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University Daily Kansan
Tuesday, Dec. 10, 1963
Whatever Part
"I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat."
No doubt this has been said by many dedicated men, both famous and unknown. But few have meant those words more or better carried out their meaning than the man who is remembered best for saying them—Sir Winston Churchill.
On Nov. 30 Churchill celebrated his 89th birthday anniversary with his usual cigar and glass or two of brandy. The elements of celebration are typical of the man. For Churchill, who rallied the people of Great Britain and possibly the whole of the Western allies from the brink of defeat during World War II, lives as he always did—unfalteringly.
FEW MEN, perhaps none, have left such an indelible mark in history as Churchill in the crucial first half of this century. He was more than a brilliant statesman. He was, and in many ways still is, an author, painter and critic and excellent in each.
In Great Britain, "Winnie," as the Britons informally call him, is a legend of his versatile talents. His art has been praised in the Royal Academy and his writings won him the Nobel Prize for Literature. As a man in government, he was unparalleled, even beyond British shores.
CHURCHILL WAS bound by no party. Although a Conservative in theory in Parliament, he roundly opposed both sides periodically from the day he entered the government in 1906 until the day he left in 1955. His independence and sacrifice won him acclaim throughout the Western hemisphere during both wars.
As Prime Minister for nine years, Churchill taught the world a few lessons it will never forget. For almost six of those years he inspired his battered nation with such confidence that certain defeat was overcome. His many personal contacts with the leaders of the Allies instilled the same confidence, the confidence which defeated Germany.
Churchill's main forte was that he knew no other aim except victory. Victory was his only answer, no matter what the odds. He sacrificed Britain's last armored division to defend Egypt and he befriended the Soviet Union to win the war. He rallied the British people to nationwide courage at Dunkirk. Even though his country suffered the most, Churchill led the free world to that victory.
Today, not only Great Britain remains a powerful nation because of Churchill's leadership, but so does the United States, France and, yes, Russia. Churchill is one of those men who pave the way for those who follow him.
CHURCHILL'S DETERMINATION for victory and freedom was never expressed more clearly than when he addressed the graduating class at Harvard University mid-way through the war. May it be remembered well today:
"Let all of us who are here remember that we are on the stage of history, and that whatever part we have to play, great or small, our conduct is likely to be scrutinized not only by history, but by our own descendants."
— Terry Ostmeyer
Millionaire Found the Glory That Was Troy
By Larry Knupp
By Larry Knupp
Almost 100 years ago, in 1870,
a myth became reality. An ancient city which man had believed a dream for more than 1,000 years came to light.
Was there ever such a place as Troy, and did Priam rule there in magnificence and splendor? Did Paris steal Helen and thus bring on the Trojan War which is sung in the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey?"
OR WAS THE great tale born only in the mind of the unknown Homer?
For more than 1,000 years, man was certain the whole story was a great and glorious fiction conceived by a great poet, not a historian. One man made Homer a historian. That man found Troy.
As a child, Heinrich Schlie-
mann was told and retold tales of Agamemnon, Achilles, Hecor,
and Priam until they became a part of him.
HEINRICH FELT that the mighty city of which Homer sang and the gigantic walls which had held off the Greeks for 10 years could not have disappeared completely. He knew that somewhere those walls were sleeping under the ground. By the time he was seven, he had resolved to find them.
When he was 19, he went to sea. Shipwrecked off the Netherlands, he settled in Amsterdam and found a job as an office boy. He began to study languages and taught himself English, French, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian within two years. Promotion came rapidly, and he found a job with a firm doing business in Russia. He taught himself Russian and could speak it fluently in six weeks. By the time he was 33, he could speak 15 languages. He was also a multi-millionaire.
In 1850, he went to America to settle his dead brother's financial affairs in California. The
Finally, in 1868, a millionaire many times over and 46 years old, Schliemann set out to find Troy. His old dream had never faded.
Gold Rush broke out and, almost by accident, he made another fortune.
MOST SCHOLARS of his time believed the legend to be pure myth. The scoffers offered substantial reason for this belief. For one thing, the Greeks made their first appearance in recorded history as a small and simple people. They did not have vast, well-armed armies or huge fleets of ships or towering palaces. Yet Homer had depicted all this and more. It was much easier to believe Troy a myth than that Greece had once bloomed only to fall into darkness for hundreds of years and rise again.
