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