War Notes 233 



Prof. Mddola was twice offered a decoration of the Legion of 

 Honor — in 1900 and again in 1907. On both occasions the Foreign 

 Off. forbade him to accept it. It could not be supposed that either 

 Lord Salisbury or Sir Edward Grey wished to behave in so rüde a 

 manner to a f riendly nation and to a distinguished man. The cause 

 was to be found in the wooden System erected by some jack-in-office 

 of the permanent service in order to magnify his own petty tyranny. 

 Then came the v/ar and, in the utter confusion caused by our policy, 

 the country was in serious difficulty, with many important industries 

 under enemy control and quite inaccessible. So Prof. Meldola, with 

 his unrivaled knowledge of the relations between science and in- 

 dustry, was asked to preside over some committees and to serve on 

 others. He was too patriotic to refuse, but the strain was too great 

 for one who was far from strong, and he died after a few months 

 of overwork. The character of the examination for civil-service 

 posts, and for the army, must be changed, and science must be given 

 a far more important place. That change would at once react on 

 our pubHc schools and the old univ's, and would bring the members 

 of future parliaments under the influence of science. London 

 LETTER: Jour. Arner. Med. Assoc, 1916, Ixvi, p. 971. 



Science vs. Latin and Greek. The French, in 1871, frankly 

 acknowledged that they had been beaten "by the Pruss. school- 

 master," and accordingly they set themselves to reform their educ. 

 System. The English, although still confident of victory, are begin- 

 ning to recognize that their educ. System is in large part responsible 

 for their inability to cope with the crisis. Prof. H. E. Armstrong, 

 one of the foremost chemists of Eng., uses strong language on this 

 point : " This country is governed primarily by and from Oxford. 

 If the lessons of the war do not cause Oxf. to reform, we shall be 

 forced to confess that there is no health in us and, like the snark, 

 our industry will ' sof tly and silently steal away.' " Since war has 

 become a branch of applied ehem., the Br. are now paying the pen- 

 alty for permitting Ger. to oust Eng. from that leadership in the 

 ehem. indus. which she held a half-cent. ago. Prof. Armstrong 

 calls the Oxf. degree in ehem. ' worthless for pract. purposes,' and 

 urges that Greek and Latin have no right to monop. the field as they 

 have done hitherto. It will be remembered that 5 yr. ago the neces- 



