1 5 6 D O C U M E N T 1 1 2 M A R C H 1 9 2 1
verhängnisvoll ist es, dass der persönliche Verkehr zwischen den Bewohnern der
ehemals feindlichen Länder fast ganz aufgehört hat; dadurch wachsen die Vorurtei-
le ins Groteske. Sogar die Binsenwahrheit, dass Charakter und Wert der einzelnen
Persönlichkeit von den Grenzpfählen unabhängig sind, zwischen denen ihr Wohn-
sitz liegt, ist in Vergessenheit geraten.
Sie aber haben durch Ihren Brief gezeigt, dass Sie zu den Wertvollen gehören,
denen das internationale Kulturideal noch etwas bedeutet. Seien Sie freundlich ge-
grüsst von Ihrem
A. Einstein.
ALS (Private collection of J. W. Schulein, New York). [43 432].
[1]Carvallo (1856–1945) was Directeur des Études at the École Polytechnique, Paris. Addressee is
identified by Helen Dukas.
[2]See, e.g., Fritz Haber’s reprimand in Doc. 87.
[3]On March 8, after Germany had refused to withdraw their counterproposal to the Paris condi-
tions issued in January 1921 (see Doc. 37, note 11), Allied troops occupied Duisburg, Ruhrort, and
Düsseldorf, and set up a customs frontier along the Rhine in case deadlines were disregarded or sab-
otaged (see, e.g., Mommsen 1996, p. 113).
112. From Arthur T. Hadley
[New Haven,] March 21, 1921.
My dear Sir:–
Let me acknowledge, with cordial thanks, the receipt of your letter of February
twenty-second.[1]
We appreciate fully the circumstances which attend your visit to America, and
should be glad to do everything possible to meet your convenience; but it appears
to be impossible that you should in the brief time at your command prepare a vol-
ume which should rank with its predecessors in substance and form.
It is not so much a question of date as of performance. If you had ready a series
of lectures which you would be prepared to give before the Academy of Sciences
of Berlin or of Paris, we should gladly change the time of our invitation to suit your
convenience; and if in some future year you have new matter which you are desir-
ous of publishing to the scientific world in America, I can assure you that our Com-
mittee will be heartily glad to renew the invitation. But it would not be just, either
to you or to us, to invite you to prepare hurriedly, in conjunction with other engage-
ments, a thing which must be done carefully and wholeheartedly to be done well.
Very sincerely,
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