"One Law for the Rich"

Winter came early in the mountains of northern Greece this year. For almost two months the Greek army had been fighting waist-deep in snow along the craggy frontier. Whenever the gunfire died away, the sharp cold silence was shattered by another sound, the voice of the rebel radio. "Greek soldiers, why are you up here in the mountains slowly freezing to death, dying like trapped mountain goats? Whom are you fighting for? Rich people sitting back comfortably in Athens, avoiding their military service and getting richer and richer? What's in it for you?"

Last week the Greek government, alarmed at the effect of this propaganda on troop morale, finally decided to crack down on those who provided ammunition for the rebel loudspeakers. To give bite to its bark, a special court-martial in Athens charged handsome Michael Chryssicopoulos (36), scion of one of Greece's wealthiest families, with draft dodging.

Michael was not a coward. He had been decorated in the Albanian campaign and remembered what the front in northern Greece was like. Now he had better things to do. He had inherited Greece's largest department store and had settled down in a luxurious apartment with his attractive wife and a young daughter. So, when he was called up a few months ago, he devised a plan. He located a former employee, now destitute and suffering from tuberculosis, supplied him witha forged identity card and paid him $1,500 to appear as Michael Chryssicopoulos before an army medical board. The ex-employee was promptly rejected as unfit.

Later, however, the fraud came to light and both Michael and his double were arrested. Last week Michael was found guilty and sentenced to death; his impersonator was acquitted. He could not, said the court-martial, be held responsible for his actions. As Michael was marched off to await execution, his ailing double departed for a tuberculosis sanatorium on the outskirts of Athens, where $1,500 worth of treatment might save his life.

Then the string-pullers went to work. Just a few hours before Michael was scheduled to face a firing squad, the Greek cabinet passed a special order in council which, for the first time, would allow a case of this kind to be brought before a court of pardons. When the government ordered the army to postpone Michael's execution, the military governor of Athens resigned his post in protest. Almost overnight the news reached the northern fron tier. Through the thin cold air of the mountains the loudspeakers of General Markos jeered triumphantly at the government troops: "You see, there is one law for the rich, another for the poor. They executed others for the same thing--but not wealthy Mr. Chryssicopoulos."

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