GREECE: The Unknowns

The Regent heaved an episcopal sigh of relief. His month-long quest for a Premier to succeed conservative Admiral Petros Voulgaris was over. In his Athens Palace last week black-bearded, black-robed Archbishop Damaskinos gladly divested himself of his stopgap function as Premier and swore in a new man: slightly-left-of-center Panayotis Kanellopoulos, leader of the National Unionist Party.

If obscurity and the absence of stormy petrels were assets, the new Kanellopoulos I Cabinet was a masterpiece. The Premier himself had done a year’s stint as Vice Premier in the wartime government in exile, but most of his Ministers were just names to the Greek in the street. Possibly this was just as well: the new Cabinet’s job is to govern Greece only until the national elections, still tentatively set for Jan. 20.