THALASSA ! THALASSA !
By JOHN PULLEN
„ HE Greeks are now fighting like veterans, and the cry, ' To the sea! ' is now being heard on all sides." So wrote a Press correspondent in a recent despatch from the Albanian front. To the sea! Like ourselves, the Greeks are a maritime nation, dwelling in a land of narrow acreage but with a varied and extensive sea-board. It is said that there is no high spot in the whole Hellenic kingdom from which the blue waters of the Mediterranean are not discernible on the horizon; there can be few of its inhabitants to whose nostrils the tang of sea-breezes is unfamiliar, or to whose eyes the vision of rolling waves and of white sails scudding before the wind is not bound up with associations that endure from the cradle to the grave.
From the earliest times the Hellenes were noted as a sea- faring race. Their culture, their traditions, their literature, were all stamped indelibly with the hall-mark of the sea. It was Homer, in the dim beginnings of their history, who first struck the note of the " wine-dark " waters, from which his successors were never to deviate very far. Wine-dark: the epithet is a revealing one. First, it is an amazingly true description, as anyone will agree who has sailed the Aegean under summer skies and has stood on deck gazing down into the sun-illumined depths. The colour may be that of no brand of wine kr•.own to the palate of man, but the suggestion of some noble vintage, flushed by the sunshine and mellowed into a rich translucence, is irresistible. So it appeared to Homer, and so it remains today. But there is more in the word than that. If Homer had the artist's eye for truth, he had also, deep-rooted in his heart, the Greek passion for the sea. He loved the blue waters as he loved the twang of the lyre, the clink of the wine-cup, and the voice of the bard rising at twilight above the sounds of feasting and revelry. All were symbolic of an age from which the freshness of dawn had not yet departed, an age when men had just begun to look about them with appraising eyes, to appreciate the wonders of creation and the infinite possibilities of human life. The rich indigo of the Aegean, the purple depths of a goblet filled with Chian wine, both spoke to him in the same language, and both bore the same message to his glowing imagination. Then there is that other Homeric epithet for the sea, the resounding, immortal, untranslatable polysyllable that represents for many of us the one scrap of Greek learning that the memory still retains from early classical studies. Poluphloisboio: it is a pleasure to set down the word, even in an alien English dress. It is to be deplored that the modem Greek, who has shown the world so triumphantly that the martial qualities of his forbears still glow within his breast, has lost the ancient taste for sonorous diphthongs. In his speech the mighty adjective would suffer sad degeneration; it would taper down into something like polyfleesvio, poly- syllabic as ever but lamentably shorn of its resonant qualities. But let that pass; Homer invented the word (let us hope that the oi's meant more to him than to his descendants) and it stands for ever as the one inimitable, unsurpassable descrip- tion of the restless moaning of the waves. The message of the sea, both to eye and ear, will bear his interpretation for all time.
And today, as the correspondent tells us, the Greek soldiers are raising the cry, " To the sea!" It is no new cry on Hellenic lips. It rose, more than 2,000 years ago, from the parched throats of Xenophon's toil-worn veterans when, after many months of forced marching, hard lodging and deadly peril, they at length caught sight, from the Anatolian high- lands, of the distant waters of the Euxine. At last they felt that their troubles were over; they were in sight of the sea, the element which they knew and trusted, the highway along which they could ply in safety and with confidence towards their half-forgotten homes. Their ordeal had been prolonged and desperate, but it ended at the sea-shore.
Will the, ordeal of the Greek army in Albania reach the same end? That is what all lovers of liberty, all who honour the Hellenic race and'its glorious history, will most fervently pray. The Greeks have shown that the spirit of Thermopylae is still alive among them. " Of the three hundred grant but three "—there was no need to make that appeal in the year of grace 1940. Not three alone, but the whole Greek nation, were swift to take their stand in the passes, to face over- whelming odds like their 300 ancestors of undying memory, and to fling back across the mountains the massed legions of a cruel and unscrupulous tyrant. Their first thought was to defend their country against a treacherous and unprovoked attack; their second—and it is a thought typical of the Greek mind through all the ages—to follow the road that would lead them, through whatever difficulties or dangers, to the margin of their beloved seas.
Sea-lovers ourselves, bur hearts warm towards those who share our passion. Lovers of liberty, we salute the race to whose genius the very conception of liberty owes its origin. The bond between Great Britain and Greece is no growth of yesterday. It has its roots in some of our most cherished associations and in some of the deepest instincts of our national character. It was cemented more than a century ago by the blood of a famous English poet; it needed but the comradeship in arms of these past weeks to establish it upon a foundation that will defy the assaults of time. The stubborn gallantry of the Greek soldier has found a fitting counterpart, as well as an unfailing ally, in the dash and intrepidity of the Royal Air Force. Neither can ever forget the other, or allow the memorable deeds that they wrought together to pass into oblivion. The chant that echoed through the Athenian fleet on the morning of Salamis—that desperate appeal to the sons of Greece to rally to the defence of national liberty and national existence—rings in our ears today. We, too, like the Athenians of old, are faced with a vast horde of armed bar- barians led by a swollen-headed despot who aspires to the mastery of the world. We, too, must use our utmost effort if we are to save from destruction all the best fruits of human endeavour. The " song that saved at Salamis " will save again, if we do not forget its solemn warning that the fate of humanity is at stake. The day will come—may it come speedily —when the haven of our desire will rise above the mists of the horizon, and when we, too, can echo, with full and thankful hearts, • the joyful cry of Xenophon's long-suffering ten thousand. Thalassa ! Thalassa 1
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