244 RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT 



opportunity was taken to discuss the future of the 

 Association, and the discussion, after the latter meet- 

 ing, was carried on in the columns of Nature. Critics, 

 amicable and hostile, set forth their opinions : among 

 these the view reappeared that our body was mori- 

 bund, if not defunct a view to be speedily dis- 

 counted by the fact that the following annual meeting 

 (Edinburgh, 1921) was in point of attendance the 

 tenth largest ever held, and this at a time when 

 financial stringency and high costs were almost, if 

 not quite, as severely felt as they had ever been by 

 the public generally. It had been merely an accident, 

 arising out of negotiations set on foot before war 

 conditions supervened to break the continuity of 

 the annual meetings, that those of 1919-20 should be 

 held in localities where large attendances were not 

 to be foreseen if the conditions of ' geographical 

 control ' suggested in a previous chapter (p. 117) 

 held good, as they did. 



Of the constructive proposals which emerged from 

 the discussions referred to, one was given prompt 

 effect. It was suggested by a number of commenta- 

 tors and arose out of such observations as the follow- 

 ing from a leading article in Nature, September 16, 

 1920 : ' Each section is autonomous, and there is no 

 co-ordinating committee to make them part of a 

 composite organisation, or suggest how they may 

 combine their forces for the common good. The 

 Association is like a great industrial works in which 

 each shop produces what it pleases, and no one has 

 the duty of building up a noble structure from the 

 various parts.' 



It has already been indicated how measures were 

 immediately taken to overcome this very real defect ; 



