Generals & Parrot

"Have you any last wish?" the executioners asked Brigadier General (retired) Anastase Papoulas and General Miltiades Kimissis, sentenced to be shot for having joined in the lost rebellion of Greece's Grand Old Man Eleutherios Venizelos (TIME, March 11 et seq.). So obvious was it to everybody that the two generals' last wish was death to the victorious enemies of Venizelos, that the two did not bother to say anything. Thereupon the firing squad blew them down dead.

In his post-rebellion clean-up work, Greece's Premier Tsaldaris was caught in the dilemma that Greece is still largely Venizelist and that Venizelist-haters demand the sternest action against the late rebels. Dozens had been sentenced to long prison terms; nine generals had been cashiered for "unsatisfactory conduct" (doing nothing one way or another); scores of officials had been fired. But until last week Tsaldaris had executed no Venizelist officers.

The excuse Venizelos, "Father of the Greek Republic," gave for his rebellion was that Premier Tsaldaris was plotting to restore Greece's King George II to the throne. An obstacle to any such plot was Tsaldaris' War Minister General George Kondylis, who once said, "King George will return over my dead body." Last week, at the instigation of Premier Tsaldaris who was ill with kidney trouble, Kondylis announced that the Government is willing to let the Greek people vote on whether they want a republic or a monarchy. Greek politicians hastened to climb on the monarchist bandwagon. And George II dodged mysteriously and importantly around Paris and London, letting underlings whisper to newshawks, "The future looks much rosier."

Less adaptable than other Greeks last week was a parrot in an Athenian cafe, trained to talk in happier times and not one to forget old tricks quickly. Over and over, to everybody's horror, he kept screaming with pride, "Hurray for Venizelos! Death to his enemies!" Once this patter had earned him crackers. Last week it got him a slit throat.

Meanwhile Eleutherios Venizelos lay, broken and distrait, in a Paris clinic, far from his old sage self. He complained: "Italy let me down. If Italy had not prevented my friend, General Nicholas Plastiras, from joining me, I might today be master of Greece." Speculative this statement was, but fact it was that had Italy not given Venizelos timely sanctuary, he would now be in a position similar to that of the two silent generals.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.