GREECE: Briskly Back from Britain

George II, King of the Hellenes, was back in Greece last week to ascend for the third time his country’s throne.* Although he is a third-generation Greek king by birth, the King (full name: George Schleswig-Holstein Sonderburg-Glücksburg) still speaks Greek with a heavy foreign accent.

At London’s airport King George kissed his pretty cousin Marina, Duchess of Kent, and shook hands with Archbishop Strenopoulos Germanos. Then a big British Lancaster bore him off to his strife-torn kingdom.

Not so gay was the arrival at Eleusis airport. The plane was ahead of schedule. Archbishop Damaskinos, the hulking Regent, and Constantin Tsaldaris, the choleric Premier, were nowhere in sight. Said the King to minor officials who received him: “I’m sorry that I don’t recognize all of you, but I extend my greetings.” Several correspondents and newsmen, who would have liked to talk to the King, were detained in an airport building by an armed guard. When Damaskinos and Tsaldaris finally arrived, out of breath, King George was whisked aboard a destroyer, where he spent the night.

Next day he made his formal entrance into Athens. The day was bright, but, as the King stepped ashore, a small cloud veiled the sun. George looked up nervously. There was delay while elaborate security preparations were completed (no flower-throwing, no rooftop rubbering). Then, while thousands cheered and cannon boomed 101-gun salutes, the King drove through the streets, laid a wreath on the tomb of Greece’s Unknown Soldier, attended a Te Deum Mass.

Sullen but Resigned. Liberals, Socialists and leftist republicans were sullen but resigned. Communists, who were already fighting in the north, were verbally ferocious, but nonviolent. The Government charged that Communist-led guerrillas in the north were being armed from Yugoslavia, Albania and Bulgaria, and that foreign military units were operating on Greek soil. Premier Tsaldaris called it war. The British said they would intervene only at the Government’s request —but they shipped in more troops from Egypt and Palestine.

In Thessaly, TIME Correspondent Robert Low reported, “Communists staged their biggest operation to date. Four bands, each about 500 strong and well equipped, converged from four widely separated points in the mountains down into the town of Deskate, overran a company of Greek Army soldiers and a platoon of gendarmerie, inflicting heavy casualties, and finally captured the town. It took the Army, with all the force it could muster, three days to recapture the town, and even then they failed to encircle the bands, which retired, followed by 160 inhabitants of the town. They took with them a large stock of UNRRA supplies, including 3,000 blankets and hundreds of cases of food.”

* First time, 1922; second time, 1935.