continue isolated. No longer, to-day, can the internationalism of culture remain the luxury of a few privileged persons. The practical value of an Institute of Nations would be small, unless the masters were associated with their disciples in the same stream, unless all the levels of culture were permeated with the same spirit.
That is why I greet, as a fruitful initiative and a happy symptom, the recent foundation in Zurich, by the university students of that city, of an International Association of Students (Internationaler Studentenbund). Let me quote from its program.
“Painfully affected by the great ordeal of the war, academic youth has realised the peculiar social responsibilities enjoined by the privileges of a studious life, and desires to find a remedy for the deeper causes of the evil.… The Association will endeavour to bring together those of all countries who are in close touch with university life, to unite them in a common faith in the advantages of the free development of the mind. It groups them for the struggle against the growing empery of mechanism and militarism in all the manifestations of life.… It hopes to realise the ideal of universities which shall remain centres of higher culture, in the service of truth alone, unsullied shrines of scientific research, absolutely independent in matters of opinion, paying no attention to selfish aims or to class interests.”
This demand for the freedom of scientific research and for independence of thought, this organisation of young intellectuals for the defence of a right so essential and hitherto so incessantly violated, seem to me matters of primary necessity. If you desire that the cooperation between the teachers in different countries should not remain purely speculative, it is not enough that the teachers should associate their efforts. It is further essential that their thoughts shall be able to spread freely and to fructify in the minds of the young intellectuals throughout the world. Let us have no more of these barriers erected by the states between the two classes, between the two ages,
