28 PRESIDENTS ADDRESS — SECTION B. 



both of chemists and engineers. Hence for the sound develop- 

 ment of a manufacturing business involving chemical proioesse-s 

 we must look to collaboration, on more or less equal terms, be- 

 tween the chemist, the engineer, and the business man. Each of 

 these classes should be represented on the Board of Directors or its 

 equivalent. 



With the outbreak of war cajiie the great opportunity for 

 British chemists to show what they could do, and to prove beyond 

 question their indispensable value to' the nation. The way in 

 which they ro?;f to this opportunity, and the feats which they 

 accomplished, if foretold in the previous times of ])eace, would 

 have been regarded by chemists themselves as a wild impossi- 

 bility. In the manufacture of explosives, and still mere in the 

 development of counter measures, both defensive and offensive, 

 against the newer methods of warfare introduced by the enemy, 

 the chemist held the key to; the position. Chemists were required 

 for work, which only they could do, in every section of the war 

 organization ; with the special chemists corps in the front line, to 

 direct anti-gas measures and gas attacks, and, incidentall}^, tO' 

 identify the various poisonous compounds which thei enemy sent 

 over; with the R.A.M.C, to supervise water supply, &c. ; in the 

 Navy, to direct the manufacture and use of artificial fog; in the 

 various munition factories ; in the Government and other research 

 laboratories; and in other activities too numerous to mentiou. It 

 woiuld be untrue, as well as grcssl}^ unfair to other workers, and, 

 above all, to our fighting forces, to^ claim that chemists won the 

 war. But we have every right to claim that, had it not been for 

 the work of the British chemists, we should inevitably have 

 lost it. 



There is every indication that, unless the League of Nations 

 becoanes an effective restraining force, chemistry will play an even 

 greater part in future wars than it has in the one we have just 

 come through. This has already been recognised in the United 

 States, where the Chemical Warfare Service has been organized 

 as an independent branch of the Army. It -would seem, there- 

 fore, that, except in wars against savage or semi-savage tribes, the 

 days of the "drshing cavalry general" are over, and that he will 

 have to be succeeded by one who-e training has consisted largely 

 of chemistry and engineering. If both sides are prepared for it, 

 chemical warfare probably dees not add so much to the horrors 

 of war as the use of high explosive shell. In 1918, although the 

 number of casualties in the British Army from poison, sufficiently 

 severe to incapacitate a man for some weeks, was unfortunately 

 very large, the number of deaths therefrom was estimated not 

 to have exceeded four per cent., whilst the percentage of deaths 

 from gunshot wounds was between twenty and thirty. The special 

 infamy committed by the Germans lay in their taking deliberate 



