Election

When returns from Greece's general election last week showed that his Liberal (Republican) Party had lost, Premier Eleutherios Venizelos, famed "Grand Old Man" from Crete, resigned. Abruptly the hound-faced Macedonian, Dare-devil General Nicholas Plasteras, proclaimed a Dictatorship, put Greece under martial law. His chief object was to head off Panayoti Tsaldaris whose Royalists had won the election, but he glibly explained, parroting other dictators: "My action was taken to annihilate Communism and secure public order."

Macedonian Plasteras did not last long. The Tsaldarists threatened a march on Athens. General Plasteras resigned. A stop-gap Premier was put in power: German-descended General Miltiades Otheneos, who presided in 1922 over the court-martial which tried and executed five Royalist cabinet ministers and one army general. Meanwhile. M. Venizelos announced, as he often has before, that he was retiring from politics, preparing to leave Greece.

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