Every time I visit Wilton Park (now delightfully domiciled at
the foot of the South Downs in the shadow of Chancton- bury Ring) I am increasingly impressed by the wisdom of the Foreign Office in maintaining an institution of this kind, to which influential Germans—Land Ministers and officials, Federal deputies (of all parties) and officials, leading journalists and so on—come constantly for short lecture and discussion courses dealing broadly with the British way of life. There is no mistaking the appreciation or the interest which the guests display. A Brains Trust of a kind, in which I was taking part during the course just finished, began at 7.45 and ended so far as I was concerned at 10.30, for I had to leave then, but I hear it persisted vigorously long after that. The "Old Wiltonites " in Germany are now in respectable strength, and they feel, I believe, that there is a real bond between them, and, what is more important, a real bond between themselves and Great Britain—all the more so because Wilton Park sternly eschews anything that could be described as propaganda. Wilton Park can arouse no suspicions. If it did the fact that the Headmaster of Eton is chairman of the Academic Council which controls. it would effectively dispel them. Under its warden, Dr. Koeppler, Wilton Park is doing notable work.
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