The Resolute Hand

Behind shuttered windows in a villa outside Athens, doctors fought for the future of Greece. Tuberculosis, contracted in Nazi concentration camps, had finally struck down aging (71) Field Marshal Alexander Papagos. For months the news was played down while the ailing Premier directed affairs of state through deputies. The resolute hand that had steered Greece through the last three years was needed in a new crisis. U.S. economic aid was dwindling, the country was in a bitter mood about Cyprus, and Greek Communists were pushing for a popular front. But one night last week, life ebbed from the bedridden Papagos, leaving Greece adrift in a sea of irresolution.

More than once Alexander Papagos had rescued his country from political dissension. A ramrod-backed cavalry officer, he was educated at a Belgian military academy and first served his King and country in the Balkan War, curtain raiser to World War I. A royalist to the tip of his long, aristocratic nose, he went into exile in 1918 after King Constantine was deposed, but a couple of years later came back as a staff officer. After taking part in the campaign against Turkey, he was bounced from the army for joining a plot to restore the monarchy under George II, Constantine's son. But in 1935 he took a leading part in a coup d'etat which got George II back his crown by means of a fake plebiscite. Said Papagos: "The only unethical act of my career." Years later he had to lecture one of George II's successors on the limitations of the royal prerogative: "Sir," complained haughty young Frederika, wife of King Paul, "you forget who the Queen is." Replied Papagos softly, bowing low: "Your Majesty forgets who made you Queen."

The Right Man. When Mussolini's legions rolled into Greece in 1940, Greek Chief of Staff Papagos in a black leather, ankle-length coat, cigarette in hand, went to the snowbound front to deploy his units. To the delight of the democratic world, his small, tough army whipped the Italians. Hitler delayed his attack on the U.S.S.R. and sent crack divisions to Mussolini's rescue; for three weeks Papagos and his evzones fought the Germans until overwhelming odds made him end the battle "to prevent Greece from being devastated." The Germans sent him to a VIP military prison in Germany. Here, to relieve the tedium, he gave a lecture to fellow prisoners in which he forecast an Allied victory. He was sent off to Oranienburg concentration camp, later to Dachau.

Papagos was court chamberlain when in 1948 General George Catlett Marshall went to Athens to see what could be done to stop the Communist guerrilla army driving down from the north. "What you need," Marshall told King Paul, "is a supreme commander with enough gumption to lay down the law. You've got the right man here--Papagos." In six months Commander in Chief Papagos, with U.S. arms aid and the friendly advice of a U.S. team under General James Van Fleet, had licked the Communists.

From the Deathbed. Three times Papagos refused the premiership, then in 1951, disgusted at King Paul's political bungling, he resigned his command job. A bunch of top army officers surrounded the royal palace, occupied all government offices and invited him to take over. Papagos brusquely disowned them. The same year he formed his Greek Rally party, began fighting the democratic way ("De Gaulle wants to change the French constitution with more power for the executive. My purpose is to defend our constitution against all trespassers"). In the 1952 election the Greek Rally swept the polls. After having had 26 governments in six years, Greece at last had a stable administration. It remained substantially so until Papagos fell ill last January and control slipped slowly from his fingers.

Only two hours before Papagos' death, his lieutenants forwarded to King Paul a letter designating Second Vice Premier and Foreign Minister Stephanos Stephanopoulos, a Rally party faithful, as his political heir. But the King pulled a surprise, chose tall, dark and handsome Constantine Karamanlis, 48, a minor member of Papagos' Cabinet, to be Premier.

Karamanlis had filled five Cabinet posts since 1935, built a popular following in his most recent, Minister of Public Works, but was not considered an influence within the dominant Rally party. The new Premier drew on the Rally party for his new Cabinet and said he would try to form a "permanent administration." But opposition groups immediately threatened to resign from Parliament unless he called for early elections. Much neutralist feeling was sweeping through Greece, and some doubted that the Greek Rally could long outlive its creator.

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