By 1944 the American Administration had still stayed aloof from Greek politics with the few execeptions mentioned, including, of course, the momentous one when Roosevelt met King George. Nevertheless, US officials in Cairo even by the end of 1943 had begun recommending greater American involvement, taking the line that only the US could handle Greek matters properly. The acting American military attaché reported that ELAS and EDES, warring guerrilla bands, could be reconciled only if the King would announce that he would not return until a plebiscite had been held, which would require a change in British policy. (Just such a change had been aborted, of course, only a few days earlier by the President.) Even then, according to a State Department paper based on his report, only an American officer or an Allied mission headed by an American could effect a reconciliation in Greece.

MacVeagh, who held similar views, feared that the US would be tainted by ‘association with British schemes’ which sat uneasily, he thought, with what Americans considered to be an ‘agreed-upon program for the postwar world’. These ‘schemes’, which aimed at ‘the preservation of Empire connections', would eventually lead Britain into an unsuccessful conflict with the Soviet Union, something that could be avoided only if the Balkans were ‘reconstructed as genuinely free and friendly to both sides’. ‘Only the United States can undertake this task’, he said, adding that it should be known that ’the United States was running the job’.