2 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



new element, the air, and the theory of aerodynamics; what ingenious 

 acoustic devices he has invented to locate and destroy the lurking 

 submarine and the hidden monster gun; to what lengths he has 

 pushed the applications of wireless waves, of electrical instruments of 

 detection; of the new uses to which he has put old apparatus. The 

 chemist could recount the triumphs in the making of explosives, and 

 the improvement of processes in their making, the production of 

 deadly gases and gas protectors, the making of dyes and optical glasses, 

 the cheapening or simplifying of methods of production, and the 

 discovery of substitutes for many products. 



But though this would be most instructive, and most interesting, 

 even the parts of the story which are not secret and can be told to-day, 

 yet I have preferred to take up the second point of view, namely, the 

 effect the war has had, and is having, and can have on Science. 



Perhaps the first result of this war on Science in British coun- 

 tries has been the confidence it has given us in our standing today and 

 in our own accomplishments in the past. In general we can assert 

 that the challenge to British science to show what it could do to meet 

 the array of scientific devices elaborated in long secret by the enem^^ 

 has been brilliantly taken up by our own scientific men, and I think 

 we can truthfully say, we ha\e gone them one better. We have proved 

 to ourselves that British men of science possess a knowledge and a 

 resource certainly not inferior to the German; and we have always 

 known that we ha\'e had more than our share in the discovery of the 

 great underlying principles and ideas and theories in the application of 

 which Germany has been so persistent and so successful. The con- 

 viction that our chemists and engineers can achieve by our liberal 

 methods results which we have been told could not compete with 

 German drill-sergeant, dogmatic and cast-iron methods, has been of 

 the greatest service to us. For I think it is true that we have felt 

 instinctively that rather than fall to his level and follow in his foot- 

 steps, we would accept our losses and retain our individual freedom; 

 indeed I doubt that we could ever have driven our scientific students 

 and our people to this form of wooden subserviency to rigid and auto- 

 cratic system. We have learned that co-operation, coupled with the 

 retention of our freedom of effort and power of initiative, can accom- 

 plish all we need in order to wrest the supremacy once for all for our 

 own people. It is a great thing for our scientists and our manu- 

 facturers and our capitalists to have achieved confidence in our 

 scientific ability and strength ; in two years England accomplished in 

 armament and explosives in all their ramifications in every department 

 of Chemistry, Physics, Optics, etc., what Germany took forty years 

 to do. 



