Science After the War 323
helps to satisfy certain fundamental desires of the human
mind, such as the desire to know and to understand the na-
ture of things. The pleasure and interest obtained by the
satisfaction of such desires serve to enrich life just as do
music and art and literature. Let us not judge the relative
values of the humanities and of science by their practical
usefulness.
Before the war very many graduate students from Ameri-
can universities went to Germany for study and research.
To-day Germany is defeated and despicable, and we do not
expect any more American graduates to go there. As a
graduate student I went first to Cambridge in England and
then to Berlin. However, as a place for graduate study and
research I did not find Berlin anything like as good as Cam-
bridge, so I very soon went back. I have known several
American graduate students who have been at both English
and German universities, and I think they all found that
English universities satisfied their needs quite as well as
German ones. Then there are French and Italian universi-
ties at least equal to anything in Germany, and, last but
not least, there are American universities in America as good
as any. American universities should not be regarded
merely as preparatory schools for European colleges.
American graduates are not advised to go to foreign uni-
versities because there are not great universities in America,
but because it is considered advantageous to get first-hand
knowledge of thought and methods in other countries. It
is also desirable to see something of the world outside one’s
own country. Germany is now ruled out, so where shall
American graduates go? They can go to England, France,
and Italy, where they will be warmly welcomed. Of course,
if they go to England they do not have the advantage of
learning a foreign language. They may, however, learn