learning. The title confers no privileges. It is
an academic distinction, and its value depends on the prestige of the
university conferring it.

Germans say that our English universities exist to turn out gentlemen
rather than scholars, and that the aim of their own universities is to
train servants for the State and to encourage learning. I think an
Englishman would say that a gentleman is bred at home, but he would
understand how the German arrived at his point of view. When a German
talks of an English university he is thinking of Oxford and Cambridge,
and he knows that, roughly speaking, it is the sons of well-to-do men
who go there. Perhaps he does not know much about the Scotch and Irish
and Welsh universities, or London, or the north of England; though it
is never safe to build on what a German does not know. I once took for
granted that a man talking to me of some point in history would no
more remember all the names and dates of the Kings of Scotland than I
remember them myself. But he knew every one, and was scandalised by my
ignorance. So perhaps the average German knows better than I do what
it costs a man to graduate at Edinburgh or at Dublin. Anyhow, he knows
that three or four years at Oxford or Cambridge cost a good deal; and
he knows that in Berlin, for instance, a student can live on sixty
pounds a year, out of which he can afford about five pounds a term for
academic fees. If he is too poor to pay his fees the authorities allow
him to get into their debt, and pay later in life when he has a post.
There are cases where a man pays for his university training six years
after he has ended it. But a German university comes to a man's help
still more effectively when there is need for it, and will grant him
partial or even entire support. Then there are various organisations
for providing hungry men with dinners so many days a week; sometimes
at a public table, sometimes with families who arrange to receive one
or more guests on certain days every week. The Jewish community in a
university always looks after its poor students well, and this
practice of entertaining them in private houses is one that gives
rises to many jests and stories. The students soon find out which of
their hosts are liberal and which are not, and give them a reputation
accordingly.

A German comparing his universities with the English ones will always
lay stress on the fact that his are not examining bodies, and that his
professors