IN GREECE TO-DAY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 73, 15 November 1940, Page 9

IN GREECE TO-DAY

No Wonder Mussolini Dreams Dreams!

Written for "The Listener" by

IDA

LAWSON

once again. Something like 2,000 years ago the Romans marched in and took control, and kept it for several centuries. They carried off works of art, but, give them their due, they were overawed by Greek culture, and as the saying is, were conquered by their captive. In fact, Athens became the Oxford and Cambridge of the Roman world. Greece is a country of mountains — mountains hard to get across. Then trickling streams sometimes become torrents, and brigands and archeologists and whoever else may be there are blocked completely. It’s the sea that has always been the best way for getting about; and even Ss" Italy has attacked Greece-

now you see the little harbours full of ships-painted ships with coloured sails that make you want to drift off in them and cruise among the Aegean Isles as long as Mediterranean suns and moons keep shining. Now, of course, there are roads and railways winding and climbing by olive groves and cypresses and vineyards, round bays, past ancient temple columns, medizval convents, modern villages. Some of the country roads are like water-courses, but that’s nothing to a Greek driver, and besides there are always mules. You see them, the mules, half buried under huge baskets and perhaps a man-a sun-bronzed peasant who wears a short skirt (this may sound funny but it looks well)-and he sings, and the mule now and then gives that being-murdered-sounding neigh or whatever it is, As for the railways-well, they’re fun; because when you're at large in Greece time doesn’t matter; and if you should happen to be held up for three hours you just go on being alive very happily, talking to people, listening to a violin. The people go third-class (very cheap). In they come with their

big striped bags, and fish, hunks of mutton (room for everything inthe rack), live ducks (very well behaved under the seat), guitars, earthenware vessels of water, fruit and bread and cheese for the journey. Getting to Know the Greeks You get to know them quickly because they insist on knowing you, and must find out how much your frock cost, and "what is your father’s name?" And they look after you and point out "the ruins " and persuade you to get off and see the

romantic cave with the sulphur spring (most horrible smell-beyond anything at Rotorua). Often someone is produced who speaks French-it’s rather a second language, and anyone with any pretensions knows it, and sometimes a man who looks as if he’s never been far from his native village breaks in upon you in broken American. (Oh yes, he was there for ten years.) Boats really give more scope for making friends. There you are, perhaps with a night before you under Grecian stars, hearing the swish of the (calm if you’re lucky) sea and sounds of music, with families camped around you on striped rugs and their cat and babies and things all there. "Italy Wants It" Crete: Yes, Italy wants it. The Romans were there, too. . . . Oh hillsides of vineyards, white dusty roads and grey green olive trees, mountains rising from the sea; and walls of palaces built before any in Greece, painted vases, all the elegant women painted and the snake goddess. . . . One look at the

map shows why any Mediterranean power should want Crete. But Italy wants the Piraeus too-the Piraeus that has been the port of Athens since time immemorial. As you sail in the narrow entrance to join the company of ships -big ships, little ships, swell, jaded, friendly ships-you think of all that’s come and gone there-people and merchandise and fleets-yes, even the ships that put out to defeat the array of Persia that threatened Greece so direly. Over the Hill-Athens! Well, you land to shoutings and tootings and arm wavings, and soon find that the Piraeus has its Customs like any port, and lots of men in uniform who want to know about you; but it’s not a New Zealand port, for there are cafes with tables on the street instead of dingy pubs, and flat-roofed, pale, stone buildings, and a dry yellow brown dustiness. And Athens is only a few miles away over the hill-at the other end of the underground or half underground. Athens! With the Acropolis awaiting you and the Athenians sitting at cafe tables on the pavement, very smart: the men you can see want to be immaculate and the women chic. Now they have tea and ices as well as ouzs (a bit like aniseed) and Turkish coffee. Perhaps "Snow White" is on and "King Lear," and they’re playing Beethoven’s 5th Symphony; but round the corner someone’s singing a Turkish song in a voice unmistakably of the east. Athens is not Oriental, but it isn’t Western, though an American said he felt so much at home in the drug stores there,

Now the papers talk about air raids. . But still there is wine from the famous hills around, and the little cafe on the hill of Colonnus where once were glades and nightingales, now pepper trees and opera music (Italian opera), and there you can laugh with the 20th century Athenians and look across the city and go back through all the years when the Turks fought and built there, the people of Byzantium, the Romans, to the days of the democracy of Athens. The setting sun meanwhile works magic on the Acropolis crag, and its buildings are no longer ruined but again complete. No wonder Mussolini dreams dreams!