NOTES 653 



made by assistants who have no control of the grants, little voice in the direction 

 of the work, no representation in the Imperial or local authorities for whom the 

 investigation is being made, poor status and pay, and scanty prospects of promotion. 

 Then the result is obvious : men and women take up research work in the hope 

 that it may, by-and-by, lead to more lucrative employment, and many find such 

 and abandon the work of investigation at the time when they are best fitted to 

 continue it with advantage to the State. 



These remarks, it will be seen, apply more particularly to pure and applied 

 scientific research, but it is not intended to make any distinction between this and 

 literary, historical, and archaeological research, or scholarship in any sense. Such 

 work is even less organised, and those who engage in it labour under greater 

 disadvantages than those who profess scientific work. 



This statement of the objects of the Guild might be expanded with advantage, 

 but some attention must be directed to the means by which they are to be 

 promoted. 



Constitution of the Guild 



The conditions of membership must be such as to make the Guild inclusive in 

 the greatest possible degree. Membership, it is suggested, should be open to all 

 men and women possessing a university degree, and even this single qualification 

 may, it is recognised, exclude some university-trained men and women who, for 

 some reason or other, have failed or neglected to graduate. It should not be 

 difficult, however, to devise some means of including the relatively few desirable 

 persons belonging to this category. 



Now, the greatest privileges conferred by a good university training are the 

 habits of original thought, the knowledge of methods whereby a man or woman 

 may be able to ascertain, at first hand, what is known about anything, and the 

 possession of skill in some craft or technique. Such are the means whereby the 

 Guild hopes to acquire power, but there are other opportunities. In a few months 

 from now the great majority of university men and women will become electors 

 in their own university constituencies, and there is really no reason why the Guild 

 should not become possessed of considerable influence, in that it may become able 

 to return quite a small party of Members of Parliament. This is the main reason 

 why the possession of a degree is (with some rare exceptions possibly) the 

 indispensable condition of membership. 



Modes of Action 



Parliamentary representation, therefore, must be the immediate object of the 

 Guild, and in this respect it will be expected to act as a unit. The first work of 

 the Council must be to organise a propaganda in each university constituency, to 

 find and suggest candidates that are acceptable, and to take steps to obtain the 

 money necessary to contest each seat. 



It is hoped that these university contests will be something quite new in the 

 history of British Parliamentary representation. It should be noted that graduates 

 who are also university electors will (in general) be household electors in the 

 constituencies in which they are resident. This household franchise might, there- 

 fore, be exercised in the usual way, the elector being free to support whatever 

 political party he inclines toward at the time. On the other hand, the university 

 suffrage should be used solely to return Members of Parliament pledged to support 

 the declared policy of the Guild. Each university man or woman would thus act 

 in a double capacity — in the capacity of an ordinary unprivileged citizen, and also 

 in the capacity of a privileged person, trained in a certain way and pledged to 



