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Stability & Surplus. Under the upright old Marshal and his brilliant but unloved economic planner Spyros Markezinis, Greek recovery has proceeded apace. The $2 billion in military and economic aid (about $270 for every man, woman and child in Greece) which the U.S. poured into the country has played a major part in the nation's miraculous return to health; but the ruthless efficiency of Markezinis is making it pay by putting each new dollar to full use. Riding roughshod over every ancient prejudice and privilege in the land, Markezinis began his program by cutting government spending to the bone. He took hundreds of state-owned vehicles off the road, fired thousands of civil servants. He devalued the bloated drachma, took restrictions off imports, and set into motion the first tax reform that Greece had enjoyed in decades. The rich, for the first time in history, had to pay through the teeth.
Today the Greek army (160,000 men) is one of the best in NATO. It is well fed, well equipped and well clothed—in woolens from Greece's own mills. Unemployment is down from 150,000 to 50,000. Greek farmers have just reaped one of the finest crops in their long history. This year, for the first time since the war, the Greek government was able to report a budget surplus—$10 million.
Double Chocolate. All this seems to prove, at the very least, that Queen Fred-erika's political actions were ill advised; and she seems to have learned a lesson. The fact is, the royal couple's unfailing charm and devoted example are still a major factor in the relative contentment of Greece today. Democracy-loving Greeks, who have no use for pomp and arrogance, like to run across their friendly, smiling Queen democratically browsing through Athens shops in search of a good buy. They pride themselves on her skill as the nation's first wife and mother, on the sensible way she brings up her children, on the royal couple's life at the palace, where Frederika often darts into the kitchen herself to cook dinner, or the summer villa where Paul putters in the garden and Frederika goes about her tasks in shorts. Greeks like the fact that their Queen is pretty, gay and charming, that she can win friends and influence people in the name of Greece. They like her and they like her husband. Despite the palace feuding, Frederika and Paul have given the throne of the Glücksburgs a new stability matched only by the economic stability Papagos has given their country.
Inveterate intriguers and discontented politicos will still argue and intrigue against both the Queen and the Prime Minister in Athens cafes, as long as either lives, for that is the way of the Greek. But when Frederika reaches Washington this week in her borrowed fur coat, few in Greece will fail to admit that she has more than earned the reward recently promised by her latest conquest, Adlai Stevenson: a double chocolate soda.