THE GREEK LEFT WING
Sit,—Mr. Richard Capell's letter on Greece in your issue of December 27th is inaccurate in more than one respect. He says that the present Greek Parliament represents about 7o per cent. of the electorate. But according to the Allied Observers only 1,105,510 votes were cast by an adult male population of 2,032,000. Thus the percentage of the electorate who voted was just over 5o per cent., which is just over 25 per cent, of the total adult population. The fact that the present Parliament is unrepre- sentative is also borne out by the public declarations of the Liberal Premier, Sofoulis, before the election, that a fair election was impossible owing to the Right-wing terror.
Mr. Capell accuses Mr. Harold Nicolson and Mr. Sofianopoulos of being "inexact " in referring to " the Centre Left-wing parties as having boycotted the elections of last spring." But it is Mr. Capell who is inexact. The elections were boycotted by all parties to the left of the Sofoulis Liberals, and at least 13 members of the Government resigned prior to the elections, calling on their parties to abstain. Not one of these Ministers was a Communist. On the question of the fulfilment of the Varkiza Agreement, the fact is that specific quantities of arms were mentioned in the agreement and were surrendered by the Left as agreed. But an amnesty was also agreed upon at Varkiza which, as the British Legal Mission has pointed out, has never been operated.
Finally, as to the reasons for Mr. Sofianopouloi's resignation after San Francisco: On his return to Greece he stated both privately and publicly that a broad coalition government was essential to solve Greece's internal and external problems. When he found that there was no intention to
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