PRESIDENTS ADDRESS. I3 



15 of the ad hoc type — perfectly utilitarian. Read what an edi- 

 torial in Nature of June 2131.1917, says in this connection: 



Though we are assured that " after the war " scientific research is to 

 receive substantial aid from the State, there is reason to fear that this aid 

 will be given with qualifications. In other words, the promise is extended 

 only to investigations calculated to further the ends of commerce. 

 Students of what is commonly known as " pure science" will not only not 

 participate in the grants that are to be made, but they may be called upon 

 to subsist upon even smaller doles than were allotted to them in the 

 pre-war days. Our administrators seem incapable of appreciating the 

 fact that "applied science" has its roots in "pure science," so that if 

 these be starved the tree will of necessity be stunted. 



B'ut surely, some may say. during a period of great national 

 emergency, at all events, we cannot alTord to spend on pure 

 scientific research time and money which should be devoted to 

 the objects of the immediate and critical present. Admitting 

 that there may be validity in such an argument, and that those 

 researches which concern the manufacture of arms and ammu- 

 nition are vital, yet an adequate supply of foodstuffs is equally 

 essential even for the waging of war, and that supply depends 

 upon the nation's agricultural prosperity, which is in turn de- 

 pendent upon the farmer's ability to maintain his soil at its 

 normal productivity, and. if possible, to increase the latter. More- 

 over, it remains for the close of the war to reveal how much 

 pure scientific research has been able to achieve in the years 

 through which we are now struggling; and let us never forget 

 that excessive devotion to the merely practical may hinder rather 

 than help the attainment of even the most " practical " discoveries. 

 To quote some lines from an address on " Industrial re- 

 search and the colleges " given last October by Dr. A. E. Ken- 

 nelly before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers : 



While under extraordinary circumstances, such as those due to the 

 present World-German war, the pure science departments may advan- 

 tageously take up industrial research, yet, as a general rule, the best con- 

 tribution of those departments to industry is by restricting their attention 

 to pure science. 



Sir A. G. Bourne, F.R.S.. in his presidential address to the 

 Indian Science Congress at Bangalore, in January, 1917, said: 



Who can say how many profound truths await discovery because some 

 utilitarian who happened upon a glimmering of them did not think it 

 worth while to pause and investigate the apparently irrelevant? . . . 

 How much patient work and loving care have been bestowed upon inves- 

 tigations seemingly impossible of application to any of the specific 

 problems of the day? Upon research of this kind no utilitarian would 

 have been at all likely to embark, yet, sooner or later, such research has 

 either proved capable of direct application, or — and this has more often 

 been the case — has unexpectedly formed a corner-stone, or occupied a 

 more humble, but still useful position, in building up some far-reaching 

 generalisation capable of being seized upon at once bv the worker in 

 applied science, thus in turn perhaps stimulating further scientific 

 research. 



Such remarks as the above, many times repeated in varying 

 keys and modes, are slowly educating administrators and the 

 public, and one is not without hope that at some not very distant 

 date the value of true research in pure science may be far more 



