336 



NATURE 



[November 25, 1915 



brokers; but not one engineer, chemist, or man 

 of science : at least the newspapers reported none 

 as present. His Royal Highness did not notice 

 the omission; it was an utterly trivial incident, 

 of course. Straws show which way the wind 

 blows. 



Not one of the headmasters of the great public 

 schools is a man of science, and very few of the 

 heads of houses in the old universities ; though the 

 recent selection of a zoologist and a botanist to 

 such posts of dignity at Cambridge may be a 

 timely concession. If the headmasters and heads 

 of houses are by training and tradition out of 

 sympathy with science, is it astonishing that 

 under-masters and schoolboys, as well as under- 

 graduates, grow up ignorant of scientific method, 

 and despise that of which they are ignorant? 

 Worst of all, in those departments of our schools 

 where science is admitted, it is treated as an 

 inferior study. No doubt our public school system 

 turns out many admirable cricketers and a few 

 scholars ; but of the living men who have made 

 their mark in science, how few can thank the. 

 public schools for that achievement? At every 

 general election the public — to judge from the 

 Press — is keenly anxious to know how many 

 of the members of the House were reared at 

 Harrow, and how many at Eton. But no one cares 

 how many Fellows of the Royal Society, or mem- 

 bers of the Institution of Civil Engineers, or 

 Fellows of the Institute of Chemistry are from 

 Harrow or Eton. 



We now suddenly discover in the cataclysm of 

 a terrible war, not only that science has been at 

 a discount in the organisation of the army, but 

 that our industrial and commercial life is dis- 

 organised and crippled by the same elementary 

 disregard. Nearly half a century ago Disraeli 

 warned us that the commercial prosperity of a 

 nation might be measured by the prosperity of 

 its chemical manufactures. He was laughed at 

 as though his dictum had been a joke. But it 

 ceases to be a matter for joking when the neglect 

 of science leads to the disappearance of whole 

 branches of those trades that are concerned with 

 the technical applications of chemistry or physics 

 or metallurgy. The loss of the dye-stuff industry ; 

 the decay of several branches of the glass indus- 

 try; the ever-increasing pressure in the metal 

 industries, in the varnish industry, in the watch 

 and clock industry, in innumerable branches of 

 the engineering industries, are serious indications. 

 They are symptoms that something has been 

 rotten in the administration of the State. But 

 they have not occurred without serious warn- 

 NO. 2404, VOL. 96] 



ing. Sir Norman Lockyer's weighty British 

 Association address. Professor Perry's trenchant 

 "Neglect of Science," Lord Haldane's earnest 

 pleas for the improvement of education in the in- 

 terests of national efficiency, all pointed the same 

 moral : ij you neglect science, you do so at your 

 peril. But these warnings fell largely on deaf ears. 

 The assistance given by Government to the promo- 

 tion of science has been largely a sham supple- 

 mented by a few doles. Government has given, it 

 is true, a large sum for the establishment of the 

 National Physical Laboratory. But the German 

 Government gives three times as much, and the 

 United States Government four times as much, 

 for their corresponding national institutions. 



In its wisdom, the Government — not the present 

 one — has merged the Science and Art Department 

 in a Board of Education, a Board which never 

 meets, under successive Ministers of Education, 

 who, however able they may have been, have not 

 in any case been men of eminence in science. 

 In the Army there is unconcealed contempt for 

 and hostility to the opinion of any civilian expert ; 

 he is lower than any mere gunner. Even the 

 military engineer is set down as a mere sapper. 

 In the Navy things are not quite so bad, though 

 it required years of agitation to secure even a 

 partial recognition for the naval engineer. Had 

 science been despised in the Navy as it is in the 

 Army, where would Britain have been to-day? In 

 political and financial circles the contempt is com- 

 plete ; science neither goes out vote-catching, nor 

 panders to Stock Exchange operations. It is 

 therefore of no importance. Always, and ever, 

 and again, science is despised and ignored. 



If the public, the nation, and its appointed 

 rulers display such blindness, is it wonderful that 

 national interests, civil as well as military, in- 

 dustrial as well as agricultural, suffer grievously 

 when forced to compete with nations sedulously 

 trained in the cultivation of science? 



And yonder march the nations full of eyes. 

 Already is doom a-spinning. 



TWO MORE BANTU BOOKS. 



[i) A Concise Kaffir-English Dictionary. By J. 

 McLaren. Pp. xv+194. (London: Long- 

 mans, Green and Co., 1915.) Price 35. 6d. 



(2) A Manual of the Chikaranga Language. By 

 C. S. Louw. Pp. x + 397. (Bulawayo : Phil- 

 pott and Collins, 1915.) Price 12s. 6d. net. 



(ijyT is curious that so many industrious 



I 



persons have issued, in the course of the 

 last eighty years, one-sided dictionaries of Kafir 

 (Xosa) dialect of the great Zulu language, and 

 that no one that I know of has published a full 



