Excerpt from Comrades I did not intend to study for a degree; my plan was to spend a year in Leipzig and then go on to Paris and the Sorbonne. There were some lectures I wanted to attend in each university, but I particularly wanted to perfect my French and German, Since the diplomatic service, even if one is only a secretary of legation, de mands fluency in these tongues. All the more reason, one would think, for choosing Berlin, Since the Hanoverian German, universal in Ber lin, is conceded to be the purest and the Saxon the most execrable of Germany 's many dialects. But I have almost come to think fate manages these things for us. Certainly life would have lost its crowning glory for me if I had not gone to Leipzig to study in October, 1913. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.