NA TURE 



365 



THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1920. 



Editorial and Publishing OffUes : 



MACMILLAN 6- CO., LTD., 



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Editorial communications to the Editor. 



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Science and the Cenotaph. 



THE second anniversary of the Armistice of 

 November ii, 1918, has come and gone, 

 and the whole nation, united in a common impulse 

 of pious and grateful remembrance, has done 

 solemn homage to the memory of the glorious 

 d<.'ad. King and people, leaders and comrades, 

 have paid reverence to the remains of that un- 

 known hero who has been laid to rest in our 

 national shrine, and who typifies the humble and 

 silent sacrifice of those many thousands to whom 

 we owe the survival of civilisation. 



To the soldiers of science, to whom duty and 

 self-sacrifice are, or ought to be, ever-present 

 ideals, the ceremony of last Thursday should have 

 ni.KJc .1 special appeal. In the great struggle 

 which terminated two years ago they were not 

 backward in taking their places in the fighting 

 organisation of the nation. With very few ex- 

 ceptions they put their special gifts and training 

 .It the service of the State. The devotion and 

 fearless courage of the medical branch of the 

 scientific profession have earned universal recog- 

 nition. Thousands of the younger students in 

 all faculties, who had, before the war, patriotically 

 joined the Officers Training Corps, came forward 

 in i9t4 as one man and filled the gap in the 

 supply of officers until the new armies were ready. 

 Of the older men of s<:icncc a great number 

 joined fighting units and shared with the rest 

 the hardships and dangers of the trenches. Many 

 valuable lives were thus sacrificed which a wiser 

 /distribution might have spent to better advantage : 

 NO. 2664, VOL. 106] 



one remembers a mathematician of great ability 

 who served as an infantry officer and was killed 

 by the explosion of a bomb store, and the tragedy 

 of Moseley, who fell at Gallipoli. Others, again, 

 debarred from active service in the trenches, took 

 up work behind the lines or in the technical 

 services^work not without its perils, as is shown 

 by the fate of Keith Lucas and Bertram Hopkin- 

 son, two distinguished fellows of the Royal 

 Society, both killed in aeroplane accidents, who 

 died a soldier's death as truly as if they had fallen 

 in action. .\nother well-known scientific re- 

 searcher spent weeks experimenting in a sub- 

 marine in a highly dangerous zone. Such ex- 

 amples might be multiplied a hundredfold. In 

 gas warfare, sound ranging, air work, submarine 

 detection, etc., a vast number of men of science 

 were to be found, and gave their labours and 

 their lives unstinlingly. Many made the supreme 

 sacrifice, and, on the whole, men of science proved 

 themselves to be capable leaders and efficient 

 organisers and administrators even in fields widely 

 separated from those of their peace-time activities. 



Scientific workers may thus join in the universal 

 homage to the fallen with a pure heart and the 

 consciousness of duty done. They, at all events, 

 are free from the reproach of having in any way 

 profited by the general suffering, or of having ex- 

 ploited the war for selfish ends. Whilst the cost 

 of living still soars, and salaries and wages, in 

 industry, commerce, and administration, try to 

 keep pace with it, the remuneration of .scientific 

 workers, poor already before 1914, is gradually 

 being brought down to the starvation limit, the 

 small nominal increase given in some cases being 

 very far indeed from making up for the decreased 

 purchasing power of the pound. 



The question not unnaturally suggests itself : 

 How many among those silent crowds that stood 

 bareheaded last Thursday have given any efifective 

 help even to one of the millions of returned 

 .soldiers who, in the present jostle of selfish appe- 

 tites, are asking for work and bread from those 

 whose busines.ses and wages they have saved? 

 .\nd, in particular, how many have given a 

 thought to those struggling scientific toilers who 

 have put away their uniforms and strive vainly 

 to exist on inadequate salaries, under crushing 

 taxation and to meet an ever-rising co-st of 

 living? Vet the brains of these men were no 

 mean factor in winning the war, and it should 

 be increasingly obvious that the salvation of a 

 modern State, both in peace and war, must depend 

 nowadays upon trained oi>servation and intclli- 



