First-Class Eagle

While U. S. campuses rang with denunciations of Adolf Hitler, the Fuehrer last week decorated five U. S. pedagogues with the Order of Merit of the German Eagle. The New York Times promptly wired the professors to find out if they would accept the awards. A reply came from Iowa-born Karl Frederick Geiser, a retired Oberlin College professor whose highest previous honor was a teaching fellowship in Germany during 1936-37. Author of a work called Democracy versus Autocracy (1918) and of a translation of Sombart's Deutscher Sozialismus (1937), Professor Geiser wanted to keep his medal (first-class German Eagle), did his best to make a case for it. Said he: "I have consistently attempted to maintain the historical attitude of understanding and interpreting Germany. . . . Assuming that my citation by the present German Government is a recognition and appreciation of my efforts in behalf of justice toward Germany, I intend to accept. . . ."

No comment came from Stanford University's Professor-Emeritus William Alpha Cooper, made a first-class German Eagle, or Professor Ralph Haswell Lutz, second-class. Said President Ray Lyman Wilbur: "It looks like an attempt by Hitler to look for friends. I'm glad he didn't spot me."

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