This is what makes our very existence an offence to the moral instincts of the German people.  They are quite right to want to kill us; the only way to abolish fun and freedom is to abolish life.  But I must not be unjust to them; their forethought provides for everything, and no doubt they would prescribe authorized forms of fun for half an hour a week, and would gather together their subjects in public assembly, under municipal regulations, to perform approved exercises in freedom.

Mankind lives by ideas; and if an irreconcilable difference in ideas makes a good war, then this is a good war.  The contrast between the two ideas is profound and far-reaching.  My business lies in a University.  For a good many years before the war certain selected German students, who had had a University education in their own country, came as Rhodes scholars to Oxford.  The intention of Mr. Rhodes was benevolent; he thought that if German students were to reside for four years at Oxford and to associate there, at an impressionable time of life, with young Englishmen, understanding and fellowship would be encouraged between the two peoples.  But the German government took care to defeat Mr. Rhodes’s intention.  Instead of sending a small number of students for the full period, as Mr. Rhodes had provided, Germany asked and (by whose mistake I do not know) obtained leave to send a larger number for a shorter stay.  The students selected were intended for the political and diplomatic service, and were older than the usual run of Oxford freshmen.  Their behaviour had a certain ambassadorial flavour about it.  They did not mix much in the many undergraduate societies which flourish in a college, but met together in clubs of their own to drink patriotic toasts.  They were nothing if not superior.  I remember a conversation I had with one of them who came to consult me.  He wished, he said, to do some definite piece of research work in English literature.  I asked him what problems or questions in English literature most interested him, and he replied that he would do anything that I advised.  We had a talk of some length, wholly at cross-purposes.  At last I tried to make my point of view clear by reminding him that research means finding the answer to a question, and that if his reading of English literature, which had been fairly extensive, had suggested no questions to his mind, he was not in the happiest possible position to begin research.  This touched his national pride, and he gave me something not unlike a lecture.  In Germany, he said, the professor tells you what you are to do; he gives you a subject for investigation, he names the books you are to read, and advises you on what you are to write; you follow his advice, and produce a thesis, which gains you the degree of Doctor of Letters.  I have seen a good many of these theses, and I am sure this account is correct.  With very rare exceptions they are as dead as mutton, and much less nourishing.  The upshot of our conversation was that he thought me an incompetent professor, and I thought him an unprofitable student.