| Description | For enclosure with this letter see FS/7/4/6/17
' Thank you very much for your letter of September 8th which I found on my return from my holiday.
I think you see the main point very clearly and I shall be very pleased to discuss matters with Birley as you suggest when he is next in Oxford.
May I add a few further remarks to my previous letter: When I was recently in Switzerland I met there three former colleagues from Germany - two had just become Professors at Zurich and another had been sent to Switzerland for a T.B. cure. All of them were of the decent type, actually two had even been actively anti-Nazi. They all confirmed the picture which I have already given you and completely agree with the statement made by Kallmann and Jost. They emphasised one point which seems to be of very great importance and I believe they are right. It is the fact that more often than not our representatives in Germany have picked the wrong people and they mentioned particularly how discouraging it is to the very few decent ones to see how we fall for those who are most adaptable and able to flatter us in a clever way, while those who are really decent have little or no influence. You will remember that I have previously emphsised this point to you but from what I have heard recently I believe it is even more important than I realised at the time.
A good illustration of this point was presented a few days ago to me when I heard that our scientific representative in Gottingen had suggsted a visit to England of a man, Professor Justi of the infamous Technische Hochschule at Brunswick, which seems to be teeming with Nazis. I know that this man was a Nazi from the very beginning and one of the really despicable ones. I have now heard from my friends in Zurich that he remained a Nazi the whole time until the end. Moreover, he is a very mediocre scientist. Of all people, he is selected as one of the first to be invited to this country! You know that I am very much in favour of inviting German scientists to England but one has to pick the right ones and there are still quite a number who not only behaved impeccably but are also high grade scientists.
I know it must be very difficult to understand fully people of another country, particularly perhaps Germany, where intellectual honesty was not the most outstanding quality. I have often wondered why our representatives in Germany do not attach to their offices a German of the right type as adviser. Such people must be available and I personally can give you the name of one. He is Dr. P. Rosbaud, a scientist, who before and during the war was a member of the staff of the great firm of scientific publishers 'Springer' of Berlin, and has a very wide knowledge of scientific personnel. During the war he belonged to a group of active resistors who included Bonhoeffer, Laue and a few others, and he was brought over to this country after the war by Comdr. Welsh of the Atomic Energy project. He has the full confidence of all the decent German scientists to whom I have talked and of many people in this country also. (Apart from Comdr. Welsh, Sir Charles Darwin would testify for him and I am sure Professor Blackett of Manchester ahnd Professor Hutton of Cambridge would also). He has now a small job with a publishing firm in England and I know that his main interest is to try and help to get things properly settled in Germnay again.
I think a lot could be done if he could be attached to some office in Germany, perhaps to Birley's office. As he is a "pure aryan" he would not be confronted with the many difficulties that refugees - particularly jewish refugees - would have to encounter. In any case I think it would be well worth while for you or one of your colleagues to have a word with Dr. Rosbaud (55, Cornwall Gardens, London, S.W.7. Telephone Western 5131).
Finally one other point: you realise how bad the position is at the Universities but it is not restricted to the Universities at all. You may be interested to read a letter which my parents -in-law received a short time ago from their former housekeepers who always stood by them until they left Berlin in 1938. The letter of these simple people gives a very good picture of the mentality of the average working class German. Rosbaud, who has just returned from three weeks stay in Germany, confirms that it is a very accurate picture.
I am very grateful to you for the chance to bring my views to your notice and I hope I shall have an opportunity in the not too distant future to discuss these matters with you. ' |