REVOLUTION IN GREECE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19415, 25 August 1926, Page 10

REVOLUTION IN GREECE.

Greece has a weakness for revolutions. They have occurred in this generation, on an average, every third year! Their habit, moreover, is to come with dramatic suddenness. The dictator of one day may be declared an outlaw on the next. He knows it,-and therefore spares no pains to make the,most of the brief authority he enjoys. Probably his very eagerness to make a virtue of this necessity has usually rendered all the more certain his own overthrow. So Greece has gone from one regime to another with almost abandon, certainly with no clear consciousness of any deep principles. Those who have said that the national sport of Greece is politics meant no compliment to Greece, nor did they pay any to either sport or politics. There have of late been many Greek politicians, but they have been frankly opportunist, and they, have been more bent on realising their own personal ambitions than on helping Greece to realise herself. General Theodore Pangalos; the dictator now dramatically deposed, belongs to this unillustrious order, and between him and his successful rival, General George Kondylis,' there is but difference without distinction. The two were for a while comrades in arms and intrigue. Last year their differences matured, and when Pangalos organised a military coup d'etat and took over the/government he beat his whilom colleague, then organising a similar coup, by a few hours only.. Now Kondylis has his turn. Pangalos took political command with a flourish of trumpets. He dissolved Parliament as useless, saying it,did not represent the people. He called together the leaders of diverse parties, including even extreme Royalists and extreme Republicans, and persuaded them to declare with apparent unanimity that Greece should always, be a republic. But what he had in mind was a military dictatorship, and in a few months he> set aside all arrangements for elections and voided the republican Constitution. His Ministers wefa merely• junior officers under, .orders, and just as he had formerly addressed Parliament, when he was Minister of War, in the blunt colourful language of the.barracks, so he proceeded, to .utter, violent commands brooking no disobedience. He left others no choice but either to carry out his orders or eliminate him* They . have . made up their minds, but the man now at the head of the country's military rulers may find that mind no less fickle than Pangalos well, knows. it to be. Today Pangalos is denounced by the populace of. Athens as the violator of the people's sacred rights ; ) tomorrow, another outburst, inspired by fresh conspirators, may send Kondylis back to the prison from which Pangalos liberated him a few months ago. *