540 KELATIONS BETWEEN UNITED STATES AND GERMANY. 



You may also be of use to us by counteracting tendencies that in an 

 unauthorized way threaten to injure the mother country, by helping to 

 remove prejudices that arise there and to clear up our own misunder- 

 standings and unjust suspicions by pointing out the good which we 

 often fail to see either through prejudice or from ignorance of the 

 nature of the people and of the political and social institutions be- 

 yond the ocean. I am happy to say that this conception of the situ- 

 ation of the American citizen of (xerman descent and speech pre- 

 vailed as the keynote of the many demonstrations which were given 

 at St. Louis on *"' German day,'' celebrated on October G, 11)04, and 

 the same note agreeably sounded in my ears wherever I, in social 

 circles, discussed this subject with intelligent persons. 



In order to properly and usefully comport ourselves in scientific 

 relations we must first of all know what the Americans in general 

 think of culture and science, what is the present condition of science 

 and scientific research in America, and how it is likely to be modified 

 in the near future. 



There is widely spread among us a false prejudice that Americans 

 turn predominantly toward material interests and have but little 

 inclination to i)ui-ely scientific matters. Those who hold this forget 

 that the most famous of the American universities. Harvard, in Cam- 

 bridge, Mass.. with an attendance of more than 5,000 students, cele- 

 1;rated not long ago the anniversary of its estal)lishment in HVM\; 

 that Yale University, at New Haven, Conn., likewise highly regarded, 

 has had a festival celebrating the tAvo hundredth year from its 

 foundation ; that Princeton University, in New Jersey, Brown Uni- 

 versity, in Providence^ R. I., and Pennsylvania University, in Phihi- 

 delphia, are about as old as (Icittingen. Besides these, Columbia 

 University, in New York, which is striving in noble competition to 

 reach the top, was established more than seventy years ago. They 

 forget that in the course of from seventy to forty years five universi- 

 ties of the first rank have been established — the Johns Hopkins Uni- 

 \ersity, in Baltimore; the Cornell University, in Ithaca, N. Y., for- 

 merly under the direction of the worthy Ambassador Andrew D. 

 White, who has recently sent us friendly regards from over sea in 

 his '•Autobiography;" the University of Chicago, 111., the Leland 

 Stanford University, Cal., and the Berkeley University, to which 

 belongs the renoAvned Lick Observatory, on Mount Hamilton, in Cali- 

 fornia. They especially forget the numerous great public libraries, 

 with their model equipment, which make it possible for everyone to 

 obtain intellectual food; only a few of us know how nuich these are 

 used by all classes, including the working people. 



The American knows very well that culture brings freedom with 

 it, and that in the fierce struggle for life, in which he must either 

 conquer or be overcome, methodical training is necessary if he would 



