THE PROTESTATION OF THE GREEK INTELLIGENTSIA
The struggle behind the lines:
The protestation of the Greek intelligentsia
It has been two weeks now since an ultimatum, unique in the diplomatic chronicles of Athens for its content, the time and the way Italy presented it, called on Greece to surrender its lands, to deny its freedom and stain its honour.
We the Greeks, gave this bold demand of the fascist power, the response that three thousand [N.B.: rather more] years of tradition has demanded, carved deeply in our souls but also written in the remote corners of this sacred land with the blood of the greatest heroes of human history. At this moment, near the stream of Thyamis, on the snow covered mountainsides of Pindos and the Macedonian mountains, we fight, most of the times with the bayonet, determined to win or to die to the last man. In this uneven, hardest but stubborn struggle that makes the furious invader burst out against the women, the elderly and the children, burn, kill, maim and dismember the population in our unfortified and noncombatant cities and our peaceful villages, we have the feeling that we do not defend only our cause; that we struggle for the salvation of all those High values which constitute the intellectual and moral civilization, the precious heritage our glorious ancestors bequeathed to humanity and which we see today threatened by the wave of barbarism and violence.
This feeling exactly inspires the courage in us, the Greek intelligentsia, the men of the mind and the arts, to address ourselves to our brothers of the entire World and to ask not for their material but their moral assistance. We ask for contribution of souls, the revolution of the consciences, the proclamation, the immediate influence everywhere possible, the vigilant attendance and the action for a new intellectual Marathon that shall rid the dominated Nations of the fear of the blackest slavery that the world has known till now.
Costis Palamas, Spiros , Angelos Sikelianos, George Drosinis, Sotiris Skipis, Demetrios Mitropoulos, K. Demetriades, Nicolas Veis, K Parthenis, John Gryparis, John Vlahogiannis, Stratis Myrivilis, Costas Ouranis, Miltiades Malakasis, Gregory Xenopoulos, Alexander Filadelpheus, Aristos Campanis.
Newspaper "Nea Hellas", 10 November 1940
