AN ANGLO-GERMAN INSTITUTE

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10107, 30 September 1910, Page 7

AN ANGLO-GERMAN INSTITUTE

GIFT BY SIR E. CASSEL

| As a memorial to King Edward I VII. Sir Ernest Cassel proposes to devote £200,000 to the establishment of an Anglo-German Instute. The object is to assist, especially by facilitating their employment, workers of British nationality in Germany and workers of German nationality in England. The scheme has the patronage of the King, the Queen, and Queen Alexandra, and of the German Emperor and Empress. The annual income produced by the investment of the £200,000 will be about £B,OOO. The scheme has been incorrectly described as one "for the establishment of better relations between Britain and' Germany." That may, it is hoped, prove to be one of the results, but its first practical aim is" that which we have described.

This, it will be remembered, is not the first of Sir Ernest Cassel's public gifts. Several years ago he put the same amount at the disposal of King Edward, who devoted it to the foundation of sanatoria for sufferers from tubercutesis. He has also, been a benefactor of the Radium Institute. By this latest gift Sir Ernest Cassel benefits both the nations to which, in different senses, he belongs. A native of Cologne, he left Germany while still a lad, and he is now a British citizen and a Privv Councillor.

The number of Germans in England, for whose advantage the British side of the Institute will work, is now very large. The British living in Germany are probably far fewer; but they include a large number of a peculiarly helpless class women \vho have gone over generally to be governesses. Sailors in British ships touching at German ports form another class whom the founder of the institute probably has in view. As the facilitating of employment is a primary object of the institute, and as our national deficiency in the matter of foreignlanguages is a common obstacle to the employment of British subjects on the Continent, helping them to learn German is one form of assistance that the institute authorities will doubtless be asked to consider.