The Press. Saturday, January 15, 1916. The Broken Fellowship.

Press, Volume LII, Issue 15488, 15 January 1916, Page 8

The Press. Saturday, January 15, 1916. The Broken Fellowship.

On the 15th October last the Great Hall of the Berlin University was the scene of a brilliant gathering, assembled to hear an address from the foremost of Prussian scholars. The speaker was Professor Ulrich von Wilamowitz-310l-lendorf, who was being installed Rector Magnificus of tho University. The name of "Wilamowitz-Mollendorf has long been known among students of the higher classical learning as a bold, brilliant, and stimulating writer. His personality is not unknown in England. A few years ago he visited Oxford, and lectured there. Still more recently he was ono of the Berlin delegates at the International Historical Congress which was held in London in 1912; and his striking appearance and graceful ora-

Tory on that occasion were described in an account of the Congress contributed to "Tho Perhaps ho derives a portion of his significance from the fact that lie is a conspicuous exception to tho popular conception of German professors as a pedant-ie. grubbing, drv-as-dust. snuffy race. Wilamowitx has brilliancy, grace, and a fineness of intuition which seems to approximate more to the French type. Tho address of which we aro now speaking (a pretty full summary of which-we get from "The Times") was full of human as well as scholastic in-

terest. Its primary purpose was to celebrate tho five hundredth anniversary of the rise to prominence of the Hohenzollorn family. But a greatscholar had also to contemplate the world of letters and science as affected by the most stupendous struggle known to history. So far as his own University was concerned, lie liad to present the same picture now so familiar to us from tho accounts of Oxford and Cambridge: balls almost empty, students all gono to the war, or preparing to get there as soon as possible; hardly any professors left to do the teaching. Still, ho said, we must keep the work going, if only for the sake of tlioso who through sex or physical defects are incapacitated from fighting for their country in the field. But soon the speaker's mind took'a wider range, and it was then that the real interest of the address began. WiLamowitz-Mol-lendorf has always been prominent among scholars in maintaining tho international solidarity of learning. To him, as to his lato father-in-law, Mommsen, the realm of letters and science has known no lines of national demarcation. In such matters he has had no thought of difference of race or nationality. He lias had warm friends in England, in France, and in Italy; and he has rejoiced in their achievements, as in those of his own countrymen. And now? Is all this fair fellowship shattered for ever? At tho thought his language takes a sadder and more personal tinge. "These studies point "tho peoples to something that is com- " mon to them all, and teach them to 'make room for one another on tnls "common ground. Here, then, tho " threads of friendly relations united "the scholars of all nations. In time "of war these threads must trail on "the ground. But aro they to be "broken for over? It seems so. Let "us bo under no illusions. Wo shall " not meet again. For the rest of our lives, I suppose, we shall walk along " together as strangers. It is a great "personal loss. But nothing is too " much if tho Fatherland requires it. What the Fatherland does not require "is that love and loyalty shall be torn "up Ilk© weeds; and I in my heart, "shall preserve towards tho men of " enemy countries, not only the respect " that is their due, but loyal friendship. ' And I have no doubt that many an "one in enemy countries feels tho ' same, even iji the Paris Acadomy, " which has expelled me. . . . The ' love for Science, the impulse upwards " to common ideals, is a divine fire, and " the hearts in which it bums must "feel, in spite of everything, that they "are related. This is tho confidence "which reconciles us old men to the " thought that we must die before the "harmony has been restored, on which "we used to build, and which ended in " shrill discord. . . . Meantime wo " will let nothing embitter our pleasure " in Montaigne and Diderot, in Shaftes"bury and Sterne, in Corot and Rodin. "Even Thomas Hardy and Anatole "France shall continue to please us."

There is something noble and toufching about these words, which could only have proceeded from a lofty mind. Possibly before we knew that German scientists wero capable of betraying us by doing the dirtiest work of spies, when we treated them as men of honour and mado them our guests, the fairsounding words we havo quoted might havo found an echo in tho hearts of every true British scientist and man of letters; so different are they from the usual German professorial utterances, to which we have been accustomed. Yet they are immediately followed by harsh words against England, and by assertions, in tho genuine Prussian vein, of German superiority in all things. Our scholars, too, have their pangs over the rupture of close, friendly co-operation with German scholarship. Nor aro they under any illusions' about tho worthlessness of tho cheap depreciation of German contributions to scholarship and science, which some people mistake for "patriotism." And yet they aro human; and, being so, they find it difficult to detach tho great achievements of a race from tho senso of loathing and nausea inspired by the recent conduct of that race, and the doctrines which th<>y have preached. Who of us, who have German books on our shelves, which we once opened with reverence, do not now almost shrink from opening them at all, as if from a physical dread of finding over them tho slimy trail of some noisome and loath- j some beast, or of finding branded on tho title-page some hideous utterance of Mophistophelian cynicism. And what English or French savant amongst us would not now shrink from grasping the hand of a once-revered German savant, as if he expected to find it clammy with the blood of poor, helpless women and children? No doubt this feeling will pass away, and there will bo somo ghostly revival of the old

personal association and co-operation. But it will take a long time; and, as Wilamowita-Mollendorf says, the old amongst us shall not see it. Meantime the loss of tho old supports may tend to greater independence and individual effort on our own part. And, as British commerco will hare to purge itself of the German microbe, and striv© for a healthy independence, so British scholarship and science will have to untold their latent national resources, and

prove to the world that they are not mere helpless eripples. nnablo to maintain an upright position without the support of German crutchcs.