INSTITUTIONS COOPERATING IN THE SUPPORT OF THE SCHOOL
1942-1943
Amherst College
Bradford Junior College
Brown University
Bryn Mawr College
Catholic University of America
College of the City of New York
Columbia University
Cornell University
Crozier Theological Seminary
Dartmouth College
Duke University
Hamilton College
Harvard University
Haverford College
Hunter College
Institute for Advanced Study
Johns Hopkins University
MassachusettS Institute of Technology
Mount Holyoke College
New York University
Northwestern University
•
Oberlin College
Princeton University
Radcliffe College
Smith College
Stanford Uni versity
Swarthmore College
University of California
University of Chicago
University of Cincinnati
University of Illinois
University of Michigan
University of Pennsylvania
University of Vermont
University of Virginia
University of Wisconsin
Vanderbilt University
Vassar College
Wellesley College
Western Reserve University
Williams College
Yale University
10
GREEK INDEPENDENCE DAY ADDRESS
Delivered by President Dorothy M. Bell of Bradford Junior College before the
Greek-American citizens of Haverhill, Massachusetts, March 28, 1943. Reprinted
from the Oberlin College Alumni Magazine for November, 1943.
Sons and Daughters of Hellas:
The appreciation which I feel in being invited to join with you in commemo
rating the independence of modern Greece is greater than I can express. In these few
moments which are mine, I am proud to pay what tribute I can in grateful acknowl
edgment to your homeland from which I have received so much and of which it may
well be true that I have seen considerably more than many of you.
The loveliness of Greece, its blue skies and bluer, island-studded sea, its up
heaved, jagged mountains with their red earth sides dappled with outcropping marble
and barbed, low-lying scrub, its grey-green carpets of myriad olive groves, its litde
towns of white-walled homes etching the shore or lying hot and dustblown in the
plains; Athens violet-crowned in the shortlived dusk of the setting sun, the breath
less beauty of the Parthenon in the full moon's light, or of the sea's horizon, il
lumined by the brilliance of a still unrisen moon, the silent eloquence of hallowed
ruins bringing awe to the soul and inspiration to the heart, the generous hospitality
of irs friendly people-this is Greece, the Greece of yesterday, of today coo, and of the
future.
We are gathered here to mark the anniversary of that day in 1821 when mod
ern Greece served notice on her Turkish overlords that henceforth she would be
free. The bitter sufferings of the years which followed made more r-recious still the
greatness of that moment in 1829 when freedom was achieved at last and Greece
saw the last Turk soldier withdrawn from her soil. Yet, great :\5 is that historic
moment to your fathers and to you, I would suggest that in the long expanse of your
nation's history there are two others greater in their significance not only to the
world at large but to Greece herself. For the first of these, I must take you far
back along the corridors of time, back beyond the Crusades and the re-awakening of
western Europe, past the days of the great Byzantine empire, beyond the day..s of
Christ and the opening of the Christian era, past the rise of Rome ~nd the building
of her great state, back to the opening decades of the Fifth Century D. C.
There in the earth of Marathon, in the pass of Thermopylae, in the waters of
Salamis and the fields of Plataea is written forever more one of the decisive struggles
of mankind. There the mightiest military force of irs time, the tool of an empire
which had not known defeat, brought by despots who held that all men were but
slaves beneath their sway, was beaten down and crushed. Not by mightier weapons,
not by outnumbering hordes, not by a greater tyrant still were the Great Kings of
Persia stopped.
11