World: WHY GREECE'S COLONELS ARE THAT WAY

RATHER like a stern father rewarding good behavior, Premier George Papadopoulos last week returned several previous liberties to the Greek people. He was observing both the Easter season and the second anniversary of the coup that ousted the previous government and brought Papadopoulos and his fellow army colonels to power. He was also trying to head off criticism of the Greek regime from the NATO ministers' meeting in Washington. Announced the Prime Minister: 1) freedom of assembly and association will be restored; 2) homes will be off limits to policemen without warrants; 3) press censorship will be reviewed; 4) some of the nearly 2,000 political exiles who have been held on Aegean islands may be brought home, and some government employees ousted by the regime will get their jobs back. Papadopoulos seemed not to notice one irony: the press conference revealing all these freedoms was held in the now vacant Senate chamber of the Parliament building in Athens. One freedom that the birthplace of democracy has not recovered is a democratic assembly.

Such subtleties apparently do not trouble Papadopoulos and his colonels because they are elementary men. Or so it seems, for in a complex world they are trying to forge an anachronistically simplistic nation. Long hair is now immoral for schoolboys; the government has ordered haircuts, and in some cases police wielded the shears themselves. Bouzouki tavernas, where high-spirited Greeks loved to smash crockery in time with the frenzied music, have been tamed: guests are no longer allowed to break even a single saucer. Miniskirts are forbidden for young girls, and bar girls are being discouraged. Government officials must attend church—other Greeks are urged to do so to build a nation of "Christian Greeks"—while anyone who publicly doubts God or the army may be held guilty of blasphemy. These spiritual up-liftings are hastened, opponents of the military government say, by torture as well as exile. "Christians behave themselves because they are afraid of going to hell," explains Deputy Prime Minister Stylianos Pattakos. "Likewise, under our regime, Greeks behave because they are afraid. Only the bad people are going to be punished."

Small-Town Morality. In sophisticated Athens, such sermonizing is glumly greeted. Few politicians from other parties have joined the colonels since their coup. Most refer to them as steno-kephalos, or narrow heads. Athens wits insist that Nikolaos Makarezos was selected to oversee the economy as Minister of Coordination because he was the colonel who knew how to add and subtract. Retired diplomat and Nobel laureate Georges S. Seferiades laments the "state of enforced torpor." But out in the stony, sun-washed countryside beyond Athens, the colonels' austerities are better received.