POIGNANT EPISODE

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXI, Issue 126, 30 April 1941, Page 7

POIGNANT EPISODE

GREEKS’ GALLANT SPIRIT.

(British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, April 28. The magnificent spirit with which the Greeks have fought and the true comradeship of arms and endeavour which the Greek Army, people, and Government have shown to the forces of the British Empire which came to their aid, and which shared with them the honours of the hard-contested retreat, have called forth a deep response from the public of Britain. The Manchester Guardian expressed the sentiment of the whole people when it declared : “Of all the tragedies of the war the most poignant is the tragedy of Greece. The Greeks have written the most heroic chapter of the war. They have kept alive, too. the spirit by which they will one day, we will hope and believe, recover their freedom.”

The unanimity of the sentiment is shown by the closeness of thought which has inspired a statement in the Times: “To all lovers of the tradition of liberty and of that freedom of thought which, with so much else, pur world owes to Greece, the occupation of Athens by the Nazi troops is one of the cruellest blows free men have endured sjnee Hitler began his career of unbridled aggression. It is bitter to know that the swastika is now (lying over the city which, in the time of civilisation’s greatest weakness, defied Alaric and his Goths.”