NATURE 



THURSDAY, OCTOBER i8, 1917. 



RESEARCH AND THE STATE. 

 T T was remarked by Prof. W. J, Pope, in an 

 address to which we referred last week, that 

 it suitable provision had been made by the State 

 tor the pursuit of scientific research twenty years 

 ag:o we should have been saved from the horrors 

 of the present conflict. He asked why the Govern- 

 ment did not then make the experiment which it has 

 now undertaken by the establishment of a Depart- 

 ment of Scientific and Industrial Research with an 

 endowment of 1,000,000/. The answer to the 

 question is that our statesmen have never had 

 sufficient knowledge of science to understand its 

 relation to national advancement or sufficient faith 

 in scientific discovery to believe that provision for 

 it would ultimately benefit the community both 

 industrially and politically. The public mind has 

 been awakened to the essential value of research 

 in all progressive industries, and every manifesto 

 recently issued by organisations concerned with the 

 future development of British trade insists upon its 

 importance. Principles which have been persist- 

 ently urged in these columns by a couple of 

 generations of scientific men are now being pro- 

 claimed from the housetops and are heard in the 

 highways, with the result that our political leaders 

 are beginning to follow them. 



There is much reason for satisfaction at this 



* change of front, even though it be at long last. 

 The official attitude is now vastly, different from 

 that of the Lords Commissioners of H.M. Trea- 



! sury in 1872, when the British Association asked 



for a grant of 150J. to complete the reduction of 



• tidal observations upon which the association 

 I itself had expended four times that amount. Their 

 Lordships, after giving "anxious attention" to 

 the memorial, regretted that the sum required 

 could not be appropriated out of the public funds of 

 this sea-girt isle for tidal investigations, because, 

 if the request were granted, " it would be impos- 

 sible to refuse to contribute towards the numerous 

 other objects which men of eminence may desire 

 to treat scientifically." Such was the position of 

 State support of science in England in 1872; and 

 the example shows how much remained to be 

 done to bring about the change represented by the 

 establishment of the Department of Scientific 

 land Industrial Research. 



I Prof. Pope asked why this department was not 



I instituted by the State twenty years ago, but he 



should have .said more than forty years, for 



one of the chief recommendations of the 



Royal Commission appointed in 1870 was 



NO. 2503, VOL. 100] 



that a State Council of Science, presided 

 over by a Minister of Science, should be estab- 

 lished. The Commission was appointed with the 

 seventh Duke of Devonshire as chairman and Sir 

 Norman Lockyer as secretary, while among other 

 members were Huxley, Sir G. G. Stokes, and the 

 first Lord Avebury. The whole position of science 

 in the United Kingdom was surveyed in the 

 volumes of the Report of the Commission issued 

 from 1871 to 1875; and it was the unanimous 

 opinion of the Commissioners that a special depart- 

 ment of State should be entrusted with the duty 

 of promoting the scientific interests of the country. 

 The suggested Council of Science was not intended 

 solely to look after the interests of purely scientific 

 research, but to bring to scientific tests, and advise 

 upon, all Government projects in which scientific 

 principles are involved. The great majority of 

 the witnesses examined upon this point were 

 entirely in favour of the establishment of a 

 Council and Minister of Science. 



The decided conviction was also expressed by 

 the Science Commission of 1870 that one of the 

 most efficient methods by which the Government 

 could further research in this country was by the 

 establishment of public laboratories for the pur- 

 suit of investigations in connection with the vary- 

 ing and ever-multiplying departments of physics, 

 chemistry, biology, and other branches of science. 

 Even at that time great laboratories had been 

 erected at Berlin, Leipzig, Bonn, Aix-la-Chapelle, 

 Karlsruhe, Stuttgart, and other places at the 

 expense of the State, and sp>ecial provision had 

 been made in them for priginal scientific research, 

 while nothing of the kind was done in our own 

 country ; and thus the main sources of new trades 

 and improvements in manufactures remained 

 undeveloped. The view then taken, and not alto- 

 gether unknown even at the present time, was that 

 the more science was left to itself the better for it. 

 Mr. Gladstone, indeed, termed the intervention of 

 the State as "interference" with science, cal- 

 culated to discourage individual exertion, and so 

 obstruct discovery and progress. A completely 

 different view was taken by Lord Salisbury, who, 

 in his evidence before the Science Commission, 

 remarked : " Research is unremunerative ; but it is 

 highly desirable that it be pursued, and there- 

 fore the community must be content that funds 

 should l>e set aside to be given, without any 

 immediate and calculable return in work, to those 

 by whom the research is to be pursued." 



We have waited more than forty years for this 

 necessary endowment of research, and the country 

 has lost incalculable millions because no states- 

 man had sufficient foresight to take heed of the 



H 



