Page 11 - Beholding Liberty!

Instead of a Preface
Instead of a preface, there follows the speech delivered by the President of the Hellenic Parliament, Mr. Konstantinos An. Tasoulas, at the 103rd National Assembly plenary session of the 24th March 2021, regarding the 200th anniversary of the 1821 Revolution.
«My colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, obviously the celebrations for the 200 years since the declaration of our National Revolution of 1821 are not taking place under the con- ditions we would all have liked, but, even as things stand, let the circumstance, the actuality, the difficult situation we are all facing, bend the knee to History, and let us acknowledge that even the arduous stretch, we are going through for many months now, due this health menace, does not surpass emotionally, spiritually and mentally the expression of honour we owe to this magnificent
anniversary of Hellenism.
«Greece shall form an independent State, and shall enjoy all the rights, political, administrative, and commercial, attached to complete independence». This is the first article of the Treaty of London of the 3rd February 1830 between the Great Powers of the time, England, France, Russia, by which the independence of our country was recognized.
«All the lands and places lying south of the line of demarcation shall belong to Greece». The lands and the places that lie south of this line of demarcation. Which line, my colleagues, ladies and gentlemen? The line that define the mouths of Acheloos and Spercheios river. This was the first Greece of 1830, the Greece south of the borderline of the river mouths of Spercheios and Aspro- potamos, namely Acheloos, along with Euboea, North Sporades and the Cyclades. And having this Greece as springboard, 200 years later, we are here today.
«Memory» -Dionysios Kokkinos writes in his breathtaking «Ιστορία της Ελληνικής Επαναστάσεως [History of the Greek Revolution]»- «has been the first great chapter of intellectual man in the quest of his new paths. The need to develop this ‘piece of equipment’ created History. It entails the knowledge of the tried and tested powers of a people and its manifested potentialities», -mark these words, its tried and tested powers and manifested capacities- «in the face of obstacles, ordeals and conquests over the centuries. Without the knowledge of the past, it is not possible to measure the powers of the present, nor to look ahead to the future», the academician Dionysios Kokkinos points out.
Today we stand before the astonishing event of the completion of two centuries since the out- break of the Revolution, the outbreak, that is, of the most glorious and important event in the History of modern Hellenism, that paved the way for the creation of the Greek state following a nine-year long epic struggle against an incomparably stronger opponent.
The factors related to ’21, which contributed to the Revolution of ’21, are well known. Very briefly I repeat them before you. The tradition of the Greek nation, not only as consciousness of History, but also as inherited and subconsciously embedded tendencies that rise and show the way to our destiny, whenever needed. Not all the revolutionaries of ’21 were familiar with the constitutional
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