-6- not the property of any one woman. He is a Vegetarian, he does not drink, he does not smoke, and for countless thousands of German women, especially unmarried women, he has become a kind of God. They have his portrait before their eyes at work and in their rooms. The men students of the universities are said to be hostile to the government for the following reasons: They dislike interference with their private lives, and those of the higher social classes strongly resent the suppression of the old Corps and Burschenschaften. They find the one club that the Nazis have set up in place of these others both perfectly flat and indirectly obnoxious. They resent the attempts that are made to regiment them and to discover their private opinions, and for this reason stay away from certain smaller universities where the system for accomplishing this sort of thing works smoothly. Also, they have begun rather widely to see that their instruction is not only far inferior to what it used to be, but much less than adequate to their needs. I attach little importance to what I was told about the attitude of the top of society, whether big business or old aristocracy, except that the trend is unfavorable to Hitler. Coming back now to the professors, who represent the class that I know best, of whom I saw the largest number and who, knowing more about me, were probably most disposed to speak freely, it will perhaps be well to go into further details. There is, I should think, all but universal conviction that the German universities have been practically destroyed as well-balanced, all round institutions of learning and of research. There is little hope that they can be presently restored to anything like their former state, and the general attitude is one of deep depression. The following episode throws light |