president's address. 3 



kind from arduous work — the conquest of pain and disease — 

 the improvement of agriculture — and, by no means least, the 

 enlargement of the human mind. Greek culture — that extra- 

 ordinary efflorescence of a limited community of small cities, 

 which we prize so highly to-day, and whose lesson seems to be 

 valid for all time — we are told was only possible because the 

 Greek civilisation was built upon slavery; the helot was the 

 pivot on which it turned. The scientist looks forward to a 

 period of leisure and culture equally founded upon a slavery, 

 but not upon the unwilling slavery either of man or beast, but 

 upon the willing slavery of machinery and of the powers of 

 nature harnessed for use. 



An increasing and unfaltering search for truth, with a 

 belief in the betterment of humanity through knowledge, is the 

 ethical basis of Science, and none other. If Science could only 

 serve material ends — the increase of money — profit, or serve to 

 rivet the domination of one State over another — then it would 

 be worthless, nay, it would be unclean. 



We perceive to-day that when any one nation deliberately 

 uses the resources of Science as an aid to war, a burden of 

 terrible import is thrown upon other nations. And herein is 

 another apparent great evil of Science, because its advance 

 makes war both more terrible and more destructive. I say an 

 apparent evil, because if it is not controlled it will lead to 

 exhaustion, and so limitation will have to come by necessity. 

 I believe that in earlier ages the individual, or at least the family, 

 the patriarchal group, was to a great extent, like a nation is 

 now, each a law unto itself, and it was only as weapons got 

 more expensive and deadly that the small group was willing to 

 abandon the right of private revenge or redress. In yet later 

 ages the baron in his great castle could defy the king, but the 

 invention of the cannon and the control of the manufacture of 

 gunpowder by the king, made even the most powerful barons 

 willing to accept the king's peace. To-day we would not 

 tolerate any man or group of men turning their buildings into 

 fortresses ; to-morrow, I hope, I believe, that nations, or a 

 federation of nations, will likewise refuse to allow any other 

 nation or group of nations to arm themselves to such an extent 

 that it or they can become a menace to the peace of the rest of 

 the world. 



Organisation. 



There is another and more positive lesson for us in the 

 present war. It shows the power of organisation. We see 

 two Empires, but roughly one — the Germanic nation — at war 

 with four other great nations, which has so developed its re- 

 sources and organised them, that it can stand the strain of such 

 a w^ar that 25,000,000 picked men have already been in the 

 field. However deplorable this may be from ethical and econ- 

 omic points of view, it at least does show what Science and 

 Organisation can do to-day. I suppose that, one way and 

 another, 50,000,000 of the human race are either fighting or 

 supplying food and munitions of war to the combatants. And 



