GREECE: Spitework

“Hurrah for the King! Hurrah! Hurrah!” shouted most members of Greece’s new Chamber of Deputies last week as they stepped up one by one to take the following oath:

I swear in the name of the Holy Trinity that I will be true to the Nation, to the Parliamentary Republic and to the federal laws, and that I will conscientiously fulfill my duties.

This oath does not mean what it says, wily Premier Panayoti Tsaldaris was at pains to explain. The deputies, mostly henchmen of Premier Tsaldaris’ so-called Government Party, were elected by Greeks who suspected M. Tsaldaris of being secretly Royalist but thought they could trust him to uphold the Greek Republic 53 demanded by the official oath. Explaining it glibly away, last week Royalist Tsaldaris declared: “The words ‘Parliamentary Republic’ do not need to be changed because a Republican Government is not necessarily without a King.” The Tsaldaris Government next decided that between Sept. 22 and 29, Greeks will vote in a nationwide plebiscite whether to equip their Republic with a Throne and set a King upon it or leave seedy old Alexander Zaimis alone as President of Greece.

Not necessarily would the King for whom so many hurrahs were shouted last week be Greece’s deposed George II (“Gorgeous Georgios”) who lives in London the life of a sportsman-about-town and insists “I have never abdicated. Mark my words, I shall again be King of the Greeks.” Many Greeks would prefer to see British George V’s youngest son, the Duke of Kent, invited by the Athenian Parliament to become King Georgios III, his wife Marina being that most popular of Greek royalties. Thus last week Marina’s Cousin Georgios II had need of what every doubtful candidate requires, a good & loving wife. Notoriously he has the opposite, and last week ex-Queen Elizabeth of Greece proceeded deliberately to embarrass her Gorgeous Georgios as much as she could by causing the following to be inserted among ordinary court notices at Bucharest, where her buck-toothed Brother Carol is King of Rumania:

“His Majesty King George of Greece, now residing in the Grand Hotel, London, is summoned to Bucharest to answer proceedings for divorce on the grounds of unfaithfulness and desertion.”

Friends of Gorgeous Georgios retorted that so far as faithfulness is concerned Elizabeth is well known to be keeping a “Secretary,” handsome Alexander Szanavy. Since her union with Georgios II was childless, they added, it will be just as well for His Majesty to return unencumbered to the Throne and pick a more fruitful Queen. Few days later Elizabeth and her M. Szanavy, with Carol and his Mme Lupescu, celebrated in high spirits the granting of the divorce by Rumania’s Appeal Court.

In Athens, meanwhile, a Royalist deputy introduced a bill to pay 1,000,000 drachmas ($9,500) to any Greek who assassinates the exiled “Father of the Greek Republic,” famed Eleutherios Venizelos. In Paris the bodyguard of M. Venizelos was instantly doubled. Summoning reporters, M. Venizelos dipped frequently into a Greek-English and English-Greek dictionary to find epithets vehement enough to denounce Georgios and the Royalists.

“It is sad that at my age I must continue to watch over Greek liberties!” shrilled 71-year-old M. Venizelos, his famed skull cap jerking back & forth on his bald head, to rest now on his neck, now on the bridge of his nose. “I had announced my retirement, but if the ex-King dares to return, I shall return to the political arena, resolved to save my country from the tyranny of a royalist dictatorship.”