21 DECEMBER 1951, Page 4

A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK

IT may be necessary sooner or later to co-ordinate the various organisations existing to promote Anglo-German friendship in one way and another. Meanwhile it is encouraging to find so much activity directed to so desirable an end. The new Anglo- German Association, which announced itself on Saturday, is, in fact, a little older than that, for its foundations were carefully and systematically laid several weeks ago. It is the most ambitious of the efforts so far made, and it should clash with no organisation already in the field. A. certain amount of co-ordination, to some extent fortuitous, is indeed manifested already. For example, Mr. Robert Birley, the Headmaster of Eton, who was one of the signatories of the Anglo-German Association's letter in The Times, is also chairman both of the Wilton Park Academic Council (concerned in bringing picked parties of Germans to this country for short courses of study of the British way of life) and of the Educational Interchange Council, which has for the last five years been doing most valuable work on a limited scale (limited by financial conditions) in arranging educational interchanges on all levels between Britain on the one hand and Austria and Germany, with a recent extension to Yugoslavia, on the other. Nothing in its report on its work is more striking than the warmth of the appreciation expressed by British headmasters and headmistresses of the personalities of individual Germans who have joined their staffs for a period to study British educational methods. * * * *