8 president's address. 



Contrast with this the official attitude in Great Britain when 

 the war began. " The need for fit men was the first considera- 

 tion," says the Editor of Nahit-e* and the need for chemists, as 

 such, in other spheres directly connected with war was not at 

 first recognised. OfiFers to the War Office of scientific assistance 

 emanating from organised bodies and from individuals were 

 politely acknowledged, and pigeon-holed for future reference in 

 case of necessity. The British Admiralty and Ronalds over 

 again ! 



It is true things are somewhat different to-day in the Old 

 World: to quote a recent address by Prof. W. J. Pope, F.R.S.. 

 of Cambridge, President of the Chemical Society if 



The general public, the public authorities, and our governing bodies 

 now regard as vital to the interests of the country a science which they 

 previously left unconsidered as being of purely academic interest. 



The error has been fully and frankly admitted. As the 

 editor of the American Journal of Industrial and Engineering 

 Chemistry wrote a few months ago,f 



France and England fully acknowledge that they greatly decreased 

 their efficiency by sending their scientific men to the trenches. Although 

 they have since withdrawn most of those still alive, § and are now using 

 them in special service, the dearth of technically-trained men has been 

 and is severelv felt. 



As I make this quotation I think in particular of such a 

 man as the late H. G. J. Moseley, whom I had the privilege of 

 meeting in Australia four years ago, and whose work in England 

 as a scientific investigator was incomparably greater than the 

 brief service which -he rendered in the fighting-line before his 

 brilliantly begun career was cut short — a man of whom the 

 Chairman of the Chemistry Committee of the United States 

 National Research Council said that he was allowed to go to the 

 front when he should have been retained at home at all costs. 



When America first entered the war there was for a brief 

 period the danger that she, too, would follow the mistaken lead 

 of England and France, and so Dr. W. H. Nichols, Chairman of 

 the Committee on Chemicals of the United States Council of 

 National Defence, felt impelled to say : 



Already serious trouble has come to many of our chemical plants, and 

 plants employing chemists, as a result of the draft, and unless wise pro- 

 vision be soon made we can foresee a condition which it will cost months to 

 rectify. 



Lieut. Engel, of the French Commission, drove home these 

 remarks : 



I desire first to emphasise [said he] the mistake it is to take chemists 

 from where they are most needed, and to place them in the trenches, as 

 we did ourselves, and have lost them where they were most needed — in 

 the laboratories and the industries. We made this great mistake at the 

 beginning of the war. We took all chemists available and sent them into 



* March 29, 1917. 

 t Chem. News (1917), 116, 199. 

 t (1917), 9 [11], 1002. 



§ To the number of 128,000, it is said. — Journ. Ind. and Eng. Chem. 

 (.1917), 9 fii], 1009. 



