igi62 At yen a 



He had no understanding of democracy, and asserted a German 

 that Germany was prosperous and progressive by not ""^ 

 allowing ignorant people to meddle with affairs. Upon 

 my request for his views on the question of Alsace- 

 Lorraine he expressed himself, by letter, in the 

 following manner: 



Elsass-Lothringen is for us Germans no longer a question. 

 The land, the seat of an old German race, is a piece of Germany 

 — in its language and its customs, German. We Germans are 

 sensitive to all discussion of this question by foreign people as a 

 revival of the French restlessness toward this problem. Inside 

 of Germany I wish to see granted to Elsass-Lothringen all 

 possible independence, but that is a problem forever and wholly 

 German. 



At Jena I spent the afternoon with Ernst Haeckel, Haeckei 

 Eucken's colleague, a man of totally different type — 

 keen, critical, dogmatic, holding in equal dislike the 

 state church of Germany and British imperialism, 

 both of which he thought essentially hypocritical. 

 He was "sure that the Herr Gott is not British, as 

 English imperialists imagine him to be." His idea of 

 England, like that of many other Germans, was 

 derived from the overreaching of Palmerston and 

 Beaconsfield. The fact that another England came 

 into power with Campbell-Bannerman he did not 

 realize. Had he known it he would probably have in- 

 sisted that fair-minded Englishmen were still in the 

 minority even though, by compromise, a liberal 

 party had come into power. He also shared the 

 opinion of his academic class in general, that Ger- 

 many was getting along famously and that for the 

 people to interfere with public affairs would simply 

 break up her harmonious efficiency.^ 



* The same idea was expressed in a personal letter to me from a professor 

 of Law in Heidelberg: "Thank God, we have no parliamentary government!" 



C 303 u 



