148 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



whether " it would not be proper and advisable " for all such bodies " to make it 

 their invariable rule and practice to pay scientific experts of all kinds for assist- 

 ance rendered by them, either at committees, or by letter, or in any other way, 

 such payment to include, not only refund for travelling expenses, or other out-of- 

 pocket expenses, or maintenance, but also a proper fee for the professional assist- 

 ance rendered." There is only one right, and one wrong, in the world ; and 

 obviously such payment is the proper and honourable thing for all public bodies 

 to give. Nearly all the Government Departments and other bodies accepted 

 the suggestion more or less definitely, and only the Colonial Office and the 

 London County Council refused to do so. With regard to the former, Mr. 

 Harcourt said that the arrangements already in force in his office " have been 

 found to work well in the past, and Mr. Harcourt sees no sufficient grounds for 

 modifying them." The business was now interrupted by the war; but a little 

 while ago a medical member of the Guild (whose name need not be mentioned 

 here) resigned, in consequence of Mr. Harcourt's reply, the membership of two 

 unpaid committees of the Colonial Office, and pointed out that he, at all events, 

 did not consider Mr. Harcourt's arrangements to be satisfactory. Following 

 upon this, on May 23, Mr. W. H. Cowan, M.P., asked the Secretary of State for 

 the Colonies whether he would appoint a committee to consider and report upon 

 the proposals of the British Science Guild. To this question, Mr. Bonar Law 

 (now Colonial Secretary) replied, " I agree with my predecessor in thinking that 

 there is no sufficient ground for modifying existing arrangements," and refused 

 to appoint the committee. Upon this, the medical member of the Guild resigned 

 his membership of a third Colonial Office committee of which he was a member. 



We hope that all scientific men will take note of this occurrence. The 

 meaning of it is that the Colonial Office intends to continue acquiring expert 

 advice for nothing, and really places itself in the position of a wealthy patient 

 who makes a practice of visiting the consulting rooms of doctors and of omitting 

 to pay their fees. There is not only an indescribable meanness in this attitude, 

 but an equally indescribable want of wisdom. Originally, the Colonial Office 

 may have pleaded that its attention was not drawn to the impropriety ; but after 

 the action of the Guild, of Mr. Cowan, and of the medical man referred to, this 

 plea cannot be advanced, and the Office has therefore put itself in a very false 

 position. 



It should be added here that although the British colonies have benefited 

 immensely by the researches and practical efforts of a few private medical men, 

 neither the colonies nor the Colonial Office have ever made the smallest effort 

 to pay properly for the professional benefits received from these workers ; l and 

 now Mr. Bonar Law attempts to dispose of all these obligations in a single curt 

 reply which, in Sir Ray Lankester's phrase, is both " contemptuous and con- 

 temptible." Of course the matter has nothing to do with the war. 



Maleducation and Malpronunciation 



One would think that, after our excellent schoolmasters have been teaching us 

 Latin and Greek for some centuries, we should by now possess some elementary 

 knowledge of what these languages probably sounded like when they were spoken. 

 Of course as the ancients published no works on phonetics, we cannot be sure of 

 their pronunciation ; but we may at least infer with a very high degree of pro- 

 bability that Latin and ancient Greek sounded more like modern Italian and 



1 See Science Progress, January 1914. Also this issue, p. 179. 



