26 MARCH 1948, Page 16

THE CHARLES IV UNIVERSITY

Snt,—Just over a year ago the University of Aberdeen received an invita- tion to be represented at the opening of the new University of Olomouc in Moravia. We were so eager to greet this happy event that our Senior Professor volunteered to deliver in person an address of welcome, duly disguised in lapidary Latin. Undeterred by the excessive severity of last winter, he flew to the frontier of Czechoslovakia and was there stopped by a strike of Czech airmen. Rather than fail to deliver our greeting, he embarked on an air-borne Odyssey of misadventure—including a narrow risk of arrest in the American zone of Germany—and eventually returned without success. When we received recently an invitation to attend the celebration of the sixth centenary of the Charles IV University at Prague, our envoy was more than willing to risk the repetition of his Odyssey— and now, like other universities, we have felt obliged to cancel his visit and to withdraw our address, not for what are called "purely political" reasons, but because of the gross infraction at Prague of that freedom which is an essential condition of academic efficiency.—Yours, &c.,

Principal and Vice-Chancellor.