A FRIEND of mine who has just returned from Germany
was much impressed by the work of the British and Anglo-German centres there. I fancy it is not very widely known in this country to what extent these activities are financed by German municipalities and even by individual Germans. 1 hear that. when there was some question of closing down the Centre at Cologne a year or two ago, the Burgomaster of that city offered to pay the whole cost of the Centre and that now the city does, in fact, contribute the major part of its upkeep. Similarly in the steel town of Bochum, in the Ruhr, the Centre has been entirely taken over and operates from rooms in the new steel and glass College of Administration, which has been built since the war. In yet another town, I was told, a local German industrialist donated a considerable sum to adapt new premises for the British Centre, which had had to leave its old ones after German sovereignty was restored and requisitioning ceased. Incidents like this seem to me to do the greatest possible credit to the work of British cultural services in Germany after the war. In spite of the inevitable resentment at an occupying power as well as the bad feeling caused by the dismantling of factories in the British zone, it seems that their efforts have met with great success, and it would be a pity if, in these days of financial cuts, the Treasury were to neglect the very remarkable nature of their achievement. The importance of the work done in ,a city like Berlin. for instance. where competition between East and West is acute, can hardly be overestimated, and I should have thought there was a case for leaving well alone. It must, surely, be a very narrow point of view that regards such exchanges as a 'marginal' activity. * * *
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