are not crammers but teachers. A student who intends to
pass the State examinations chooses his own course of reading for
them, and the lectures that he thinks will help him. He does not
necessarily spend his whole time at the same university, but may move
from one to the other in pursuit of the professors he wants for his
special purpose. He is quite free to do this; and he is free to work
night and day, or to drink beer night and day. He is under no
supervision either in his studies or his way of life.

English people who have been to Germany at all have invariably been
to Heidelberg, and if they have been there in term time they have been
amused by the gangs of young men who swagger about the narrow streets,
each gang wearing a different coloured cap. They will have been told
that these are the "corps" students, and the sight of them so jolly
and so idle will confirm their mental picture of the German student,
the picture of a young man who does nothing but drink beer, fight
duels, sing _Volkslieder_ and _Trinklieder_, and make love to pretty
low-born maidens. When you see a company of these young men clatter
into the Schloss garden on a summer afternoon, and drink vast
quantities of beer, when you observe their elaborate ceremonial of
bows and greetings, when you hear their laughter and listen to the
latest stories of their monkey tricks, you understand that the
student's life is a merry one, but except for the sake of tradition
you wonder why he need lead it at a seat of learning. Anything further
removed from learning than a German corps student cannot be imagined,
and the noise he makes must incommode the quiet working students who
do not join a corps. Not that the quiet working students would wish to
banish the others. They are the glory of the German universities. In
novels and on the stage none others appear. The innocent foreigner
thinks that the moment a young German goes to the Alma Mater of his
choice he puts on an absurd little cap, gets his face slashed, buys a
boarhound, and devotes all his energies to drinking beer and ragging
officials. But though the "corps" students are so conspicuous in the
small university towns, it is only the men of means who join them. For
poorer students there is a cheaper form of union, called a
_Burschenschaft_. When a young German goes to the university he has
probably never been from home before, and by joining a _Corps_ or a
_Burschenschaft_ he finds something to take th