Schliemann refused to believe it.
if Troy had existed at all, scholars felt, its site was probably a village called Bunarbashi on the coast of Asia Minor. The sole reason for selecting this site was the passage in the 22nd book of the "Iliad," which said that near Troy there were two springs, one very hot and the other very cold. Bunarbashi was the only village in the area with two such springs. The difference in temperature was only a few degrees, but there was a difference. Also, Bunarbashi stood at the southern end of a plain known as the Plain of Troy, and the rocky heights behind the city would have made it an ideal citadel.
The only problem to Schliemann was that Bunarbashi was eight miles inland, and Homer told of the Greeks going back and forth between the city and the sea several times a day. Besides, the site didn't feel right to Schliemann.
called Hissarlik. It was only an hour from the coast, and it stood atop a high mound from which it could command the entire Plain of Troy. In historic times, Hissarlik had been the site of a Roman settlement known as Novum Ilium or New Troy.
HE HAD a feeling that the true site of Troy was a village at the other end of the plain
In April, 1870, Schliemann began to dig. Almost immediately he struck ruins. As he dug deeper, he found one of the most amazing archaeological finds of history. He found not only the Troy of Priam and Paris, but eight other Troys as well, all piled one atop another like a fantastic sandwich. Nine Troys, nine cities, at least seven of which existed before recorded history.
ALTHOUGH SCHLIEMANN was not a professional archaeologist, he made a discovery that changed man's whole concept about his past. Later, more thorough men established that the seventh city from the bottom was the Troy of Homer and that it dated to about 1200 B.C. That left six cities lower in that strata which predated even that. The lowest city, or Troy I as archaeologists know it, was a humble fishing settlement, probably established about 3200 B.C. The second city, which Schliemann thought was Priam's, actually went back to around 2500 B.C. This forced historians to revise their picture of Greek civilization.
By 1872. Schliemann had uncovered evidence that made him certain that the second Troy from the bottom was the Troy of Homer. Satisfied that he had found Troy, he left the site. He died in Italy in 1890 with his greatest dream fulfilled.
Sometime prior to 2000 B.C. a race of barbarians known as the Achaeans swept out of Europe and conquered the area. In time they developed a mighty civilization which was the Greece of Agamemnon and Hector. If the Trojan War lasted for ten years, then the war must have started in 1190 B.C., because Priam's Troy, or Troy VII, as it is known, was sacked and burned in 1180.
As far as the reason for the war is concerned, it is highly unlikely that Paris and Helen had anything to do with it. If anything, the stealing of the wife of the King of Sparta was an excuse and nothing more. The separate city-kingdoms of Greece would not have banded together for such a reason. It more likely was a trade war. Troy controlled the Dardenelles, the entrance to the Black Sea, and that fact was no doubt a sore spot with the Achaean Greeks.
Thanks to Schliemann, we now know that Greece did indeed undergo a "Dark Age." About the year 1000 B.C., a race of barbarians called the Dorians overran the Achaeans and destroyed their civilization. Within 400 or 500 years, they had developed their own great civilization. This was the Greece of the Classics, of Plato, Socrates, and democracy, of Aristotle and Oedipus.
DORIAN GREECE was the earliest in man's knowledge before Schliemann found Troy. Now, whole new civilizations have come to light. Archaeologists have found Knossos, home of the Labyrinth and the Minotauro. The palace of King
Minos has been found, and we now know a great deal about the powerful empire of Crete, which was in its Golden Age when Troy was a village 2500 years before Christ.
Other archaeologists have found other great missing segments of man's dim past. Babylon and Assyria of the Bible have been found and with them what may be man's first true civilization, that of the Sumers, who had built cities in the Euprates-Tigris River valley some 6,000 years before Christ.
Other great civilizations of man have come to light in the past 100 years. The perfectly preserved city of Pompeii told us how a people as recent as the Romans had really lived. Almost all other sources of that information had perished in the Dark Ages. We have learned of Chichen Itza and the other cities of the Mayans, Aztecs and Incas which told us of civilization that had thrived a thousand years before Leif Erickson discovered America.
ARCHAEOLOGISTS are working today, all over the world, finding little bits and pieces and fragments of the shattered history of man. They will continue to work in the hope that every piece of shattered pottery or masonry will provide a clue, and that every little bit of metal and scrap of paper that is found in the places where man was once great will shed a little light on why he fell.
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