As a member of this community for nearly a quarter of a century, I wish to spend a few minutes with you, taking an inventory of its accomplishments and failures in the past, and of its major problems in the present, with some attention to your share towards the solution of these problems. Please do not take this as a pedanic outline of the "same old junk". Surprisingly even to me, I have become one of the older persons of whom Socrates says in his Republic that "they are travellers who have gone on a journey which you too may have to go, and of whom you ought to inquire whether the way is smooth and easy, or rugged and difficult." As such, I may be allowed the privilege of sitting with you for a few minutes and talking of this journey.

Concerning your duties as a member of American Society you have been lectured to and advised for so many years that certainly it would be an imposition on my part to expect platitudes. But the fact that you are here tonight denotes that you are a member of a heterogeneous group which is held together by ties of common racial extraction. Whether in the past you were proud or indifferent to the fact that you were an American citizen of Greek extraction signifies nothing.....I am sure that most of you will become members of our community which is the community of American citizens of Greek extraction---shall I say, peace-seeking and law-abiding? You arrive to take your places at a time when the community is emerging from youth, or rather from the frontier days, and passes into the state of maturity.

The troubles, tribulations, and problems that have harassed the early members of the community in their attempts to acclimatize themselves in a strange and seemingly hostile environment are now memories and to you, perhaps, an obscure uninterested page of history. Yet it is this background against which you will try to build the pattern of your lives, and it may not be amiss to recall the major outlines.

The undeniable fact that many of the Greek immigrants wish, or rather think that they wish to go back, merely springs from the greater liberty they enjoyed in their former country liberty not known to many immigrants, such as those of Irish and German descent.....

Caught by a tidal wave, we were vomitted one day onto this shore, and we attempted to transplant ourselves as best we could. We did not, at first, understand the environment. From a land of pastoral quietude we were thrust into a country boiling over with youth, virility, and optimism. The tempo of life seemed too quick, and above all there appeared to be a God named Business which overshadowed everything, permeating even the emotional expression of the people. To be in business, to work, to succeed, were moral duties. All this interlocked with what appeared contradictory---rugged individualism and group idealism.

To the natives we were foreigners with all the implications of the word, and naturally we were considered to be of lower strata. We had either to be 4assimilated and absorbed, or to live huddled in some corner as a foreign group. This is still a major problem, because.....Therefore, the first outlook was that of a transient community; its members had as an objective to earn as much as possible, save as much as possible, pay the debts in the old country, marry the sisters, and finally to return. The struggle is, however, near its end. The force of environment is stronger than pride. People of some learning were looked upon with suspicion if not derision and labeled "Calamarades."

Being occupied from dawn to dusk with toil in an environment which did not appear altogether friendly left little time for culture.....

A community must first be established before it can develop a culture, and the toil and hardwork involved in establishing it brings with it many features that are not altogether pleasant. The arrogant but ignorant who made a little money, etc...., the opportunist ready to proclaim himself a leader .... The half baked person...., the ruthless promoter and go-getter, the cheap patriots... all of these are transient features--sores and pimples upon a body that has changed its diet and is trying to adjust itself to new food.

Slowly we changed; the dream to go back became misty and evanescent; we realized that our stay here is of permenent nature. Those of us who were discharged accepted it as written in the book of fates. Some did go back. The dream lost its translucent character; the sea, the mountains, the rocks and the sky were the same as in the dream, perhaps more exotic and beautiful. But they, the returned wanderers were not the same as when they had left many years ago. Neither were the people they found, their brothers and sisters. They felt strangers in their own home.

The task to be reassimilated in the land they called their own was found by most to be painful indeed, and so our community has lost its transient character. It is of a permanent nature.

There was a time when, here, in this community, the number of students attending the higher institutions of learning could be counted on the fingers.

Slowly it grew, and this dinner tonight given in your honor by the graduates of earlier years is the best evidence of the development of the community.

As I stated previously, you come at a time when the community is emerging from its youth with all its vigor, enthusiasm, blunders, and mistakes to maturity. I have attempted to give a picture of the background and some of the major problems that we encountered--and now I must digress for the present--to your part in the active life of the community, to what you can do towards helping to solve the problems with which the community is faced.

Of the first is the relation between the older and younger generation.... only by the two extremes could it best be represented. Old men and women are not affected inwardly by the environment....hold the yardstick of the old country....

To illustrate we may feel badly when our girl wants to go to the movies with her boyfriend, still we try to reason that our girl must have the same privileges 7as the girls of good American families. The average, however, I believe tends to the other end of the scale. That cannot be helped. The younger generation..... finds itself in conflict with us many times, because the environment outside gives you different attitudes, different values than those you find at home.

The older people must realize that a boy or a girl must be assimilated or live alone, ostracized from the normal life which they have a right to expect, and the younger generation must attempt to soften its disapprovals of the traditions and values that it finds at home.

May I even go as far as to point out that the younger people should remember that they come of an emotional race, and that although certain practices may be harmless to those of northern extraction because of their slow rate of emotional reaction, still the same practices may be laden with consequence of dynamite to us. It is your task to help, etc.....

Another major problem directly connected with the above is the institution of marriage as practiced in our community. As you know at present everything is in a state of flux.........The problem has many complicated angles, and certainly it would be foolish to suppose that we can reach out into the air for a solution. Perhaps the best way to begin is to offer to the younger people a clean, wholesome, social life, with an opportunity to meet, and I am quite sure that nature will take care of the rest........This developing a stimilating social life with some vestiges of intellectual coloring is a job that awaits you. The start has been made but there is much ground still to be cleared.

Of the many other major problems that can be enumerated, I will only touch upon two, because they seem to me the most important.....The first is connected with religious expression.....You were born into a religion. It has great traditions......This, of course, will mean some very radical changes within the church affairs of our community, but after all that is up to you.

The second and last problem to touch upon is the matter of the Greek language. It is connected with everyone of the problems I mentioned above. Acquisition of reading and writing knowledge of the history of the racial stock from which you spring will help you to solve practically all the conflicts which have been outlined.

There is yet a possibility that the teaching of Greek will start in two high schools by next fall.