Newspaperman: Inside the News Business at The Wall Street Journal

CHAPTER 7Greece and Turkey

ARRIVING IN ATHENS, I checked into the stately but tired-looking Hotel Grande Bretagne, on Syntagma Square across from the Parliament Building. There were few guests in the lobby. Dinner was unavailable until late in the evening, the customary Mediterranean dining hour of the time. The large formal dining room was almost empty. It was winter, Greece had been worn down by German occupation and then civil war, and it clearly was not a time for tourists.

I called on Greek government officials and businessmen and the American ambassador and other embassy diplomats and military officers, toured the Acropolis and Agora, climbed the hills north of the city in the chill December air, and then a few days later took off in a ...