The professor, like the army officer, has long been a semi-deity in
Germany. Not only in his university lectures does he influence the
students, and particularly the prospective teachers of secondary
schools who hang on his words, but he writes the bulk of the
historical, economic and political literature of the daily Press,
the magazines and the tons of pamphlets which flood the country.

Years before the war the Government corralled him for its own. It
gave him social status, in return for which he would do his part to
make the citizen an unquestioning, faithful and obedient servant of
the State. As soon as he enters on his duties he becomes a civil
servant, since the universities are State institutions. He takes
an oath in which it is stipulated that he will not write or preach
or do anything questioning the ways of the State. His only way to
make progress in life, then, is to serve the State, to preach what
it wishes preached, to teach history as it wishes history taught.

The history of Prussia is the history of the House of Hohenzollern,
and the members of the House, generation after generation, must all
be portrayed a& heroes. There was a striking illustration of this
in 1913 when the Kaiser had Hauptmann's historical play suppressed
because it represented Frederick William III. in true light, as
putty in the hands of Napoleon.

There is a small group of German professors interested solely in
scientific research, such as Professor Roentgen and the late
Professor Ehrlich, which we exclude from the "puppet professors."
Such men succeed through sheer ability and their results are their
diplomas before the world. Neither shoulder-knots nor medals
pinned in rows across their breasts would contribute one iota to