D O C . 3 5 6 M A R C H 1 9 2 0 2 9 7 I must add a few words about the professorship at Leyden. Your nomination has not yet taken place, but we expect it with certainty it is only a matter of formal- ities.[2] As you are now, once our wish has been fulfilled, going to be coming here every year for a few weeks, we think that you might not want to wait long with your first visit. It is even possible that you would like to make the trip in the near future without waiting for the nomination, in order to conduct a few introductory discus- sions with us. It goes without saying that we leave all this to your judgment and I would just like to ask you please to inform me whether you have already inquired about your permit. If you have already done so or if your earlier permit is still valid, then our colleague Kamerlingh Onnes will approach the authorities in The Hague in order to obtain permission for you to travel to Holland.[3] With cordial regards, yours truly, H.A. Lorentz Kamerlingh Onnes asks me to tell you that he has not written because he wanted to wait for the nomination, which he had expected earlier. I am quite especially pleased about the latest paper by Grebe and Bachem.[4] 356. To Hendrik A. Lorentz [Berlin,] 18 March 1920 Highly esteemed Colleague, I beg you not to take offense at my long silence.[1] The serious illness and death of my mother in conjunction with the duties of the day hampered me completely.[2] Only gradually do I regain the peace of mind to think and work. Your news that my employment is now becoming serious business pleased me exceedingly.[3] I am now writing vigorously away at my inaugural lecture on the ether, which naturally cannot be anything other than a more or less personally col- ored retrospective view of the development of our opinions on the physical proper- ties of space. But I hope that in these fundamental things we are not essentially of a different mind.[4] I am glad that you have now been able to approve of the booklet about Lille. Only those who had examined the files signed it.[5] Here the conviction is gradually beginning to penetrate that grievious sins had been committed and that one is not entirely blameless for the horrendous hatred. It is a pity, though, that the action tak- en regarding the punishment of war crimes is not international. Holding only cul- pable Germans responsible, even though bad things happened to prisoners on the
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