THE GLORY THAT IS GREECE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23839, 14 December 1940, Page 4 (Supplement)

THE GLORY THAT IS GREECE

Old virtue Lives Ayain

By KOTARE

THE war has been full of surprises. Perhaps the most unpleasant revelation of an unsuspected flippancy in our own makeup has been the pitiable demonstration of selfishness and false values in the; feminine silk-stocking stampede of last week. A trumpery matter of self-adornment becomes life's major issue while bombs fall on our kinsfolk overseas, and the world faces the greatest menace in all its long history. It takes some people a long time to realise there is a war on. If their limbs are adequately covered the heavens can fall. W hen Shylock's daughter ran away with a few thousand ducats he thus delivered his soul: ''The curse never fell upon our nation till now; I never felt it till now." And some of our patriots never understood how terrible war could'be till they saw the prospect of having to appear in <• public in woollen stockings. But all surprises are not revelations of humanity's degeneration. Ihe ■ demonstration of the splendid fighting power of the Greeks is the most comforting ami assuring thing that has come our way for some time. It is 110 injustice to the Greek to say that we ad not expected such superb military spirit and so splendid a fighting power. The Greeks like ourselves have not- been a military people. Subtlety is the quality usually assigned to the Greek character, after our usual fashion 01 glib generalisation. But just as Britain has proved again and again that a fiee-dom-loving. pence-loving people can ■convert itself into a mighty fighting power when the occasion demands it. so the Greeks have shown the world that the ancient virtue still is strong in the national life, and that a small people in defence of its liberty can .strike blows that shake the whoie world. The Greek Choice We have been so preoccupied with the actual successes in the field against the overwhelming material might of Italy that we perhaps have not done full justice to the magnificent moral ■courage that made one of the smallest and least prepared nations take up the insolent, contemptuous challenge of the Axis powers. David confronting Goliath was nothing compared to the small Greek State confronting unafraid the most powerful military combination the world, has known, in the full flush of ' triumph after triumph. That Greece is fighting at' all and not cringing before the conqueror as practically all the rest of Europe is doing, is the greatest miracle of all. Whatever the ultimate outcome,. Greece by the mere fact of defiance has added immeasurably to the spiritual capital of the world. On the face of it Greece accepted national martvrdom when she decided to resist the haughty Italian demands. Sho chose the way of the cross when she might have meekly surrendered and spared herself the horrors of a modern, war. All the loye of the easier way that has corrupted Rumania and Vichy and the; rest, and that was spreading like a foul disease throughout Europe, was counselling her in her I hour of crisis to sell her liberty. We have been privileged to see in our days that have supped full of horrors and manifestations of human baseness, a small nation that calmly accepted almost certain destruction of the body that-she might save her soul. Greece's example has made all fighters for liberty take a firmer grip upon their swords.She has brought faith in humanity and hone for the triumph of decency in a world ringed by the balefires of tyranny. If she had failed, as she is so gloriously succeeding, she would still have made a contribution of inestimable value to the cause ,of right in a .dark world. A Resurrection That resurrection of the ancient ■Greek spirit ,in a "world formed 011 its higher the impulses that came out of Greece two thousand five hundred years ago, at a bound puts a small insignificant modern State again 011 the sunlit heights as a guide and an inspiration to climbing humanity. Never even in her highest days has Greece given a nobler lead to the questing spirit of man. And straight to busy camps and marts The singing flames were swiftly gone; The trembling leaves of human hearts Hid boughs for them to perch upon. And men in desert places, men Abandoned, broken, sick with fears Rose singing. sw;ung their swords again, And laughed, and died among the spears. 'Lamartine, a Frenchman of the days when France could hold up her head proudly among the nations, thus rhapsodised 011 his first view of the sacked soil of Greece. "This blackish group of hills, capes and valleys, only a point upon the map, has produced more glory, more splendour, more virtues, than entire continents. This fragment of islands and mountains, which threw up almost in one age Miltiades, Leonidas, Demosthenes, Pericles,_ Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Phidias; this land which swallowed up the armies of two million pouring from the East; which sent out its colonies to the West, to Asia, and to Africa; which created or renewed the arts of the spirit and the I arts of the hand, and in one hundred | and fifty years developed them to such j a pitch of perfection that they have never been surpassed; this land whose history is our history; whose Olympus is still the heaven of our imagination; this land whence philosophy and poetry have winged their way to all the rest .of the world and whither they return .ceaselessly like children to their .cradle." A Great Light Every word of that is true. But ,we need 110 longer look only to the past for the glory that is Greece. In the hour of crisis she has soared again with the ancient wings to new heights of splendour and become once more the spiritual leader of Europe. There is something immensely comforting and inspiring in this clarion call from the ancient Greek spirit to a world seeking false gods and kowtowing in abject surrender to the malignant manifestations of material power. • Out of Greece came for the benediction of mankind the first true conception of the value of the individual man. .Out of her came the first proclamation ,of tho human right to be free. Out of her came the democratic institutions that gave shape and opportunity to new conceptions of the worth of man. Just as out of ancient Italy came the conception of the supremacy of the State that shadows all Europe and tho world to-day with its vulture wings. And when Greece in our day raised her* apparently feeble hands against the might of the Axis, whatever she may yet be called upon to suffer for her supreme faith and'courage, whatever victory or defeat may be her portion, she again took her place in the forefront of the never-ending conflict between light and darkness, and once again brought to the sorely bested cnilclren of men the rich gifts of the spirit without which faith, beauty, progress, even life itself, are impossible.