Greater Greece and Greater Britain; and, George Washington, the Expander of England.: Two Lectures with an AppendixFreeman, Edward A. (Edward Augustus)
History
Greater Greece and Greater Britain; and, George Washington, the Expander of England.: Two Lectures with an Appendix
Freeman, Edward A. (Edward Augustus)
Great Britain -- Colonies; Imperial federation; Washington, George, 1732-1799
Herein comes the great truth, the seeming contradiction, which is
embodied in the life and work of the worthy of this day and of the men
who were his fellow-workers. There may, I trust, be still some left,
who can take in the thought that there may be true brotherhood among
men of the same race and speech, though their homes may be physically
parted by the full breadth of Ocean, though they may be parted into
distinct political communities, possibly rivals, possibly, by some
unlucky chance, even enemies. Let us go back--there is no parallel so
living--to those old Greek analogies of which I have often spoken,
the analogies which some of us may still have in our memories. Let us
place ourselves in the plain of Altis on one of those high festivals
when the scattered folk of Hellas come together as speakers of the
common tongue of Hellas, as worshippers of the common gods of Hellas.
They come from every scattered settlement of Hellenic speech from the
pillars of Hêraklês to the altar of the Tauric Artemis. The race is
run; the victor is proclaimed, the victor whose success is to give
fresh glory to his native city, the city which on his return he may
not enter, like other men, through the opened gate, but through the
breached wall, as it were the conqueror of his own birth-place. That
city may be one of the renowned centres of the Greek motherland; it may
be Athens or Sparta, Thebes or Argos; but it may also be the Iberian
Zakynthos or the Campanian Kymê, Kyrênê on her terrace by the Libyan
sea or far away Olbia by the banks of Dnieper. Every scattered member
of the great brotherhood comes there of equal right; all are alike at
home in the gathering of the united folk; all throng to the common
hearth of the common gods of Hellas and her children. From east and
west and north and south, all are alike Hellênes; none would refuse
the name; none would endure to have the name refused to him. Wherever
men of Hellas have planted themselves on barbarian soil, the soil has
become Hellas through their presence. The man who goes forth from
Athens to Milêtos still remains Greek and Ionian; the man who goes
forth from Rhodes to Gela still remains Greek and Dorian. The tie of
national brotherhood, the abiding feeling of the oneness of the folk,
lives on through physical distance, through political separation,
through political rivalry and wasting war. Here is indeed a gathering
of scattered kinsfolk, but it is no gathering of dependencies round a
common mistress or even round a common mother. It is the picture of
something nobler; the picture of scattered communities, free and equal,
gathered together in a common home and rejoicing in the tie of common
brotherhood.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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