GREECE: If We Hold Fast . . .

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Two visits to the U.S. (in 1928 to raise money for earthquake victims; in 1930 to unite divided Greek Orthodox factions) increased both his clerical and lay stature in Greece. His first major essay at national politics came in 1938. Against the violent opposition of Dictator-Premier John Metaxas and the King whose powers Damaskinos now administers, he was elected Archbishop of all Greece—by one vote. Metaxas promptly annulled the election, put in the runner-up, Chrysanthos of Trebizond, and exiled Damaskinos to the mountain monastery of Phaneromene on Salamis.

This struggle against the King and authoritarian regimes sobered Damaskinos, tempered his enthusiasms. In the monastery Damaskinos developed his only hobby: a friend from Chicago sent him a portable harmonium, and the lonely cleric, with his pet goat and dog beside him, learned to pick out the weirdly beautiful Gregorian chants.

The Trial and the Rope. The war and German occupation brought Damaskinos to his full national stature. He returned to Athens as Archbishop after his old opponent, Chrysanthos, was dismissed for refusing to swear in the first quisling Premier, General George Tsolakoglu. But Archbishop Damaskinos was no stooge.

Against the Germans, Damaskinos fought with all the considerable might of his clerical robes, his glittering pectoral cross and pastoral staff, using them not as shelters but as shields. He saved hundreds of Jewish lives by encouraging Orthodox Greeks to harbor them. He achieved undying fame by substituting his name and those of his bishops for a list of hostages about to be shot for the death of a German soldier. If the Germans had not backed down, Damaskinos would have been the first to be shot. He had put his name at the head of the list.

When Damaskinos visited German military headquarters, he always carried a length of rope with him. When the Germans lost their tempers, Damaskinos would hand them the rope and say:

"If you wish to hang me, as the Turks did Gregorios, here is the rope."*

In a small and barren office, Damaskinos labored for the poor and oppressed. His philanthropies, though not connected directly with any one resistance movement, also succored the men in the hills. He banded his clergy into the EOCHA (National Organization of Christian Solidarity) to help those interned by the occupying powers. So popular was this organization that on several occasions quisling Greeks tried to exploit it. Damaskinos fiercely resisted, kept politicians' hands off. Toward occupation's end, the frustrated Germans put Damaskinos under house arrest.

Protector & Protected. No Greek would deny that Damaskinos holds his Regency today, and keeps his Government in power, only with the support of the British Army in Greece. On their fateful visit to Athens last December, at the height of the tragic battle between Greek and Greek, and Greek and Briton, Winston Churchill and Anthony Eden chose Damaskinos as the one Greek who might save his countrymen from themselves—and who might save Greece for Britain and the western world.