Nelson Leonard
Leonard characterizes his trip through Leningrad and Moscow as “favourable and encouraging,” praising the social services, industry and the busy populace. He has had the chance to speak with students there as well and has seen everything he could desire. Lehigh alumnus Nelson Leonard sent these letters to Owen during his Rhodes fellowship at Oxford before the outbreak of World War II.
Leonard discusses his trip through Vienna and describes the quaint towns and beautiful woods on the hills surrounding the city. He describes hearing the waltzes of Strauss, and then journeying to Hungary with a friend from Oxford, discovering that the Hungarians are of a different temperament than the "cold, calculating Americans." In Salzburg, he has seen Wagner's operas, cathedral concerts, and plays. The Leonard collection consists of ten letters and postcards that Nelson Leonard wrote to Dr. Owen; these letters and postcards provide scholars with a snapshot of a pre-war Europe that will soon be lost forever to the ravages of war.