I have the honour to enclose as Appendix I a copy of a 
communication from the Librarian which was handed to me not 
long since.*4? When I took the liberty of making a few observations | 
to Mr Stossel regarding certain expressions used therein, his reply, 
as I had expected, was that the communication was merely a copy 
of the set form laid down by the Literary Section of the 
Directorate. 

If, therefore, I now feel compelled to bring the said observa- 
tions to the attention of the Directorate, I should first of all 
emphasise that these do not in any way apply to the substance of 
the communication as such. Everyone will, no doubt, subscribe to 
this last, to a strict adherence to the time limit prescribed for the 
loan of books, to the levying of “fines” should that limit be 
exceeded, and to the observance of the Institute’s rules and 
regulations generally. What I am concerned with here is merely 
the tone of this document. That tone is so very different from that 
customary in correspondence between educated persons that I 
must confess I am not used to receiving such letters, nor, from 
what Mr. Stossel tells me, am I the first to have been struck by 
this, to put it mildly, uncouth form of address. 

Indeed, when | had read this missive, it was as though I had 
been suddenly transported home. It was as though, instead of a 
communication from the Librarian of the Schiller Institute, I were 
holding a peremptory summons from’ a German inspector of 
police ordering me, on pain of a heavy penalty, to make amends 
for some kind of violation “within 24 hours”. The otherwise very 
innocuous uniform of the beadle who served this writ on me could 
not on this occasion but help to complete the illusion. 


Appendices 361 


Immediately after this incident I took occasion to reread the 
manifesto dated November 12, 1859, and issued, so to speak, as 
the programme of the incipient Schiller Institute. Seen alongside 
the afore-mentioned communication from the Librarian, that 
programme now appears in a somewhat peculiar light. In it we 
read that the Schiller Institute was intended to be such 


“that a young German ... should at once feel more at heme here... find himself 
better looked after and provided for, both morally and intellectually ... and, above all, 
should return to the fatherland in no way estranged from it”. 


No doubt, the bureaucratic style of such official communications 
is the very thing to make the recipient instantly feel that he is on 
his home ground, and to instil in him the belief that he is just as 
well if not “better looked after and provided for” than he would be 
at home, in the dear, old patriarchal police state, that great 
institution looking after and making provision for little children; 
nor, so long as such official communications continue to flourish, 
can there possibly be the remotest danger of any member of the 
Schiller Institute’s becoming estranged from the fatherland. Indeed if, 
once in a way, there should happen to be some member of the 
Schiller Institute who had not had occasion to become acquainted 
at home with the forms of bureaucracy and the imperious 
language of officialdom, the Schiller Institute would seem to offer 
him an excellent opportunity to do so; again, this presumably is 
the construction to be put upon the programme’s undertaking that 
the Schiller Institute will help ensure 


“that even he of advanced years, who decides to return home and settle down 
there again, should, along with the German language and culture, also preserve and 
. even develop to a higher degree, his capactty for public service as a German man and 
citizen”. 

Indeed, it would hardly have occurred to many members that 
“the German spirit in the fullest sense of the term”, for the 
nurturing of which the Schiller Institute was to be a rallying-point, 
should inter alia also comprise that spirit of bureaucracy in whose 
hands, alas, almost all political power at home is still vested but 
against which the whole of Germany is fighting and over which, at 
this very moment, it is scoring victory after victory. This hectoring 
tone, these categorical demands that an order be obeyed within 24 
hours are, at all events, out of place here, and if they entail, not a 
fortnight’s imprisonment on a diet of bread and water, but the 
fearsome threat of a half-crown fine, then the effect is comical 
into the bargain. 

Among its members the Schiller Institute numbers not only 


362 Appendices 


Germans, but also Englishmen, Dutchmen and Danes, for whom 
this tone will certainly not have the ring of “home”. I permit 
myself to ask what such members are likely to think of the 
“German spirit” upon receiving missives of this kind? 

It so happens that I myself do at present belong to the Literary 
Section of another society **? here which does not boast a librarian 
and, in similar cases, it often falls to me to send out circulars to 
members. I enclose herewith the customary form (Appendix IJ),°”° 
not because of any pretence it might have to serve as a model, but 
rather because it may, perhaps, show that the same object can be 
attained without infringing on that deference which one educated 
person owes another. 

I repeat that while fortiter in re* is certainly most commendable, 
members would also seem to me to be entitled to some suaviter in 
modo.” By all means, let the iron hand of the Literary Section 
descend on the head of every member, but let it also wear a velvet 
glove. And that is why I would request the Directorate to be so 
kind as to ensure that the Literary Section’s official correspond- 
ence with members should be modelled, not so much on orders 
issued by German administrative offices to those they administer, 
as on what is proper in correspondence between educated persons.