PRESIDENT S ADDRESS. 2/ 



Science and Research of the United States Council of National 

 Defence, says that it is because, 



looking ahead, it was seen that the conchision of peace would be followed 

 by a trade war witli German}', in which no industry not perfected by 

 scientific research could hope to succeed. 



Can this country compete industrially with a country that 

 has shown me what organisation can achieve if we starve the 

 very soul of industrial prosperity — pure and applied scientific 

 research carried out in the laboratory ? 



Mr. W. C. Dampier Whetham, F.R.S., in his recently pub- 

 lished book on " The War and the Nation," devoted a section to 

 '■' The organisation of iBxitish industry and commerce," in regard 

 to which a reviewer says that 



three years of war have done more than a century of peace to impress 

 upon the public mind the indispensability of scientific research to national 

 prosperity. 



The result has been that the Imperial Government has called 

 into being a Department for the express purpose of organising 

 and directing research, and has placed considerable sums of 

 money at this Department's disposal. But perhaps the most 

 important outcome is that « 



the leaders of British industries have licgun to acquire the hal^it of working 

 together in order to conduct associated researches.* 



Now let me emphasise the point that there is not one of 

 these industries for which the chemist is not essential at one 

 stage or another. An interesting address given some months 

 ago by the President of the American Cyanamide Companyt 

 shows how universal the need of the chemist is. Two thousand 

 grades of glassware are required for a vast variety of purposes ; 

 for this the skilled glass-maker must work under chemical con- 

 trol. The iron and steel of oin* cutlery, the extraction of silver, 

 gold, and, in fact, of all metals from the ores, need the chemist 

 at every step ; the clothing we wear, the dyes that colour it, and 

 more particularly synthetic dyes, 'the host of other uses to which 

 cotton is put, the use of cellulose in the form of artificial silk 

 as a new textile material, all are interwoven with the resources 

 of the chemist. The preparation and preservation of our foods, 

 and the securing of their purity, both depend on chemical con- 

 trol. The manufacture of synthetic drugs, such as antipyrin, 

 phenacetin, sulphonal. veronal, novacain, aspirin, and salvar- 

 san ; the introduction of synthetic perfumes like heliotropin, of 

 synthetic flavours like vanillin, of synthetic rubber and synthetic 

 camphor ; the quality of the fuel we use, the efficiency of the 

 fertilisers we put into the soil, the extraction and utilisation of 

 the various animal and vegetable oils, and the conversion of some 

 of them into solid fats by catalytic agency, and so into soaps or 

 candles, with glycerine- as a by-product ; the production of liquid 



* Journ. Roy. Soc. of Arts (iyi7), 65, 755. 

 fChem. Nezi's (1917), 116, 157-159. 



