153 



A^. — The Royal Microscopical Society during the Great War — 



and After. 



Presidential Address, 1917-18. 

 By Edward Heron- Allen, F.L.S., F.G.S., F.Z.S., &c. 



{Rtad January 16, 1918.) 



On the 17th of June in the year 1914 the Meetings of the Royal 

 Microscopical Society were suspended as usual for the summer 

 recess. To all outward seeming the whole world appeared to be 

 passing through, or, more accurately speaking, to have arrived at a 

 general condition of ease and peaceful luxury that had hitherto 

 been unknown in its history. Indeed there were not lacking 

 serious thinkers who saw, in the unprecedented luxury and com- 

 petitive hedonism of the times, signs of the Writing on the Wall. 

 The gradually increasing extravagance and lavish expenditure both 

 in public and in private life, the apparently ever-decreasing influence 

 of home and family ties, the almost frenetic pursuit of pleasure at 

 all costs which was gradually permeating every class of society, 

 gave cause for anxious thought, and occasion for ominous prophecy 

 to the more far-seeing student of political and domestic economy. 

 If a notable extravagance in dress, in amusements, in sports and in 

 •travel might be taken to be a proof of firmly-founded national 

 prosperity, we were living in a Golden Age — and if the gold 

 rang sometimes false, and sometimes stood revealed as a gilding 

 upon baser metal, the shadow seemed to satisfy the vast majority of 

 the world's population as fully as a more real substance might have 

 done. 



It was only eleven days later — on the 28th — that, in the 

 Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, the Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir to 

 the throne of Austria-Hungary, and his wife were assassinated. On 

 that day the stone was flung upon the apparently placid waters 

 of the world's prosperity, whose resultant ripples were destined to 

 assume the proportions of a tidal wave that should eventually 

 fall with shattering force upon the shores of the whole habitable 

 universe. 



We met again on the 21st October, and met as inhabitants of 

 a world altered indeed, but, though dazed by the events which had 

 crowded the fateful weeks since the 4th August, few of us, if any, 

 would have admitted the possibility of the changes which were ' 

 impending — and which are not yet fully developed. So full indeed 



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