•
The victors were mere handfuls of men, farmers and seafarers, not even profes
sional warriors, men of a little nation still in the greenness of irs youth. But they
were free-born men, men who loved their litde States because they were the states,
men with but one thought on their lips and in their hearts-Better death than slavery.
They fought for Greece, bur in saving themselves they saved the western world.
But for them all Europe would have been made Persian, and the concepts of democ
racy and the dignity of man would have vanished in their infancy.
It was only after the Persian Wars that the culture of Greece, which is the
heritage of our western world, came co fruition. When Marathon, Thermopylae, Sal
amis and Plataea were fought the Greek mind was just stirring. The semi-legendary
lawgivers in their various cities had lived, but the summation of their efforts had not
been achieved. Homer had lived and sung, and Orpheus, but the great names of litera
ture had not arisen. Men were governing themselves in their little city states, but
the full stature of democracy had not been reached and the great discourses on gov
ernment and the inherent rights of free-born men were still unwritten. Socrates
Plato, Aristotle and all those who followed were yet unborn.
To us today this same democracy with i ts thesis of the sanctity and the rights
of the individual citizen is our most precious possession, for the preservation of
which we are sending forth our youth by the millions. It is what carried Britain
through when she stood alone, ill-armed, in the most fateful hour of her destiny, it
is what buoys the hopes and stimulates the spirits of countless millions in the oc
cupied countries writhing under the heel of a new and far more ruthless and bank
rupt barbaric tyranny.
When Athens lay in ruins after the Persian menace had been swept away
whole generations of her citizenry threw themselves into the task. No talent was too
great, no material roo cosdy, no cause more important. A far nobler Athens rose,
built of the sweat of their brows, the toil of their hands, the love in their hearts.
From the common purpose of the participants and the intensity of their efforts a
whole city of artists was born, so that even their common utensils, their humble
funeral stelae which were the work of ordinary craftsmen too unimporrant ro sign
their creations, are to us today venerated objects of art carefully preserved in the
world's museums. All over the land this was so though in less degree.
But I need not enumerate to you the debt which all the world owes to Greece.
The culture, the accomplishments, the thought of its golden age, and of the centuries
that followed are one of the greatest single forces in all the history of mankind. To
efface irs marks from our world these twenty-five centuries later would be to remove
much of the brain and soul from the mind of man. For the gift of Greece was not to
her age alone, but rather to all men and co all times. Of what other nation can this
be said half so well?
I think of Hippocrates creating the science of medicine and the creed of its
practitioners, setting it forth in an oath still sworn by all physicians today.
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I think of Roman Horace writing in an ode that captive Greece has taken her
conqueror captive, of Cicero writing ro his son when that young man set out to
Athens, the Harvard of the Roman world, that all culture and all civilized thought
came from the land in which he was about to rake his residence.
I remember the manuscripts of Greek writings lying mouldy and forgotten in
the monasteries and abbeys of southern Europe until their discovery by the Cru
saders helped ro launch the Renaissance of men's minds and recreate their world in
the Quamocento and the centuries that followed.
I think of Byron dying at Missolonghi because he knew no greater cause than
to help the sons of ancient Greece regain their lost liberties; of Rupert Brooke lying
in that wild and lonely, yet utterly peaceful glade of Scyros which he himself had
chosen.
I remember that in rare cases in this world the name of a people has won for
itself a wider, universal meaning. There is Hun from the savage tribe led by At
tila, "the scourge of Europe" in the Fifth Century of our era. And there is Nazi
whose terrible significance for all ages to come there is no need for me to depict.
And there is H-ellene, carried throughout the Mediterranean world by Alexander and
through our own by the power of the thought and the achievements of its greatest
age. Hun and Nazi signify the brutal aspects of the low moments of mankind, Hel
lene alone rises beyond a national character. After Alexander any man was a Hel
lene who in his spirit and his thought was at one with the spirit and the thought of
ancient Greece. And this is so still.
I spoke of twO great moments in your agelong history which transcend in
import the event of 1821 which we celebrate today. Between the first and second
lie better than twenty-five hundred years. Not to many nations goes the privilege
thus co serve mankind over so long a span of time. I refer to the Greece of this very
decade. As, alone and unafraid she defied the Great King, so, in our time has mod
ern Greece dared ro oppose the engulfing and unbeaten Nazi. Nor lesser courage,
bur greater machines of war have laid her for the rime beneath the Hiderian yoke.
But of the modern Greeks ir shall be said that deliberately and of their own free
will they--and I quote--"elecred co suffer virtual extinction rather than surrender
one jot or one tittle of their rights as free citizens at the demand of barbaric op
pressors."
Of them it shall be remembered that when little nations everywhere were
bowing their naked heads to the onrushing storm, they alone dared rise up in the
Nazi's path, and of them it shall be recorded in the records of mankind that they
were the .first to upset his carefully plotted timetable.
Like their ancestors so long ago they fought for themselves, but in so doing
they served the entire world. For the deeds they did, the fearless courage they dis
played have inspired the world, and fed anew the eternal hope of humankind.
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