"The meanest thing the Germans did in Holland is known at Maastricht as 'the rape of the ants.' . . . Even quisling Hollanders resented the theft of the greatest collection of ants in the world."
Thus cabled New York Herald Tribune Correspondent Lewis Gannett. A suburban book critic turned war correspondent, Gannett is himself an amateur formicologist. When he arrived in Maastricht last fortnight, the burghers poured into his sympathetic ears the whole ant story.
The collection was the work of the late Jesuit Father Erich Wasmann, known as the "Fabre* of the ants." His studies of ant psychology (hermaphroditism, agricultural cooperation,...
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