Trafalgar School - Echoes Yearbook (Montreal, Quebec Canada)

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I was interested to find that French is the second language throughout the country. In all museums and picture-galleries notices were written in French as well as in Greek. For instance many might feel rather puzzled at the words ME APTE but they would feel quite at home when they saw Ne touchez pas written underneath. In all the leading hotels and shops you will always find several people who can understand French. Indeed the Greeks, especially the Athenians, resemble the French in many ways. Both are quick-witted with a keen sense of humour; they are good talkers and love argument and discussion. They are realists too, and, distrusting everything that is vague or woolly , they like things to be clearly defined. I found them polite and affable like the French, and none but the French could rival the Greeks in that unerring artistic sense, that sense of beauty which has made both peoples the touchstone of taste for the world. There are many ways of approaching Greece but the best is by sea. It was the way the ancients knew it and the way we know it through them. Boats go regularly from Marseilles to the Piraeus, and also from Venice down the Adriatic Sea. That was the way we went. One evening we left Venice, and the following afternoon we called at Dubrovnik an ancient city-state now forming part of Yugo-Slavia. It is a lovely spot, a city of white stone and purple flowers, jutting out into the deep blue waters of the Adriatic, with the last spurs of the Dinaric Alps rising high behind it against a vivid sky. Next morning we woke to find ourselves slipping past Corfou, an island supposed to be the Scheria of the Odyssey, and quite lovely enough to have been the very place where Nausicaa played ball with her maidens and was found by Odysseus! Soon we were sailing past Ithaca, and in the afternoon we reached the northwest of the Pelo- ponnesus where we landed in Greece for the first time and drove to Olympia. We went in buses, escorted, rather to our surprise, by policemen, smiling gentlemen in grey-green uniforms, white sun helmets and white gloves. One sat beside the driver, one was perched on the top of the bus, and one hung on behind. Wherever we went in the country, policemen invariably accompanied us, whether to protect us from the natives or the natives from us we were never quite sure! The Greek chauffeurs drove at a terrific rate along roads that were none too good, and though at times we were rather fearful at heart, yet we could not but admire the dashing way in which they took dangerous corners and the crumbling banks of certain rivers. The country was wild and rather desolate. We saw men and women working in the fields gathering the currants, one of the most important Greek exports. Most of the women wore a brightly-coloured scarf twisted simply round their head and falling gracefully over their shoulders, while the men wore gaily coloured sashes, and had straw sombreros to protect them from the sun. Here and there we passed solitary figures riding on mules who drew aside and watched us with that passive stare with which country people generally regard a bus full of tourists. We saw some houses — very humble indeed, little mo re than flat-roofed shacks with a lean-to for the animals. Sometimes there was a rough attempt at a verandah — a crude arrangement of poles and sticks with branches laid on as a kind of roof — just something to keep off the heat. Now and then [18]

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UNDER GREEK SKIES TO see Greece had been a dream of mine since childhood. I remember looking at the map and someone called my attention to the fact that it was like a pendant, a jewelled pendant flashing brightly towards the East, The phrase caught my fancy and everything I have heard or seen of Greece since then has made me feel this was one of the best descriptions ever given. Geographically of course it is obvious. Her many islands, clustering in the Aegean Sea, gleam in the radiant Greek air like precious stones set in wine dark waters. But the phrase has a deeper significance. When we think of the heritage bequeathed by ancient Greece to Europe, not only in learning but also in art, when we realize that, while she has championed Europe against Asiatic aggression, she has also been the gate through which Eastern thought has come to us, then we see that not only geographically, but also in a spiritual sense, Greece has been the jewel of Europe, flashing brightly towards the East. Several things surprised me about the country. I had thought it was a small place. I was amazed to find how much it has developed since its independence was declared in 1831. The population has more than trebled, and Greece is now the dominant power in the Eastern Mediterranean. Crete belongs to her and she has also got the Ionian Islands on the west coast, Macedonia and Thrace to the North, and all the islands in the Aegean Sea. In addition she received after the Great War, a million and a half refugees from Asia Minor where they were being persecuted by the Turks. She has not only fed and clothed them but has given them work and has quite absorbed them in her population. Some of these people are very good at carpet-weaving and making pottery and they are becoming useful citizens. Another thing that surprised me was to find that Greece was under a dictatorship. Although she still has a King, yet Metaxas, the Dictator about two years ago suspended Parliament, dealt sharply with all labour questions, organized a Youth Movement and marshalled the whole country in a very summary way, on the side of law an d order. Everybody now seems occupied and busy and the faces of shepherds, fishermen and muleteers all light up at the mention of Metaxas ' name. However many people do not like it at all, for they feel he has suppressed liberty, the most precious of all possessions. [17]

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we rattled past a little church of the Byzantine type, and sitting near it was the Greek priest in his long white robes and high, round black headdress. And then suddenly we swung up the hill of Cronus, crossed a bridge under which a tiny stream trickled in an exhausted way. Someone called out excitedly That must be the Alphaeus! We rounded a corner and found ourselves looking down on the broad and rich valley of Olympia. My first impression was one of exquisite peace and beauty. It was one of the few places in Greece where we saw trees — pines, myrtles, turpentine trees, and a kind of rock-rose. Green banks rose on either side on which sheep and goats peacefully browsed. It was a pastoral scene, the whole bathed in that strangely trans- figuring light which to my mind makes Greece a land apart. Then we remembered that this peaceful valley had once been a vast sanctuary to Zeus, a meeting place for the entire Greek race, where all forgot their feuds and fra- ternised in the worship of strength, skill and beauty. For it was here that the great Olympic games were held every four years from 776 B.C. till the fourth century A.D. In the spring when the date was fixed, heralds went through Greece proclaiming the fact. All wars had to cease for the time being, and none dared to molest the competitors or spectators on their way to Olympia. For more than a thousand years this valley must have been thronged every four years with athletes, poets, princes, sculptors and musi- cians, and all they would bring in their train. I tried to imagine the running, the wrestling, the boxing, and above all, the chariot-races. What sights this valley must have seen! No wonder they kindled the soul of Pindar into song and inspired the masterpieces of Phidias and Praxitiles. In the stadium, recently excavated, w e saw the very stones sunk flush !with the earth where the runners got a grip with their toes to be ready for the start. The Palaestra or gymnasium, where candidates trained for a month before the events, the Bouleu- terion where they took oaths to obey all the rules of the games, the Prytaneum where the winners were feasted and crowned with wild olive — there are traces of all these still left. But what interested me most were the grey ruins of the ancient temple to Hera, Mother of the Gods, and close to it the huge broken pillars of the temple to Zeus. I thought of the god ' s colossal statute in gold and ivory — forty feet high — which once stood there. It perished long ago, but the splendid marble figures which were once in the eastern and western pediments of the temple, have recently been excavated, and are now in the museum on the top of the hill. We hurried to see them, and the past sud- denly came flashing back to us as we gazed at these grave and lovely men and women in sculptured marble, as fresh and true today as they were over two thousand years ago. On the left is a striking scene showing two groups preparing for a chariot race. In the centre stands Zeus between the girl Hippodameia with her young lover, Pelops, on the one hand, and the girl ' s parents on the other. The father has challenged all his daughter ' s suitors to a chariot-race, and if he wins, he slays them for their presumption in aspiring to his daughter ' s hand. Here, however, he meets his match, for Pelops is the victor, and the father, though he does not know it, is going out to meet his doom. Chariots, horses and servants are grouped on either side, among them an old man whose face of despair plainly shows that he foresees his master ' s fate. [19]