I have in my possession a little manual which Albrecht
,Bernstorff compiled for the instruction and guidance of German Rhodes scholars who were about to go up to Oxford. It supplies in a prudent form all. the practical information which a young German student would require. At the same time it contains a most incisive analysis of the habits and character of the ordinary British undergraduate. In that it was written for the specific purpose of explaining to German students what they would find most strange and startling about British students, this analysis provides, as in a tiny mirror, a remark- able picture of the psychological differences between British and German youth. He draws their attention to the general tolerance of the British undergraduate, to his belief in chivalry and fair play, to his doctrine of "live and let live" and to his contempt for petty falsities and intrigue (Kleinkrameret). "With us," he writes, "a boy who holds views which are not the views of the majority is immediately shunned. Not so in England. Any man is allowed to think what he likes. That is a frame of mind which we should seek to imitate if we are to preserve all the things which Germany has acquired in the last decades." "The young Englishman," he writes again, "is far more an individualist than the young German. The reason for this is that he does not worry at all what the outside world may think of him." "The Oxford undergraduate," writes Bernstorff, " has little sense of social obligations ; it is this casualness of social intercourse which is so liable to disconcert the German . student." He urges his young countrymen to realise when they go to Oxford that the average Briton is governed by instinct rather than by reason ; being accustomed to take everything, even himself, for granted, he is often irritated, and always bored, by German "sub- jectivity." The egocentric German habit of constantly relating the universe to themselves and themselves to the universe is a morbid habit "which may lead us to disaster." It does not produce indi- vidualism, it produces only self-consciousness ; and in so doing it diminishes the sense of personal responsibility and tempts the young German to surrender in despair to something outside himself—" to the State or to a Party."
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