PRESIDENTS ADDRESS. IQ 



means a financial backing, l)ut we shall never reap the bounteous 

 fruits that science is able to afford until we cease to look upon 

 money devoted to such objects as expenditure, and dubious ex- 

 penditure at that, and begin to believe in it as direct investment. 

 As long as we hold the former view, scanty returns \v\\\ be 

 deservedly proportionate to our niggardly treatment of science. 

 And the treatment has in the past been niggardly because — to 

 quote the editorial in A'atitrc (March 29th. 1917) again — 



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

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

 importance to the interests of the country. 



Prof. Pope, alluding, in an address given by him in the 

 Regent Street Polytechnic last October, to the establishment of 

 the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research with an 

 endowment of £1.000.000. asked why that experiment was not 

 made 20 years ago. at a time when it would undoubtedly have 

 prevented the horrors of the last three years. 



We have suffered [he said] in the past from the exclusively British 

 method of making the specialist entirely subservient to the administrator, 

 the administrator being generally chosen because he is available, because 

 he is politically acceptable, and because he knows nothing whatever about 

 the subject which is to be administered, and is therefore not likely to be 

 prejudiced by any previous convictions. That process of appointing some- 

 one who knows nothing to supervise the work of someone who does 

 know how to do the job seems to have been at the bottom of a great many 

 of our misfortunes in the past. 



There was a time — now, fortunately, long past — when I used 

 to be asked to submit an annual requisition for the " drugs " 

 which I would require in the course of my chemical work, and 

 the request used to be accompanied by an instruction to call for 

 tenders for the supply of these " drugs " from the various 

 pharmacists in the city. It was with the utmost difificulty that 

 I managed to persuade the authorities that the laboratory under 

 my charge needed not drugs but chemicals, and that the disciples 

 of Galen and .^sculapius were quite unable to supply those 

 needs ; the chemist, whose concern during war-time is largely 

 with explosives, gases, foodstuffs, follows a calling totally dis- 

 tinct from that of the druggist, who concerns himself solely with 

 pills, potions and plasters ; but this is a distinction wholly beyond 

 the ken of those pilloried by the editor of Nature. 



Those day.s — when one used to be called a Trades Unionist 

 for suggesting that when a Government Analyst was wanted it 

 was scarcely appropriate to appoint a physician to the post — 

 have happily passed away, even in South Africa, which gener- 

 ally lags behind in such matters, and thanks to such books as 

 Sir William Tilden's " Chemical Invention and Discovery in the 

 Twentieth Century." the general reader is at last beginning to 

 arrive at clear notions regarding the chemist and his work ; not 

 a moment too soon, for, as a contributor to the Manchester 

 Guardian remarked a few months ago.* 



* January. 9, 1918. 



