38 president's address — section b. 



no inconsiderable proportion of the technical staff of the Depart- 

 ment of Explosives Supply. One cause of this was the supineness 

 of the British Government, early in the war, in allowing the 

 chemists of the United Kingdom, who were all too few in any case 

 for the chemical work ahead, freely to enlist in the fighting forces; 

 so. that, when the great factories were apjoroachmg completion, an 

 urgent caJl for cheinists had toi be sent cut to all parts of the 

 Empire. It is sometimes invidious to^ single out individuals; but 

 in this connexion an exception must be made m favour of Mr. A. 

 E. Leighton and Professor B. D. Steele. Mr. Leighton was from 

 the start one of the foremost men in the Explosives Department, 

 and was reeponsible for much of the design and of the running of 

 the plant in the factories, notably those at Queen's Ferry and 

 Gretna. Australia owes a debt of gratitude to Mr. Leighton for 

 having recruited so many Australian chemists tor work in the 

 Explosives Department, and for seguring for them posts of re- 

 sponsibility in the factories, where they had unique opportunities 

 to acquire a comprehensive knowledge of the design and running 

 of plant and of the details of factory management, which should 

 make them of inestimable value to Australian industry, if our 

 manufacturers and labour unions will only allow them the oppor- 

 tunity to show it. In fact, one could hardly go into any factory 

 under the Explosives Department without finding one or more 

 Australian chemists in positions of trust, which, with few excep- 

 tions, they fully justified. It is worth noting that, whether on the 

 plant ca- in the laboratory, the chemists whoi had had a thorough 

 university training as a rule stood head and shoulders above all 

 others. As migfit be expected, this was most strikingly the case 

 whenever work on new processes or methods was involved. Pro- 

 fessor Steele had the experience, probably unique for a man fresh 

 from an academic career, of first working out a new process in the 

 laboiratcry, and then trying it out on a semi-technical scale tO' the 

 satisfaction of the Heads of the Explosives Department, design- 

 ing and erecting a factory to run it with an output of several tons 

 per day, and finally as its Superintendent bringing tliat factory 

 into successful opei-ation. Incidentally, although far fro'in being 

 the largest, this factory was by no means the least efficient of 

 those producing the same material, in respect of either quality of 

 product or working costs. 



The future status of chemistry and chemists is intimately bound 

 up with the quantity and quality of the training which chemists 

 undergo-. Hitherto many chemists have been using their generic 

 name in an inexcusably loose fashion to include, not only 

 thoroughly trained and competent all-round men, but also mere 

 testers or works foremen, who have served a sort of apprenticeship 

 in a chemical laboratory or works, but who, although they may 

 sometimes be highly skilled in some one restricted branch of 

 chemistry, have only the merest smattering of chemistry as a whole. 



