Vol. 1 March 25, 1897. No. 20
ABOUT GREECE AND CRETE.
Do you know, my dear young friends, that you and I ought to be very glad and grateful that we are Americans?
Does it ever occur to you that while millions of people in other lands are to-day suffering unspeakably from cruelty and oppression, it is your happy lot to live under a government which makes such wrongs impossible?
You have seen what Cuba is willing to suffer, if she can only get away from the oppression of Spain. You have seen that she considers no sacrifices too great, that she will surrender fortune, happiness, and life itself, will endure lingering tortures and death in solitary dungeons; and all this, just that she may secure the very freedom which you and I enjoy so carelessly!
And now, from the Southeastern end of Europe, there has come another supplicating voice, from another island.
The little island of Crete, in the grasp of a hand infinitely more cruel than Spain's, has declared she would rather perish than remain longer at the mercy of the Turk.
What could such a little atom of a country do alone? One can only wonder that she ever dared to dream of freedom! But a desire for freedom makes frail, weak bodies marvellously strong sometimes. She resolved that she would not longer endure the Turkish yoke; and she called to her old kinsmen in Greece to come and take her into their Christian kingdom. She said: "We are the same in race and in religion, let us become one in country, too."