Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1940-11-10
Spirit and Terrain
Of Greece 10 Halt
Foe, Newsman Says
Soldiers Do Their Jobs
With Punch and Gusto,
Reporter Discovers
By LELAND STOWE,

CHICAGO Daily News Foreign Correspondent
ATHENS, Nov. 9.-After starting
from Salonika at daybreak on
Thursday, we have just driven down
from Thermopylae, and everywhere
along our 400-mile motor route we
have found the Greeks spirits as
high as toe mountain pass where
Leonidas and his handful of men
held back the entire army of the
Persians. simultaneously, we dis
covered why MuSsolini's blitzkrieg
didn't and won't blitz.
Italy's would-be invaders can't
blitzkrieC through country which is
criss-crossed by whole series of
mountain ranges and whose narrow
passes and extremely few, serpen-
timing roads are guarded by large
determined Greek forces.
Even in light car it required
nearly 10 hours to cross two ranges
in Central Greece, but both the
mountains and the roads are much
more formidable along the Albanian
wi 1uOlCONCly QUILL
ways as exist can repeatedly be bar
ricaded and fortified by the defend
ers in the rocky passes.
Are a Fighting People.
You need take only one good look
at the topography OF the Greek in
terror to realize that no modern
mechanical army whether Italian,
or not, has yet attempted to invade
a country whose terrain is so fort
ress-like by nature. 1t is true that
Norway resembled Greece in this
respect, but the Norwegians are not
in the slightest degree similar to
the Greeks in their combative elan.
Here Mussolini has run head on
into a fighting people as well as
mountains.
1t should betray no military Sc
crets to give some general impress
sions gathered on the trip taken
by Edmund Stevens Of the Chris
tan Science Monitor and myself,
especially since, except for Russell
Hill of the New York Herald Tri-
bune, we are the only foreign cor
respondents who have motored from
the Bulgarian frontier to Athens
since the Italo-Greek war began.
We we're surprised by an efficiency
and discipline in the air raid pre-
cautions which was highly reminis-
cent of the Firms under similar cir
cumstances.
Troops in Good Spirits.
We have seen soldiers on the move
everywhere doing their jobs with
punch ana gusto. We have seen
great numbers of trucks going places
where they will be most useful. We
have seen roads cleared and every
thing going through without hitch,
regardless of herds of sheep, goats
or donkeys, regardless of daylight
or darkness.
Sometimes truckloads of singing
troops roared by. Once a soldier
rode past standing beside a mounted
machine gun, singing at the top of
his voice. Sometimes ambulances
ground upward around dozens of
curves. Everywhere it seems like
a nation in motion and everywhere
men are smiling, cheering or work.
ing unstintingly. Perhaps it was
more surprising that we never once
found the roads clogged or traffic
damned, and this is true measure
of Italy's complete failure to block
or prevent the Greeks self-defenSe
activities.
Despite air raids on Salonika and
other centers, it is certain that
Italian aviation has failed to strike
military detectives in Northern and
Central Greece, and that the Greeks
have kept their communications
open without even temporary inter
ruptions. Whatever the Italian
bombers may attempt in the future,
it seems unquestionable that the
Greeks have made enormous gains
by moving with desperate speed from
the moment the invasion was an
nounced.
Costs Italians Dearly.
Win IL Gays not utilized TO the
limit, the observer must conclude
that the Italians incapacity to blitz
has already cost them very dearly.
Curiously enough, it has been the
Greeks who have moved with light
ming speed,
1t is also striking that the Greeks
military police already exercise the
strictest control of civilian travel
along all highways. Automobiles not
only are halted entering and leav-
ing towns but sometimes every few
miles along empty stretches of road.
Greek buck privates frequently
stopped our car and demanded our
papers simply because they were so
anxious to do their full patriotic
duty and were taking no chances
with foreigners.
You soon get the feeling that the
Greeks are in this up to the hilt
and 1t is no wonder that II Duce's
blitzkrieg begged down at the start
Long before reaching the heights of
Thermopylae you conclude that our
contemporary Persians also have
made an awful mistake in under
estimating the Greeks
tcopyright' 1910 by Chicago Daily News.