PRESIDENTS ADDRESS. 3 



been uttered on this subject since the war began, but Httle of it 

 has been stronger than that of the eminent bacteriologist. Sir 

 Ronald Ross, in Nature of January 13th, 1916 — 17 months after 

 the declaration of war : — 



Tt is idle to disguise the fact [said he] that recent events have filled 

 most educated persons with a sense of extreme resentment against the 

 administration of this country. . . . It is felt by many (and I am one 

 of them) that we live under the rule of the invertebrates. The people 

 who administer the country are not the best, the most vigorous, and the 

 most sagacious of men. They are too often the time-servers and the 

 mediocrities. The maladministration of scientific afifairs is only one of 

 the many forms of maladministration ; but, on the whole, I think it is 

 perhaps the most important form, because it gives to the mind of the 

 whole nation a lower, a meaner, and a thoroughly sentimental and 

 unpractical turn. 



Scarcely less trenchant in parts is an editorial in Nature of 

 March 29th, 1917 — 31 months after war was declared. There 

 we are told that 



such matters have been too much in the control of the clerical establish- 

 ments> who are ignorant of the significance of chemistry, and its vital 

 importance to the interests of the country. 



Even if one had no other evidence, the obvious consensus 

 of opinion on the part of scientific men throughout the length 

 and breadth of the British Dominions should suffice to convict 

 the nation of criminal neglect of science in general, and of chem- 

 istry in particular. Witness against this neglect has. I say. been 

 borne in every part of the Empire. In England, Sir William 

 Crookes suggested as a remedy a Ministry of Science, and repre- 

 sentation of Science on the Privy Council. In the Nova Scotian 

 Institute of Science, Professor Eraser Harris put forth a power- 

 ful plea for the institution of a Department of Science, presided 

 over by a Cabinet Minister. The comfortable mental inertia of 

 the British race he deemed to be such that " nothing less than 

 this irruption of Teutonic brutality " could have shaken it, and 

 so he urged that the official interests and the economic aspects 

 of science should be presided over by someone who knows some- 

 thing about them.* 



Not mere lapse of time — not six score years of unparalleled 

 scientific progress since the day when Erance rewarded the dis- 

 coverer of oxygen with the guillotine — sufficed to break down the 

 impenetrable crystalline structure of the British mind. Natura 

 non agit nisi fluida, and so a stupendous war had to intervene 

 and melt this conl}X)site solidity before anything like chemical 

 action could be brought about. The war has been called a chem- 

 ists' war. It has been described over and over again as a war 

 between the engineers and chemists of the belligerent countries, 

 with chemistry in the front ranks. Within limits the statement 

 is true, and certainly it is far nearer the truth than many admin- 

 istrative authorities realise. Bearing that in mind, hear the 

 testimony of two chemists of note, one from the British and 

 one from the American side of the Atlantic. 



* Nature (1917), 99, 237. 



