"Zito!"

For 900 years, Greeks and Turks have intermittently warred on each other. The Greeks massacred 20,000 Moslems in April 1821, and shortly thereafter proclaimed their independence from Turkey after 400 years of subjection. But the two nations were still at war 100 years later. During the 1920s, a wary rapprochement began. The two powers exchanged their national minorities; in one of the great mass migrations of history 2,000,000 Greeks quit Turkey.

In Istanbul last week, the old and long-dying mistrust was set to rest: the old enemies were now allies. Schoolchildren waved paper Greek flags and shouted a newly taught word: "Zito!" (meaning "long live" in Greek) as King Paul and Queen Frederika debarked from the cruiser Helle. It was the first visit ever paid to Turkey by Greek monarchs. A gleaming white presidential train took the visitors off to Ankara for a station-side reception by President Celal Bayar and Premier Adnan Menderes. High point of the visit would come when the Greek monarchs placed a wreath on the tomb of Kemal Ataturk, the great Turkish strongman who had whipped their armies in the 1921 war.

Getting such ancient enemies together was an amazing tribute to the Russians; it was concern about the common peril which had united Greece and Turkey, made them NATO's newest partners, and led them to deploy their 29 divisions to guard the southern anchor of the Atlantic defense line. An old Istanbul grocer who fought the Greeks under Ataturk explained the change simply: "The Greeks don't like the Russians much and I hate them."

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