The book emphasizes the all, pervading fear, throughout Greece, and among all sections of the population, fear of right and left extremists within the country, and fear of possible Slavic invasion from the north. Underlying this fear, and to a considerable degree responsible for it, is the grinding poverty of the people. In the countryside the peasantry is being squeezed by the scarcity of good land and the lack of capital to buy fertilizer and machinery.