Rector of Heidelberg Fears Demoralization of Students

"Moral and political breakdown" is feared by the rector of the University of Heidelberg if his students do not get quick evidence of support from abroad.

In a letter transmitted by American military authorities and received here by E. F. Bruck, professor of Rector Wolfgang Kunkel writes that outside assistance can help avoid "distress and embitterment" and "dispair of the world and democratic ideals of which they are being told so much."

"Only a minority of our students are living with their families," he writes. "Most of them are single or separated from their families and therefor e dependent on restaurant food."

(Purchases outside the student messhall, investigators report, are made extremely difficult because of black market conditions overseas.)

"The existing food situation," he continues, "has already influenced that state of health of our students in a dangerous way. Details are to be seen in statistics, which show to what a degree students have required medical services in consequence of typical deficiency diseases, and they also show how the number of cases of tuberculosis has increased.