Greece: The Besieged King

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But in times of trouble, Greeks have always looked to their king for spiritual unity. Such was the case after World War II, when the country faced economic ruin and a bloody civil war between the Greek government and Communist guerrillas supplied from neighboring Red-ruled countries. Greeks voted 2 to 1 in a plebiscite to call back George II from his wartime exile in London and to restore his throne. Though George died in 1947, his brother Paul, who succeeded him, traveled the breadth of the peninsula with his German-born wife Frederika, rallying support for the government. They went to the battlefront in Jeeps, crossed mountains on muleback and even took meals with the peasants in the countryside. The U.S. poured in $300 million in aid under the Truman Doctrine, and General James Van Fleet went to Greece to advise the military. Thus, it was in the Greek hills that the West first blew the whistle on the spread of Communism.

Kingly Profession. King Paul felt that he had not had sufficient training for his duties; when his son Constantine was born in 1940, he spoke of preparing him for the specialized profession of "kingship." When he was six, young "Tino," as the family called him, was sent off to a spartan private school. He later spent time at each of the nation's three military academies and tasted the medicine of army discipline. "I bitterly cursed it at the time," he said later on, "but you're grateful for it all." At home, Constantine got more royal treatment, was even allowed to listen when his father talked with the politicians. "I used to sit in the corner," he remembers. "During the time the visitor was there, I was not allowed to say a word. When he left, my father would explain to me what they had been saying."

When Paul died in 1964 and Constantine graduated to the throne, many feared that the young King, who has said about his family that "we always used to work as a team," would be under the sway of the Queen Mother. But young Constantine soon showed that he had considerable toughness. He decided that his job was not for a puppet or a figurehead, and that he would have to reign as his family had before him—within the constitutional rights of the monarchy but with the strength and determination of a modern king. In fact, the Greek King has considerably more constitutional powers than most kings. He is the supreme authority of the state and commander in chief of the armed forces, concludes treaties and declares war, convokes and dissolves Parliament and appoints and dismisses ministers.

Mass Transfer. It is these powers that started the chain of trouble in which King Constantine found himself enmeshed last week. It began with the downfall of the conservative government of Constantine Karamanlis, who brought considerable stability to Greece for eight years even though his foes claimed that his elections were shams. A sweeping electoral victory in 1964 brought to power George Papandreou, the velvet-tongued leftist who has carved his image in Greek political life for a half century.