PRE-WAR GERMANY

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 77, Issue 82, 7 April 1934, Page 8

PRE-WAR GERMANY

Sir.—T was very much interested in your«leading article which appeared in the “Chronicle” dated April 5, on “The Now Paganism.’’ In my opinion your loader is none too strong, as it gives your readers some idea as to the trend of public opinion in Germany and what it is loading to. The light of tho past is needed to understand the Germany of to-day. Long before tho Great War began, tho German profcs sors invented a Gorman, a national, learning, whose object it was to glorify the Kaiser and to prove to the whole world the virtue and valour of tho Ger man Empire. Now science and scholar ship cannot be nationalised, any more than the Deity can be nationalised and tho state-fed learning of Germany Ik*came perforce a dangerous mixture of pedantry and politics. Tho episode of the German professors is a darkly sinister episode in a sinister war. To read their utterances is to bo transported into a world of boastfulenss and falsehood. At a bound they rid themselves of all the respect for truth which should have been their ideal. They said whatever they thought might be acceptable without reflection and without inquiry. The perverted intelligence (if space permitted many examples could be given) of tho German professors contains for us a grave warning. Their conduct can best he explained by the fact that they are tho servants of tho State. They have taken their wages, and they must prove their zeal in earning them. Had they beau free to follow learning for its own sake they would not have contorted th* plain truth at the bidding of any mr? ter. —T am. etc. “J.W.H.” Gon villa, April 5.