The Marshal Resigns

For more than a year, since the decisive defeat of the Communist rebels, the free world has not worried much about Greece. Last week it was time to worry again. Field Marshal Alexander Papagos, who with U.S. help defeated the Reds and put backbone into the Greek army, resigned from active service.

The story behind the rumor-shrouded resignation:

Papagos, at 68, is Greece's No. 1 military hero (he beat the Italians in 1940), an ardent royalist and disciplinarian. But for the past six months the hawk-nosed commander's loyalty to King Paul has tangled with his belief in military discipline. Trouble started over a crony of the King's, one Aristides Metaxas,* a suave, impeccably dressed political aide. A military court had passed a death sentence on a Communist collaborator, a wealthy merchant who donated money to the Reds. The collaborator's relatives asked Metaxas to intervene. Soon thereafter the King commuted the death penalty to five years. Outraged, Papagos let the King know that the palace ought not to undermine his court-martial, asked for Metaxas' dismissal. The King, as proud and sensitive a man as Papagos, refused. U.S. Ambassador John E. Peurifoy rushed into the breach, got the King to send Metaxas off for a vacation.

But Papagos was not satisfied: he wanted the final say on all official appointees to the royal household. The King ignored him. Then word came that Metaxas, visiting the U.S., was spreading propaganda against Papagos. Last week, in a huff, Papagos resigned. His official reason: ill health.

The field marshal's walkout shocked the army. Two infantry companies surrounded Parliament and Radio Athens, tried to impose military censorship. But Athens, by & large, remained quiet. Papagos himself told the soldiers to return to barracks, and the King took over Papagos' title of commander in chief.

Ambassador Peurifoy, in the U.S. on a visit, hastily flew back to Athens, tried again to patch up the quarrel between the country's two foremost men. There was danger that, without Papagos, the U.S.-trained-and-equipped Greek army--an important weapon in the West's defenses against Red aggression--might fall apart.

*No kin to Greece's late Dictator John Metaxas.

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