Greece: Long Live the King!

Church bells tolled mournfully throughout Athens. Atop Lycabettus hill, a lone cannon boomed an hourly salute. Women wept in the streets, and only funeral dirges were played on the radio. Throughout Athens, Greece's blue and white flag flew at half-staff for King Paul of the Hellenes, who died of thrombosis in the lungs last week at 62, after a 17-year reign that had seen Greece rise from destitution and civil war to become one of the most stable states in Europe.

For days, the royal family had kept a death watch around Paul's...