High Lights

Despatches from Athens etched the Greek scene sharply last week.

Olympus. Forgotten Homeric deities may well have laughed as the militant and ungracious Dictator of Greece, General Pangalos, assumed the style of a respectful cavalier and escorted Lady Austen Chamberlain, ever tactful wife of the British Foreign Secretary, up the slopes of Mount Olympus.

Indemnity. Bulgarians grudgingly admitted that Dictator Pahgalos was at least prompt when 15 million leva ($110,000) passed from Athens to Sofia last week as the second half of the indemnity awarded by the Council of the League of Nations, as arbiter of the Greco-Bulgar frontier clash (TIME, Nov. 9 et seq.). The payment was made eleven days before due.

Cliff. A cliff (unnamed) was shaken from a mountainside at a place (unstated) in the Peloponnesus by an earthquake tremor, which registered on various foreign seismographs. The detached fragments of rock struck a Greek railroad train, obliterated three coaches and many of their occupants.

Plastiras. Onetime Dictator Plastiras, exiled foe and perpetual rival in conspiracy of Dictator Pangalos (TIME, March 1), turned up at Skoplje, Jugoslavia, and wandered out among its environs "to look for a villa." Several Jugoslavian policemen drifted out in the same direction. When Plastiras attempted to escape toward the Greek frontier they closed in and firmly escorted him back to Skoplje. The Jugoslavian authorities declared that they are offering to Colonel Plastiras "the hospitality due a political exile."

He, of course, wishes to escape to his friends in Greece, there to overthrow the dictature of Pangalos. Per contra, Pangalos and others of his Greek enemies have been attempting to extradite him back into Greece, with the idea of trying and shooting him for "high treason"--against whom or what it is scarcely clear, since Pangalos himself is a decidedly supra-constitutional usurper.

Submarines. It was announced that six submarines built for the Greek Government are now practically complete at the St. Nazaire shipyards on the Loire (France), and that contracts have been approved for two Greek "super-submarines." Observers recalled the words of Dictator Pangalos (TiME, Jan. 11) : "Greece in a few months will have a fleet dominating the eastern basin of the Mediterranean!"