REPORT OF THE DIRECTOR OF THE SCHOOL To the Members of the Managing Committee of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens: I have the honor to submit my report as Director of the School for the year 1942-1943. The Committee has received, through the report of the Chairman, such news as has reached us from Athens during the last year; sad news for the School, nearly all of it: the loss of Anastasios Adossides, tragically dead of disease aggravated by hunger; the internment of the Agora Fellow, Eugene Vanderpool, in Germany; and of his wife and their children in Athens. This report, therefore, is confined largely to the Director's own activities. Since receiving the Ph.D. degree from the J ohns Hopkins University in June, 1942, I have lived in Berkeley, where, last August, I was appointed research associate in Classical Archaeology (without salary) at the University of California. A paper on the bronze figure of the Trojan Horse by the sculptor Strongylion is in prepara­ tion for the California Publications in Classical Archaeology; and che study of the fouorain Klepsydra and the Court of the Pythion at Athens will appear in an early number of Hesperia. I have served as a block warden in the Berkeley Warden Ser­ vice, and as a member of the general council of the Berkeley War Chest; and have devoted a considerable part of my time, as a volunteer, to the work of the Greek War Relief Association. I expect shortly to enter Government Service for the du­ ration of the war. When the last report of the D irector was submitted, a year ago, the future of the School in Athens was uncertain and at best very remote; the time seemed little suited to discussion of it. Today the situation has wholly changed. The armies of the United Nations are on the offensive; the liberation of Greece and of other occupied countries is no longer merely a possibility; it is something on which, no matter how long delayed, we may count, and to which we may look forward with confidence. The future is assured, the time is here when that future may reason:1bly be thought about. In very nearly every field of human activity planning for the post-war period is beginning; and the School should be no exception. I should like, therefore, to suggest to the Committee some lines along which, it seems tO roe, the School's think­ ing about its future might profitably run. No specific recommendations are made : what follows is not proposals ro be acted upon, but some considerations of general policy to be discussed. The war in which we are now engaged is peculiarly a Hellenists' war, for the civilization which we are fighting to preserve is, basically, a Hellenic civilization. All that we cherish most in that civilization, all that our enemies would destroy, had irs origin, ultimately, in Greece, in Athens: in the agora, in the sroas, under the plane 26 ' trees by the Ilissus. On us, therefore, who call ourselves Hellenists , who, as teachers and students of Hellenism, more than all others participate directly in the great tra­ dition, there rests a special obligation to contribute to the prosecution of the war. And when the war is won, and our civilization faces a still severer test, the obligation will be yet heavier upon us, as Hellenists, nor only to maintain the great tradition bur ro show that it is worth maintaining. In the discharge of that obligation the School will have a peculiarly important role. For the School ar Athens is, if not the only, certainly the primary link between American H ellenism and the land of Greece itself. In the fulfillment of that role the School must per form two functions, sharply distinct, though closely related. First is research; as a school of archaeological research it must make its contribution, piece by painstaking piece, to the ever-growing mosaic which is Hellenic culture. Second-and I do not mean second in importance--is the function which the School's founders had in mind when they called their creation a school of classical studies­ not a school of archaeology: that is the introduction of teachers and future teachers of classics to the land of Greece, their indoctrinat ion, if I may fall back upon current jargon, in its physical aspects, its antiquitie s, in the spirit and the language of its people. · In the performance of the first of these functions the School has been, particu­ larly in recent years, outstandingly successful. Its field archaeologists, its epigraphists -at the Agora, on the north slope of the Acropolis, at Corinth-have developed new techniques for forcing each fragment of stone, each bit of broken pottery, the very earth itself, to yield a maximum of information, and new standards of accuracy in the interpretation of the facts thus gathered. As an institution of archaeological re­ search, engaged in the rask of building up, of restoring, the skeleton, so to speak, the bony structure and the body which with the mind and the spirit make up the indivis­ ible whole of Ancient Greece--as such an institution, the School today has no peer; its prestige among its fellows is unquestioned. I need not dwell on this, the Committee knows it well. But in this connection I should like, if I may be permitted, to recall to the Committee that the exacting standards and the high quality of work which have brought this prestige to the School are to a very large extent the result of the efforts of two members of the staff: the director of the Agora Excavation and the Professor of Archaeology. We cannot today be certain what means will be available, when the School can once more resume its work, for the prosecution and completion of irs excavations. In a sense, it does not matter whether those means are large or small; for only one thing is of real importance: if the School is to continue brilliantly to perform its re­ search function, if it is co fulfill brilliantly, or even adequately, its role in carrying on the great tradition, its work in the future must be done, whether on a large scale or a small, without sacrifice of quality. I need not urge upon the Managing Com­ mince that it recognize and accept the obligation which is placed upon it, to do its part toward seeing that those high standards are maintained. 27