December i6, 1915] 



NATURE 



431 



measured. The exposures were from three to 

 Hve minutes. Photog^raphs are given in the second 

 paper showing- the displacement of the fringes 

 for three different points in the spectrum. The 

 results are summarised in the following table : — 



The calculated probable error of the experimental 

 result is about i per cent, of the latter. 



The experiment decides conclusively in favour 

 of the Lorentz coefficient. Not only does the 

 absolute value of the result agree better with the 

 latter, but so also does its variation with the 

 wave-length, the figure for the experimental value 

 being 161 6 and the figures derived respectively 

 from the Fresnel and Lorentz coefficients being 

 1572 and 1608. Thus the degree of accuracy 

 has been pushed a stage further in what was re- 

 garded as one of our most accurate experiments. 



SCIENCE AND WAR. 



WE are permitted to publish this week some 

 passages from Sir William Osier's address 

 to the Leeds Medical School on " Science and 

 War " (Oxford : At the Clarendon Press. Price 

 15. 6d. net). Sir William writes with authority 

 and with distinction : and all who love good 

 thoughts arrayed in good style ought to buy this 

 address and read it with care. He keeps his 

 head clear, though he has chosen a theme vast 

 beyond imagination. The war transcends our 

 powers of thought; so does science. The war 

 has gone beyond us ; so has science. Yet he is 

 able, more than most of us, to measure the work- 

 ing together of the immeasurable forces of science 

 and war : for he has always in his head, and in 

 his heart, the duplicity of science. " I bring to 

 life, I bring to death," says Science. In the war, 

 my Lady Science is busy both ways. She em- 

 ploys artists in death and artists in life ; she 

 supplies them — so impartial are abstractions — 

 with asphyxiating gases and with antiseptic 

 dressings ; she manufactures with equal mind 

 high explosives and protective vaccines, sub- 

 marines and motor-ambulances. What a thing 

 it is to be an abstraction, a name for systema- 

 tised thought ; to have no morals, no likes or 

 dislikes ; to be nothing but a Latin word for the 

 best way of doing what is to be done. 



Sir William Osier, as a true man of science, 



ig'ives an admirable and well-balanced account of 



ithis dual influence of scientific method on the 



rar. He is not only a man of science : he is also 



fa great physician, a notable artist in life. His 



iccount of one of the chief base hospitals in 



'ranee is delightful reading ; the speed and pre- 



:ision and modernity of the work achieved are 



above praise. A strong committee has already 



taken in hand the compiling of the medical and 



sui^ical history of the war. It will be a mighty 



book. The medical and surgical history of the 



NO. 2407, VOL. 96] 



American Civil War is in five huge volumes; we 

 earn scarcely have less than that for the present 

 war. 



Toward the end of the address, Sir William 

 says what a good many of our great doctors are 

 saying or thinking. "To one who is by tem- 

 perament and education a Brunonian and free 

 from the ' common antipathies ' and ' national 

 repugnances,' one sad sequel of the war will be, 

 for this generation at least, the death of inter- 

 national science." He thinks that science will 

 suffer grievously by some sort of boycott against 

 Germany ; he dreads what he calls " Chauvinism 

 in science." He says that "an impassable intel- 

 lectual gulf yawns between the Allies and Ger- 

 many." We think that he makes too much of 

 this fear. The gulf between the Allies and Ger- 

 many is ethical, not intellectual. There wiH be 

 friendships broken, and international medical con- 

 gresses made impossible, and no more honorary 

 degrees from German universities, and no hos- 

 pitality for hospital workers, and so forth ; but 

 these losses will be easily tolerable. Science has 

 her own ways of getting back a bit of her own. 



The following extracts from Sir William Osier's 

 address may serve to illustrate its wisdom and 

 style : — 



In Time our civilisation is but a thin frinjije like 

 the layer of living polyps on the coral reef, capping 

 the dead generations on which it rests. The lust of 

 war is still in the blood : we cannot help it. There 

 was, and there is as yet, no final appeal but to the 

 ordeal of battle. Only let us get the race in its true 

 perspective in which a thousand years are but as 

 yesterday, and in which we are contemporaries of the 

 Babylonians and Egyptians and all together within 

 Plato's year. Let us remember, too, that war is a 

 human development, unknown to other animals. 

 Though nature is ruthless " in tooth and claw," collec- 

 tive war between members of the same species is not 

 one of her weapons ; and in this sense Hobbes's 

 dictum that "war wtis a state of nature" is not true. 

 The dinosaurs and pterodactyls and the mastodons 

 did not perish in a struggle for existence against mem- 

 bers of their own species, but were losers in a battle 

 against conditions of nature which others found possible 

 to overcome. In our own day the gradual disappear- 

 ance of native populations is due as much to whisky 

 and disease as to powder and shot, as witness in 

 illustration of the one the North American Indian and 

 of the other the Tasmanians. 



Some of us had indulged the fond hope that in the 

 power man had gained over nature had arisen possi- 

 bilities for intellectual and social development such as 

 to control collectively his morals and emotions, so that 

 the nations would not learn war any more. ^ We were 

 foolish enough to think that where Christianity had 

 failed science mi^ht succeed, forgetting that the hope- 

 lessness of the failure of the Gospel lav not in the 

 m^sage, but in its interpretation. The promised 

 peace was for the individual — the world was to have 

 tribulations; and Christ expressly said: "Think not 

 that I am come to send peace on earth ; I came not 

 to send peace but a sword." The Abou ben Adhems 

 woke dailv from their dreams of peace, and lectured 

 and published pamphlets and held congresses, white 

 Krupp built 17-inch howitzers and the grun range of 

 the suoer-Dreadnoughts increased to eiffhteon miles ! 



And we had become so polite and civil, so cultured 

 in both senses of that horrid word, with an " Is thy 



