No man could fail to be impressed by this gentle
and imposing personage. Five times has the Archbishop been called upon, either by his Church or by public opinion, to bring to the solution of internecine disputes the authority of his high character and the resourcefulness of his intelligence. It was he who was called upon, while still a young man, to draft a new charter for the monasteries of Mount Athos ; it was he who was sent to America to solve the controversy which had broken out among the orthodox communities in the United States ; it was he who, at the time of the Corinth earthquake in 1928, was entrusted by the Government with almost dictatorial powers ; it was he who, in the hour of invasion, was unanimously summoned to the archiepiscopal throne to protect his people against the impositions of the German armies of occupation ; it was he finally who became Regent in this present hour of unhappy dissension. This Aetolian giant, born fifty-five years ago under the shadow of the Aracynthus mountains, where there is " sun and clear light among green hills," is of the same type as his great predecessor, Archbishop Germanos, who in April, 1821, raised the cross of liberty at Kalavryta. He himself fought as a soldier in the Balkan wars ; he is of the people and he understands the people ; his brother today is the village priest at the village of Dovritza, where he was born. As a pupil of .Venizelos he shares his master's faith in the validity of the liberal doctrine and the good sense of the Hellenic people. The integrity of his character, the disinterestedness of his aims, are not questioned even by his most rabid opponents ; it may well be he who will guide Greece out of the turmoil of violence, vituperation and unreality into which she has of late been plunged.
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