Presidential Address. 161 



Metallurgy, but this is readily explained by the national, and for 

 obvious reasons unpublishable, nature of researches in Technical 

 Optics and Metallurgy and their application during the War, 

 practically the whole work of labourers in these fields of Science 

 having been devoted to the solution of problems arising out of the 

 War itself. We may properly look forward to the publication of a 

 great body of work in these directions as soon as circumstances 

 will permit. I think it a matter for sincere self-congratulation 

 that, in spite of the difficulties to which I have referred and of the 

 fact that our Abstractors have had unprecedented calls made upon 

 their time, this feature of our Journal has been maintained at such 

 a high level of quantitative and qualitative excellence. That the 

 War should have so little affected the work of the Society in this 

 respect is, in itself, an answer to those who suggest — from 

 insufficient knowledge — that we have not "risen to the occasion." 

 We have not required or condescended to fall back upon one of 

 the most prominent curses of the War — the War Excuse. A 

 recent writer has said : — " The war has given a great and grievous 

 fillip to that most pitiful of all prevarications — the Excuse. . . . 

 War is the super-excuse, the quibble democratic, the ubi- 

 quitous ululation of inefficiency. . . . On the face of it, 

 we might reasonably suppose that it -would be those who are 

 taking an active part in the War that would be most in need of 

 its Excuse. Yet the word for them has gone right out of the 

 Dictionary. They are busy enough to do without it, . . . but 

 to those who are comfortably sheltered, or comparatively immune 

 from the dangers and discomforts of these times, the word is a 

 veritable leaning-post — a loll-wall against which their short- 

 comings can lounge luxuriously and till all is blue." 



I repeat that I very deeply regret that I am unable to give you 

 precise and concrete details of the War-work of many individual 

 Fellows of the Society, but this is impossible again for two major 

 reasons. In the first place, a recital in the shortest form of such 

 activities would constitute a volume of matter far beyond the 

 limits of time and space allowable to a Presidential Address. In the 

 second, however communicative our Fellows may be under normal 

 social conditions, an enquiry as to the details of the work they are 

 known to be engaged upon has the instantaneous effect in almost 

 all cases of inducing a condition akin to aphasia. You might 

 just as M^ell ask a soldier home on leave why he got the Military 

 Cross, the Distinguished Service Order, or any other meritorious 

 decoration ; their answer takes only two forms — in my experience 

 — it is either " I don't know " or " Just for walking about." It is 

 therefore only by lucky happening upon a paragraph or article in 

 some technical or scientific journal that one learns that some 

 Fellow of the Society has executed some work of supreme national 

 importance. The day may come when Professor Benjamin Moore 



