4G3 



WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 



Friday, January 20, 1922. 



Sir James Reid, Bart., G.C.V.O. K.C.B. M.D. LL.D., 

 Manager and Vice-President, in the Chair. 



Sir James Dewar, M.A. LL.D. D.Sc. F.R.S. M.R.I. , 



Fullerian Professor of Chemistry. 



Soap Films and Molecular Forces. 



(The Abstract of this Discourse will be published in a subsequent 

 number of the " Proceedings," together with the Abstract of the 

 Discourse for 1023.) 



WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 

 Friday, January 27, 1922. 



Sir James Crichton-Browxe, M.D. LL.D. F.R.S., 



Treasurer and Vice-President, in the Chair. 



Viscount Btjrxham, O.H. 



Journalism. 



Writing nearly a hundred years ago the great French writer, 

 Alexis de Tocqueville, said, " The Press constitutes a singular power, 

 so strangely composed of good and evil that liberty could not live 

 without it and public order could hardly be maintained against it." 

 The definition is characteristic in its clean-cut clearness, and docs 

 but gain in comprehension by the test of time. Whilst the historian 

 defines he does not explain, and the power of the Press defies any- 

 thing like adequate and satisfactory explanation. It depends not on 

 scientific data which can be tested and measured and weighed, but 

 on the phenomena of human character which are incapnble of scien- 

 tific analysis. Even to me it remains an insoluble mystery why, 

 because the man in the street sees a name displayed in block letters of 

 Vol. XXIII. (No. 116) 2 l 



