The Greek community of Chicago celebrated with great festivities the anniversary of our freedom. Prominent people, societies and their banners, representatives of Greece - all were there. Enthusiasm and patriotism were the keynotes of the day. It was the greatest day in the lives of many of the Greeks.

Although we are all Americans, we return, annually, on this day to the native customs and ideas, of our forefathers. Although our celebrations cannot rival those of Greece we do our best to celebrate this great day in the true Greek way. We should be able to do so because there are plenty of Greeks in America and in Chicago itself.

We have done our best to preserve the Greek customs and ideals in America, but every day a Greek boy and girl are born who will not learn the Greek language but will be true Americans. The fault lies entirely within ourselves. How many times have the priests visited the Greek schools? How many times has the General Consul appeared in full dress 2before the small Greek boys? The uniform seems superfluous and silly to us but to the little Greek boys it denotes bravery, valor, courage and patriotism. There is a Greek girl's club in our city. How many times has this club been visited by our priests to be encouraged in the good work it is doing, to be advised and to be blessed?

We establish churches. Without churches we cannot preserve our national language. We establish schools, where we teach the alphabet. Why can't we have a complete school and higher classes yet? Is it because the Greeks don't have enough money to support such a scheme?

There are 3,000 Greek children who attend the second and third grades of Greek schools, The three schools in our city enroll 150 to 200 students every year for higher learning. That is not much considering the number of Greek boys and girls of school age there are in Chicago at the present time. We must do our best to get all of them enrolled to preserve our language and keep up the customs and ideals of our motherland.