At the same time, she was always on cordial and pleasant terms with diplomatists, who as a rule combine the advantages of good birth with intelligence and culture and the most delightful of professions. For many years of her life her greatest personal friends were Lord Ampthill (at the time Lord Odo Russell) and his wife, a daughter of that Lord Clarendon who had expressed so high an admiration of the Princess Royal's mental gifts. But perhaps the Crown Princess most surprised and offended her husband's future subjects by her pro-Jewish attitude. In this she showed extraordinary courage and breadth of view. For example, she accepted the patronage of the Auerbach schools for the education of Jewish orphans, and that at a time when the whole of Berlin, from the great official world to the humblest tradesman, was taking part in the Judenhetze. The Crown Princess was indeed, as we have seen, extremely broad-minded in matters of religion. She heartily despised the type of mind which attacks Jews as Jews, or Catholics as Catholics. She showed this in March, 1873, when she spoke strongly to Prince Hohenlohe about the hostile policy the Prussian Government was then pursuing towards his church. She observed that in her opinion those called upon to govern should influence the education of the people, as that of itself would make them independent of the hierarchy, and she added: "I count upon the intelligence of the people; that is the great power." But Hohenlohe drily answered: "A much greater power is human stupidity, of which we must take account in our calculations before everything." What we should call the middle classes were incensed by certain other activities of the future Empress. From the very first the Crown Princess had been ardently desirous of improving the position of the women of her adopted country. But the German woman of that day was quite content with the place she then held, both in the public esteem and in the consideration of her menfolk; the fact that in youth she was surrounded with an atmosphere of sentimental adoration made up, in her opinion, for the way she was treated in old age and in middle age.