10 Transactions of the Royal Canadian Institute 



While in Paris last summer, I found that the total attendance for 

 the year 1913-14 at universities and other educational institutions of 

 university grade in France was in the neighbourhood of 26,000. This 

 is at the rate of a little more than 6 per 10,000 population. It would 

 hardly be necessary to cut this figure down as much as we did with the 

 corresponding figures for the other allied countries. In comparing the 

 university status of France with that of Germany, too, it would only 

 be fair to take account of the selective policy adopted by the former 

 country with regard to the intellectually gifted. 



One must not be too hasty in finding implications in the figures we 

 have mentioned or in drawing conclusions from them. They do not 

 imply that the intellectual status of Germany compared with that of 

 England is as 14 to 3, nor do they give the relative positions of the two 

 countries in regard to scientific achievement. The scientific status of a 

 country is determined principally by the quality of the output of its 

 foremost research workers. The status of England in science compared 

 with that of Germany is in the aggregate, no doubt, higher than that 

 given by the ratio 3 to 14. This would seem to indicate that among 

 the scientists trained in England is to be found a larger proportion of 

 high grade ones than is the case with those who are trained in Germany. 

 This may or may not imply a smaller proportionate waste of scientific 

 material among the men of highest intellectual capacity in England than 

 among those who are of a somewhat lower grade. It might imply that 

 the average intellectual level of the classes in England from which the 

 ranks of science are recruited is higher than that of the classes in Ger- 

 many from which science draws her recruits. My own impression is 

 that the average Englishman has been endowed by nature with more 

 intelligence than the average German. There can be no doubt that 

 the amount of brain power which is undeveloped and which goes 

 to waste in England is something enormous. The one thing that the 

 figures just given do tell us is that in Germany there are more young 

 men in proportion to population who prolong the period of their studies 

 and receive an advanced training than there are in other countries. 

 Of these young men science secures its full share. As a consequence a 

 larger number of highly trained men are available for the purposes of 

 science and industry in Germany than elsewhere. It would appear that 

 men of such training have been spared by Germany during the war as 

 they have not been spared by the Allies. 



Two months ago, while in London, England, I had a conversation 

 with Dr. E. C. Worden, chemical expert of the Bureau of Aircraft Pro- 

 duction, Washington, D.C., who had been commissioned to report on 

 the chemical factories in the occupied portion of Germany. He had 



