return it the next day, but they sent it down to Athens for some American-paid intelligence bureaucrat to examine.
As more and more pressure was mounting against us during the weeks after Pattakos' visit, we decided that we had to finish filming as soon as possible and leave. The villagers were always kind to us and the village council even gave us all the land surrounding our tent to build a house on when we would come back the next summer. The news of this spread until it was reported on the radio in Salonika that some foreigners were planning to build a college overlooking Samarina which would enroll a thousand English students. But the local village policemen were under constant pressure to confiscate all our film. On September 8, we left Samarina in the middle of the night with all the film.
THE COLONELS have more support in remote mountain villages such as Samarina than they do in the larger towns and cities. One reason is that conditions in the countryside were largely neglected by the previous governments, which emphasized urban growth and industrial development. Many villagers are now happy that so many self-seeking politicians are either in the can or in exile. Another reason is that after Churchill excluded the Communists from the electoral process in accordance with a deal with Stalin, the Communists, who had spearheaded the resistance against the Germans, began taking desperate measures towards the end of the Greek civil war. They kidnapped children, slaughtered sheep, and murdered their opponents ruthlessly. The mountain villages were particularly hard hit, since the mountains were a bastion for the guerrillas. Many villagers who were affected by these harsh measures talk admiringly of the colonels, who are virulently anti-Communist. But even in these bastions of conservatism, the junta's support is rapidly declining. The Samarinans reacted with disgust when they heard that the military was interfering with our film, which was simply attempting to describe and
preserve their way of life. Many resent the government's massive purchase of private forests. One old man complained that his son could not find a job in Greece because he had gone to a foreign university.
The prospects for active resistance against the regime involves a Catch 22: opponents of the junta are reluctant to resist because they realize that the Sixth Fleet and the U.S. military mission in Greece is behind the colonels all the way. The U.S. is not considering changing its unqualified support of the regime until (they claim) there is some sign of resistance among the people.
The Greek people have every reason to believe that the U.S. is completely in favor of the colonels. Within days of the coup, a large sign for Latton Industries appeared in the central square in Athens. When Helen Vlachos discontinued publication of her newspaper in protest of the coup, American ambassador Phillips Talbot tried to persuade her to resume publication. C. L. Sulzgerger, chief foreign editor of the New York Times , could scarcely conceal his delight at having that rabble-rousing Andreas Papandreou silenced. The so-called embargo on heavy arms turned out to be completely bogus when it was found out that the Pentagon was selling surplus heavy arms to Greece. In any case, the "embargo" was lifted this summer for "strategic" reasons. When the Commission on Human Rights' findings that torture is a practice of the Greek government induced the Council of Europe to expel Greece from its membership, the U.S. lobbied against expulsion.
While Stylianos Pattakos owes his sudden rise to power largely to his being in the right military circle at the right time, he also has a great debt in gratitude to the U.S.A.