GREECE'S STEADY MAN

A democrat from the land where democracy was born and the word coined, Premier Constantine Karamanlis of Greece arrives in Washington this week for talks with President Kennedy.

A handsome, husky man at 54, Karamanlis is something of an outsider among Greek politicians. He does not come from the tight little circle of Athens families who have traditionally run Greece. Instead, he is the son of a schoolteacher from Macedonia, which Athens sophisticates consider Endsville. But Karamanlis has restored order to Greece's turbulent postwar politics, and stability to its economy. In his six years as Prime Minister, he has built a modern highway network that connects Athens and Salonica with hundreds of villages that once were far from the main drag, brought electricity to hundreds of thousands of Greeks who never had known anything but candles, got the shipyards going, and brought strength to the nation's banks. Today Greece's drachma for once commands confidence at home and abroad. Tourists who once chose Italy or France now flock to enjoy the thin sun, sail out to the Aegean islands, and scramble around the magnificent rubble of the Acropolis.

Karamanlis got his first Cabinet post (the Labor ministry) in 1946, when postwar Greece was desperately weak and struggling with a Communist-run rebellion. He stayed in Cabinet posts--for a long time as the energetic Minister of Public Works--while first Britain, then the U.S. stepped in to prevent a complete Communist takeover. When Greece's military boss and strongman Prime Minister, Field Marshal Alexander Papagos, died in 1955, Karamanlis took over the government, has since been confirmed in power twice by thumping majorities of his own.

A man of few words, Karamanlis is the idol of Greece's peasantry, draws fire from Greek left-wingers for his unflinching loyalty to NATO. When Greek tempers flared against the British during the long Cyprus crisis, Karamanlis resisted intemperate demands for a break with Britain, and his moderation contributed heavily to the final settlement. Karamanlis is an outspoken supporter of the Western side in such places as Laos, where, he insists, "the Soviets are just playing with us. They start something here, they start something there. The time has come to make a stand."

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