612 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



least curious point being the fact that the members of the Com- 

 mission had to pay their own expenses, the Government being 

 responsible only for the printing and publication of the Report 

 and the secretarial expenditure. Prof. Roscoe's colleagues on 

 this Commission were Mr. (the late Rt. Hon. Sir) Bernhard 

 Samuelson, the late Mr. John Slagg, M.P., Mr. (now Sir) Swire 

 Smith, Mr. (now Sir Philip) Magnus, and the late Mr. William 

 Woodall, M.P., the Secretary being Mr. Gilbert Redgrave of 

 South Kensington. 



It is of course impossible to do more than sketch some of 

 the conclusions published in the 557 pages of the Report 

 (Vol. I. Second Report), but it can safely be said that if all the 

 recommendations had been adopted, this country would not have 

 found itself so hard pressed in many ways at the outbreak of 

 the present war as was actually the case. 



The chief result arrived at was that certain foreign coun- 

 tries, particularly Germany and Switzerland, were getting 

 ahead of us in many of the more technical branches of industry 

 largely owing to the great attention paid abroad to technical 

 education and the relatively poor provision made in this country. 



Although various hands were concerned in the issue of the 

 Report, there is no difficulty in observing the impress of Roscoe's 

 vigorous personality upon it, more especially as regards the 

 position of chemistry at home and abroad. Two sections in 

 particular, probably that on " The Influence upon Industry 

 of Institutions for Scientific Research " on page 219, and 

 certainly that on " The Influence of Technical Instruction 

 on certain branches of Chemical Industry," were specially 

 written by Sir Henry Roscoe for the Report, and the contrast 

 between the British and German way of running a chemical 

 factory in those days is clearly expressed : 



" The first principle which guides the commercial heads of 

 the continental colour-works is the absolute necessity of 

 having highly trained scientific chemists, not only at the head 

 of the works, but at the head of every department of the works 

 where a special manufacture is being carried on. In this 

 respect this method of working stands in absolute contrast to 

 that too often adopted in chemical works in this country, 

 where the control of the processes is left in the hands of men 

 whose onty rule is that of the thumb, and whose only knowledge 

 is that bequeathed to them by their fathers." 



