Zito o Vassileus

It started as a routine day. But after a morning of conferences, the King felt a month-old pain heavy on his chest. He canceled a luncheon date with his brother. As he mounted the steps to his private rooms, coronary thrombosis smote him. He sat a moment on the steps, groped his way to his rooms, rang for an attendant to bring him a glass of water. By the time a doctor arrived, the King of the Hellenes, who had lived a lonely life, had died a lonely death.

Six hours later the dead King's tall (6 ft. 3 in.), 45-year-old brother stood before the civil and military dignitaries of Greece and took the sovereign's oath. The assemblage rumbled: "Zito o Vassileus Pavlos" (Long Live King Paul).

With a Shovel. With sovereign continuity satisfied, the Greek court turned to mourning, and the world to taking a good look at the obscure yachtsman who has ascended the world's most controversial throne. The new King started with advantages over his deceased brother: no taint of supporting the prewar Metaxas dictatorship; a genial, democratic manner; an energetic, intelligent wife.

His young (30), pretty helpmeet and first cousin once removed (Paul is a grandson, Queen Frederika a great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria's daughter Victoria) has worked hard to overcome original Greek impressions that she was a flippant pro-German society matron. When grandfather Kaiser Wilhelm died, German-born Frederika* ostentatiously wore a bright red hat, let it be known that she wanted no offers of condolence. She has learned Greek, turned her charms on wealthy and influential Greeks, made an enthusiastic admirer of South Africa's Field Marshal Smuts. Last week the Greek Royalist press said she had been converted to the Greek Orthodox Church.

When the new King says "We," he speaks as a husband, not as a sovereign. Always interested in youth movements, King Paul, as Crown Prince, has long planned a work corps of young Greeks, probably to be called the Volunteer Corps of St. George, to rebuild Greek roads. Last February, as Paul outlined the plan to a TIME correspondent, Frederika interjected: "And of course, my dear, you will go out and set an example with a shovel." "Oh yes," he said, "and we'll get some of our Ministers out there too." And both, who make no secret of impatience with bureaucratic ways, chuckled at the thought.

With Kisses. To whip up Royalist enthusiasm the royal couple this year have visited troubled Macedonia, Thessaly and Epirus. In Salonika Frederika plunged, over official protests, into the working quarter, won a few smiles and cheers from sullen leftists, was kissed ("from top to toe," she said) by working women outside an orphanage. When she left Salonika, a shopkeeper arranged a triptych of photographs in his window: Frederika flanked by Stalin and the Greek Communist leader, Zachariades.

This week, as Paul I followed the coffin of George II to its tomb at the royal country estate at Tatoi (demolished by the leftists in 1944), the Greek Government was already speeding up an all-out drive against leftists. Said Paul on taking the crown: "Our eternal country calls upon us to fight for her existence. . . ." Greece had a new King, but its Government's policy was unchanged.

* Princess of Hanover, Great Britain and Ireland, Duchess of Brunswick and Lueneburg at the time of her marriage in 1938.

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