Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, president of Columbia University, said today that the people of Germany have gone “stark, raving mad.”
Speaking at ceremonies marking inauguration of Dr. Dixon Ryan Fox as the twelfth president of Union College, Dr. Butler declared that “no light and no leadership can be looked for from Germany for some time to come.”
“Those people must regain their senses, turn their backs upon the silly and reactionary slogans which are now hurled at them, to be received with such highly emotional enthusiasm,” the noted educator asserted, “before they can resume the intellectual leadership which they had so well won.”
LAUDS, BRITISH, FRENCH
He said, however, that “the world cannot do without Germany, no matter how preposterous and reactionary may be its ruling policies and doctrines at the moment.”
Paying tribute to the British, French, Dutch and Scandinavians as “the happy and fortunate few who still hold fast to sound principle,” Dr. Butler said:
“Almost everywhere else in the world troublesome and dangerous ferment—moral, political, economic and social—is well under way.
“Unhappiest of all, the great German people, whose literally colossal accomplishments in philosophy and in science, in literature and in the fine arts, in industry and in commerce, have played so commanding a part in the world’s history for two full centuries, have gone stark, raving mad under the pressure and temptation of those rigid and disheartening conditions which attended the writing of the Treaty of Versailles.
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