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Nations that preserve within their boundaries important relics of a glorious past invariably suffer for it in the neglect which the rest of the world pays to their present character and achievement. Visitors flit through Italy, for instance, as if there were nothing there except cathedrals and museums. The number of books in English on Italian art and archaeology is appalling, but those on her modern political and social conditions are few and unsatisfactory. The same is true of Greece. This exclusive devotion by the rest of the world to the past of any nation is hardly complimentary or fair to the present generation, and it is somewhat with an idea of modifying this tendency that the Greek Government is now sending a traveling exhibition about this country, not to belittle ancient Greece, but by pictorial means to unite it in the mind of the rest of the world with the nation of today. In the exhibition, largely photographic, one can see side by side with ancient monuments modern Greek women in dances reminiscent of the solemnity of the ancient Greek tragedies, one can see modern Greek shepherds in Theocritan landscapes.

The rage for Greek terracottas has been the prevailing passion of amateurs and museum officials in Europe for the last ten years, and many a fortune has already been built on these fragile and costly relics of Greek industry. The fame of the Tanagran terracottas spread from Athens, Greece to Paris, France and from Paris to the rest of Europe. About half a century ago the learned German archaeologist, Eduard Gerhard, directed the attention of his pupils to the interest which Greek terracottas have for the history of ancient art.