Before 1914 the German university system and German
scholarship occupied a position of special prestige. The outbreak
of the First World War not only severed ties of friendship and
common endeavour between British and German scholars, but also
seriously undermined the reputation of German Wissenschaft* British
academics, hitherto admirers of German achievements, now claimed
to have long harboured doubts as to the tone of German academic
life. Others, like Lord Bryce, who had worked to promote Anglo-
German understanding now joined the propaganda battle against
Germany.
Intellectuals in all belligerent states saw the war as a
great ideological contest. British philosophers provided an ideo¬
logical exegesis for German policy, although the legacy of Hegel
gave considerable difficulties for the neo-Xdealist school then
dominant in British universities. The historian's traditional
explanation of Britain's role in the world was given greater impor¬
tance by the German claim that the war was a contest for world
empire.
The war also posed an intellectual problem for academics.
Before 1914 there had been little discussion of the questions of
war and peace amongst British academics. When war forced liberal
academics to face moral issues, only Bertrand Russell stood out in
total opposition to government policy. Gilbert Murray and Lowes
Dickinson provide more typical examples of the behaviour of liberal
intellectuals under the stress of war. In Britain the eulogy of war may have been more muted than
it was in Germany or France, the persecution of academic "dissenters"
less intense than in the United States, but the involvement of
academics as publicists and propagandists of the national cause was
not less marked than in other belligerent states. However, the
theme is not one of "betrayal". The commitment of British academics
to value-free objective enquiry before the war was, in reality, as
illusory as the similar claims of their German colleagues
