The Nome Daily Nugget

GREEK NAVY
RESUMES
INDEPENDENT
STATUS

Special Correspondence A. P.

ATHENS.—The Greek flag has again been raised over the Greek navy. Greek officers and crews are aboard and the navy has resumed its independent status after a year of merger with the Entente fleets. This applies to the twenty-two warships of the light squadron, consisting of destroyers, gunboats and light cruisers, and also to the battleships, chief of which are the Lemnos and Kilkis, formerly the American battleships Idaho and Mississippi, says an Associated Press report of Sept. 21.

This change back to Greek control is one of the results of the recent Balkan conference at Paris, when the allied military and naval activities were confined to the Saloniki region, while the new Venizelos regime was strengthened by entrusting to it the military and naval control of lower Greece. The Entente troops were rapidly withdrawn from all these southern sections, and at the same time the Entente crews turned over the warships to their Greek commanders.

It was last October that ex-King Constantine's military and naval activities were considered by the Entente allies as such a menace in the rear of their Saloniki expedition that allied control should be applied. On the light squadron there was a change of flags and crews, and the ships went to Saloniki where they joined the allied squadron. The battleships Lemnos and Kilkis remained at the arsenal near here, but had some of the vital parts removed so as to render them incapable of doing any damage by the government then in control.

A crowd of several thousand Greek officers and their partisans gathered in front of the American legation at the time, trying to have the American minister intervene, which he strenuously refused to do as being a matter entirely outside his functions. The American authorities are satisfied this demonstration was planned by the then existing government for political effect, to create the impression that American sympathy was against the Entente allies. It failed of that effect and thereafter the delegations of agitators had to bear a request from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs before being received at the American legation.

Now that the navy is again in Greek hands there is prospect that the light squadron may play a considerable role against the submarine activities of Central Powers in the eastern Mediterranean and the Aegean. It is said that more losses have occurred in this section than in any field of submarine activity, but chiefly in coasting vessels. The Greek naval patrol is very active, not only against the submarines, but in seeking out the main base where they hide among the islands and take on their supplies of gasoline and food.