GREEK CLIMAX

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVIII, Issue 52, 29 January 1938, Page 9

GREEK CLIMAX

DICTATORSHIP ESTABLISHED. GENERAL METAXA’S REGIME. OPPOSITION BANISHED.

(United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright.) Received January 29, 10.45 a.m.

ATHENS, Jan. 28. The newspapers publish a Government statement announcing the arrest and banishment from Athens in the last few davs of all the leading Opposition politicians: The dictatorial General Metaxas regime abandons all its previous measures and enters on a new period of severity without pity to operate against those disturbing the peace. The sudden announcement of General Metaxas’s dictatorship is the climax to a week of crisis. All the former Opposition leaders recently issued a proclamation sharply criticising the Government’s economic, financial and home policy calling on the people to recover their sovereign rights. This led the Government to round up their opponents. Former Parliamentarians were interned on remote islands. Those banished include M. Sophulis (leader of the Liberal Party), M. Theodkis (leader of the Nationalist Monarchist Party), M. Ivaphandaris (leader of the Progressive Party), and M. Miclialokopulos (leader of the Independent Republican Party and former Foreign Minister). To-day’s Government statement says that the people have forgotten the first insurrections and hatreds, but the old parties refuse to let bygones be bygones and have united in the work of destruction. They will become allied in the criminal elements and wretched gangster politicians.

General J. Metaxas is Prime Minister, Minister for Foreign Affairs, Minister of War, Marine and Air in the Ministry.