NEGLECT OF SCIENCE 15 



into one much more violently aggressive; it is 

 suggested that the wonderful development of the 

 German fine chemical industry has been promoted 

 with this eventuality always in view. This is, 

 of course, a perfectly legitimate view for any State 

 to take, and it behoves others, hitherto careless 

 in such matters, to devise methods for their own 

 future protection. We, in this country, must ask 

 ourselves how any recurrence of the present 

 appalling physical and mental suffering, and dis- 

 location of all productive mental and intellectual 

 work, can be prevented. 



The entire fabric of any modern state is built 

 up about the manufacturing and agricultural 

 industries of the country. These and the other 

 more obviously intellectual activities of any Western 

 civilisation are as closely interdependent as are 

 the arterial and nervous systems in the animal 

 body; any deficiency or damage occurring in the 

 one systematic component is speedily reflected in 

 a sympathetic deterioration of some seemingly 

 quite disconnected element of the organism. The 

 public neglect of science in any state is accompanied 

 by poverty of purely intellectual output, by 

 gradual decadence of manufactures, by conserva- 

 tism of agricultural effort and by the replacement 

 of the statesman by the mere politician; we may 

 indeed anticipate that decay of classical scholar- 

 ship in our older Universities would have an unfor- 

 tunate effect upon our science faculties. A strong 



