GREECE: Triantafyllopoulosism

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What is high treason? The learned and venerable Professor Triantafyllppoulos, Minister of Justice, astonished international jurists last week by declaring that one who seizes the temporal power by violence has committed high treason if the people as a whole are subsequently dissatisfied with his government, but that the same act does not constitute high treason if the populace subsequently approves.

This diverting sophistry was propounded in the Athenian press last week with a definite purpose. The recently deposed dictator of Greece, General Pangalos is soon to be brought to trial, and it is intended to convict him of high treason. At the same time the present dictator of Greece, General Kondylis, must be purged of treasonable taint, though he seized power (TIME, Aug. 30) by exactly the same violent means as did General Pangalos (TIME, July 6).

From Kos, one of the twelve Greek Aegean islands seized by Italy during the Italo-Turkish war of 1912, there came last week news of an able ecclesiastical strategem. Just before Dictator Pangalos was overthrown the local Greek Archbishop was commanded by the Italian authorities to offer prayers for Dictator Mussolini. He, wily, offered a simultaneous prayer for Dictators Mussolini and Pangalos, humored the pan-Greek leanings of his congregation. Arrested by the irate Italian police for praying for General Pangalos, he said: "You know that General Pangalos and Dictator Mussolini are great friends. They are both Dictators. They have both recently escaped from the peril of assassination. What more simple than to offer up prayers for them both?"

Vexed by such irrefutable logic the Italian police banished the Archbishop.