470 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



understand, from a note in the Morning Post of November 13, 1920, that the 

 idea was originated by the Rev. David Railton, M.C., the present Vicar of 

 Margate. It is stated that the thought occurred to him about a year previ- 

 ously ; that he wrote to the Dean of Westminster about it ; and that the large 

 Union Jack which covered the coffin was the gift of Mr. Railton. It had been 

 used in the war, sometimes as a pulpit cloth and at other times to cover the 

 remains of dead soldiers. The nation is much indebted to Mr. Railton for his 

 beautiful thought. 



Such is Fame 



The Americans show more appreciation of the services of great men than 

 we do — or rather they recognise that greatness consists not merely in politics 

 and sport. They have long possessed an American Hall of Fame, and we 

 read in November that amongst six new admissions to the roll were Mark 

 Twain, the humorist ; A. Saint Gaudens, the sculptor ; and W. T. G. Morton, 

 the discoverer of ether as an anaesthetic. There must be much difficulty of 

 selection in these cases. In the great library of Washington there are, or used 

 to be, a number of statues representing the world's greatest men, and one saw 

 those of Shakespeare, Columbus, etc., placed side by side with various Smiths, 

 Joneses, and Robinsons with whose claims humble Europeans were not fully 

 acquainted. But that may be our fault. 



The Middle Ages 



On October 30, 1920, Sir Herbert Warren, President of Magdalen, Oxford, 

 addressed the Oxford Branch of the Modern Languages Association and 

 enriched our store of beautiful things by a lovely figure describing the so- 

 called Dark Ages. These, he said, were not a period of Egyptian blackness, 

 but were " a long twilight lit by the stars of Cicero, Horace, Ovid, and Lucan, 

 and the moon of Virgil reflecting the sunken sun of Homer " — a most admir- 

 able summary of classical literature. 



A Word of Appreciation 



In our October number we remarked, in connection with some very kindly 

 appreciation of Science Progress which appeared in Japan, that scientific 

 publications seem to be appreciated anywhere except in their own country. 

 The Literary Supplement of the Times points out that it has often had occasion 

 to commend this Quarterly. That is true, and we have always been pro- 

 foundly grateful to that very fine review — perhaps the finest review now 

 being issued. It has reviewed almost every number of Science Progress, 

 and has not been niggardly in its praise of the works of our contributors when 

 these met with its approval. We are also frequently reviewed in the pages of 

 The Yorkshire Post, The Aberdeen Journal, The Aberdeen Free Press, The 

 Oxford Chronicle, Nature and other Journals. 



But these few swallows do not make a summer ; and most of the great 

 dailies and weeklies ignore us completely, though we send them copies on 

 issue. A little while ago we even went so far as to write to their editors and 

 ask them whether they wished to continue receiving review copies of Science 

 Progress. Nearly all of them replied that they did so wish, but, nevertheless, 

 they continue to give us scant notice. Probably the fault does not lie with 

 the editors, but is due to the difficulty of obtaining scientific reviewers for a 

 work which covers so much ground as Science Progress does. Our effort 

 to obtain better recognition has not been made merely on our own account, 

 but is part of the war now being waged to obtain a better place in the sun for 

 science in generail. 



