The Daily Alaska empire., 1941-04-01

Foundation, in statement accompanying his an- nual report:
 Tn the shadows that are deepening over Europe the lights of learning fading by The conception of knowledge as international respon- siblity has vanished. The free flow of ideas boundary lines between laboratories and universities has dried up. Everywhere the exigencies of the have erased the possibility of intellectual and cul- tural life as that term was understood few years ago."
 On the Continent, as distinguished from Great Britain the situation during the last year has rapid ly deteriorated. The year 1941 finds large number of universities and institutes closed and many others working under conditions scarcely tolerabe. AS German forces have moved into one country after another definite pattern has been followed in lation to the universities and other schools Allowed at first to continue with their work, their teaching and student activities closely supervised by the German authorities The supervision involved an attempt to enforce cultural program" similar to that already imposed by the Nazis German insti- tutions. Where this attempt resisted, it fre- quently the measures of repression adopted by the occupying authorities included the closing of the institutions, sending faculties to concentration camps and even breaking up student demonstrations with machine guns and tanks.
 In two Czechoslovak universities during the win ter of 19394O hundreds of students imprisoned and many shot, Finally the universities closed and most of the student body was deported for forced labor in Germany. In Holland in 1940 in Poland in 1899. there were many arrests and de- portatons of students and professors. Similarly in the Norwegian universities the German attempts to enforce the Nazi cultural pattern have been marked by the frequent arrests and disappearances of pro- fessors and students alike Belgiums four univer- sities all permitted to reopen in October. but TT,;v citx of Brussels and upon the Catholic University of Louvain, whose library completely and appar ently deliberately destroyed by the Germans. In Paris, following the Armistice Day demonstrations in which number of students machine -gunneG, the University closed for period and the Rector dismissed.
 The condition of university life and standards on the Continent is little short of appalling Due to flight, imprisonment or disappearance the number of professors in institutions has been duced by at least 50 percent Jewish professors in France were discharged as result of the Sep tember decrees issued from vchy and similar action has been taken in other countries under German domination with the exception of Denmark. Pro- fessors residing in German-occupied territory who were known to be anti-Nazi have been taken to centration camps have disappeared The same is true of German refugee scholars who have found haven in countries subsequently, invaded by German troops Similarly in the three Baltic states-Iithu- ania, Latvia and Estona-which absorbed by Russia in June 1940, the process of converting the universities into Soviet institutions has proceeded rapidly. More than half the professors have been removed from their positions and many of them have been imprisoned have disappeared Even neutral countries under pressure to permit toalitarian interpretation in the teaching of such subjects economies, political science and sociology; and schoars-to quote a recent guarded
 etter-"exercise certain tact and circumspection
 in our treatment of the most up-to-date problems" In such surroundings scholarship withers and only through heroic struggle keeps itself alive When the German Minister of Justice tells the Association of University Professors that the old ideal of obec tivity was nonsense and that today the German University Professor must ask himself question: does my scientific work the welfare of Ma tional Socialism," he is voicing doctrine which
 if broadly applied spells the end of Western scien- tific thought. When relatvity becomes "an example of characteristcaly perverse Jewish thinking" and genetics is a battle-ground for the "Aryan theory" then the end of the day has come in which Claude Bernard could say: T give small thought to where the truth will lead me provided that I find it."