PRINCE LICHNOWSKY
[Speech of the late German Ambassador at the dinner given in his honour by the Oxford University Anglo-German Club, June 3, 1914. The University at a special Convocation conferred upon him the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Civil Law. The speech was delivered in German, and has an interesting bearing on the Great War, betraying the sinister influences of German Philosophy.]
Gentlemen:—I believe the honour you have so generously conferred on me is not on account of any merits in the field of knowledge I may possess, but is probably intended to encourage the efforts I have made to become more closely acquainted with English life and English thought, and also to express your approval of the political line I have followed. But, above all, I believe it has been desired to mark the community of ideas which this celebrated University has maintained with German thought for centuries past by fostering and furthering German intellectual life. Professor Fielder, in his pregnant speech, laid stress upon the fact that the Emperor William is one of you, and that exactly one hundred years ago his Majesty's august great-grandfather had the distinction of being made an Hon. Doctor here in Oxford. The latter stayed here with his two sons, one of whom became King Frederick IV., and the other the Emperor Wilhelm I.
Great events have happened during these hundred years. The balance of power has been shifted, and as a result the grouping of the Powers has also been changed. But the goal towards which the British and the German peoples were aiming in those stormy times after years of fighting, and which is still their aim to-day in the unclouded atmosphere of civic progress, has remained the same.
Then, as now, our Monarchs joined hands to maintain peace and to protect civic industry. Then, as now, both British and German policies were in agreement in the endeavour to secure for their peoples the blessings of undisturbed intellectual and economic development. In those days Goethe still lived; Schiller had been dead only a few years. The
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