CYPRUS AFTER FIFTY YEARS
By KENNETH WILLIAMS
TO the not often posed question of whether the island of Cyprus is in Europe or in Asia not many Britons are able to provide an answer based on certitude. To the frequently posed question of whether the island should be detached from the British Empire and incorporated in Greece perhaps more Britons are capable of giving an ansewr, though this, again, may not be based on certitude. To the question of whether Cyprus is in the Near or the Middle East, however, answer is now largely irrelevant, for if President Truman's declaration in favour of supporting Greece and Turkey is sanctioned by Congress, and fully implemented, the already blurred lines between Near East and Middle East will, de facto if not de jure, be obliterated. The President's policy raises a comprehensive umbrella for both Near and Middle East. What rains may fall, blown by a northerly wind, on that umbrella, is one of those hypothetical problems which make the present one of the most pregnant times in the history of the Mediterranean and of the neighbourhood of the Mediterranean, if not of the whole world.
Britain's standpoint on Cyprus has passed through various stages, varying from almost complete apathy to a lively interest in the welfare of the Greek-speaking and the Turkish inhabitants. Begin- ning with the Turks' cession of the island in 1878 to Britain, in return for a promise from Britain in respect of the Turks' north- eastern provinces of Kars and Ardahan, and also as a guarantee of
decent Turkish treatment of the Armenians, British Administration of Cyprus has been subject to vicissitudes natural enough, perhaps, in a country whose ultimate future was, at any rate until 1925, when it was formally proclaimed a colony, uncertain. In any case, it has not been until the last decade or so that Britain has shown in Cyprus much of that missionary zeal, that drive for better standards of living, which has characterised her record in certain other colonies.
True, Cyprus was used during the first world war, but not in a strictly military sense. The main value of the island then lay in the minerals extracted from it for war purposes. Between the wars,
little enough was done to develop the island as an outpost of Empire. Despite, however, the preoccupation of a large section of its in- habitants with the movement known as ENOSIS, there was never any virulently anti-British feeling, and Cypriots were among the first colonial volunteers for the British during the second world war. That war, in which Greece played a part the precise value of which only detailed historical investigation can determine—but :n any case it was a magnificent effort by a high-souled people—raised the hopes of immense numbers of the Greek-speaking inhabitants of Cyprus that, with the arrival of peace, their dreams of becoming as much a part of Greece as, say, the Ionian Islands or Crete, might be realised. Those hopes, as has been made clear from recent dis- cussion between a Cypript mission in London and the Colonial Secretary, have for the time being been dashed. Britain has decided, not on the political union of Cyprus with Greece, but rather on the progressive development, materially, socially and politically, of Cyprus, the inference being that in time autonomy may be conferred.
But the question which forces itself to the front now is: Will this latest decision on Cyprus be modified by President Truman's declaration on Greece and Turkey? It might have been said, before that declaration, that, from the point of view of world politics, it would be unwise to take Cyprus out of the hands of a Great Power and give it to a weak, though most gallant, Balkan nation. It might have been said that the territorial position of Britain in the Near and Middle East—with the evacuation of Egypt and uncertainty in Palestine—was so problematical that, to achieve some balance in the Eastern Mediterranean, it was essential that Britain should retain Cyprus. I•t might have been said that those who wanted to treat the problem of Cyprus as if it existed in vacuo were simply living in a world of dreams.
Here, it is relevant to recall that Britain twice, not once, as is generally thought, contemplated offering Cyprus to Greece. Every student is aware that, in 1915, Sir Edward Grey made this offer, which was contingent upon the immediate entry into the war, on the Allied side, of the then distracted Greece; every student is aware that that condition was not fulfilled, and that, in fact, the Allies had, in the following year, to force Greece into the war. But very few students indeed are aware that there was a previous willingness by British statesmen to offer Cyprus to Greece. In 1912, Mr. Churchill, studying the Balkan wars, became convinced that there would be a greater war, involving both large and small States, within a few years. About the Allied prospects in the Western Mediterranean he was happy enough. But Britain wanted, he said, bases farther east than Malta, for use against the contingency of trouble in the Adriatic and Eastern Mediterranean. What, he asked, about Greece's lending Corfu for this purpose? That proved impossible, owing to an international convention governing the recession to Greece of the Ionian Islands. A pity, said Churchill, because for the rights of user in that island we should be willing to give Cyprus to Greece. In that case, replied the Greeks, we sug- gest you consider the possibilities of Cephalonia, which has in Argostoli a harbour fully capable of accommodating all that you require for safeguarding the Adriatic. Subsequent investigation by the Admiralty confirmed the Greeks' estimate of the port's potentiali- ties. It so happened, however, that Venizelos at that time was occupied with other claims on behalf of Greece, and before this Cyprus issue could be settled, the first world war had broken out.
Now, though it does not necessarily follow that the British estimate of the strategic significance or possibilities of Cyprus in the first two decades of this century has been preserved unmodified to this day, one is bound to wonder if the future Anglo-American programme and aspirations in the Near and Middle East will suggest any change in the political regime in Cyprus. The new Governor, Lord Winster, will doubtless have to consider things from angles which his pre- decessors in offices were seldom, if ever, concerned with, and he is likely to have to set Cyprus in something like a world perspective. After fifty years in Cyprus, the British must look not backwards to the romance and tangles of the past, but forwards through the mists to the future.
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