122 



NATURE 



[October i8, 1917 



warning- and advice of scientific men at a time 

 when profitable action was clearly indicated. 



After the publication of the Report of the Science 

 Commission the Government had no excuse 

 for neg-lect to remedy the evils brought under its 

 notice. If was remarked in Nature of March 26, 

 1874 : "If means are not forthwith taken to 

 organise our public museums and institutions for 

 scientific research and instruction on some intelli- 

 gent system, to supplement their lamentable defi- 

 ciencies, and make them as widely beneficial to 

 the advancement of science in all its departments 

 and conducive to the highest instruction of the 

 public as they are calculated to be, it can no longer 

 be set down to ignorance, but to an utter disregard 

 of the highest welfare of the country. In this direc- 

 tion the Government has a chance of distinguishing 

 itself and winning for itself an enduring and worthy 

 popularity ; let it lose no time in showing its wis- 

 dom by appointing a responsible Minister of Edu- 

 cation, whose duty it will be to keep all our public 

 scientific and educational institutions up to the 

 highest pitch of efficiency, to re-organise them 

 upon some common basis, and to see that the 

 progress of research in all branches of science is 

 not hampered by the Avant of adequate means for 

 its pursuit." 



It is scarcely necessary to remind readers of 

 Nature that though the case for national care of 

 scientific research was stated as convincingly as 

 it could be by the leaders of science forty years 

 ago, politicians turned deaf ears to their pleadings. 

 It is true that a grant of loooZ. for scientific 

 investigations was included in the Estimates from 

 1855 to 1881, and that in 1876 a further grant of 

 4000^ was voted for tht payment of personal 

 allowances to men engaged in research, but this 

 latter grant represented the whole response of the 

 Government to the recommendations of the Royal 

 Commission on Science. Since 1882 the grant of 

 loooL, which was provided under the Vote for 

 Learned Societies, has been discontinued, and that 

 of 4000L has remained unaltered, except that it is 

 now administered by the Royal Society instead of 

 by the Science and Art Department, to which it 

 was originally allocated. 



In 1894 the Council of the Royal Society asked 

 H.M. Treasury to increase the amount of this 

 grant for scientific investigations, but without 

 success. Men of science were not sufficiently 

 organised, or did not possess the necessary politi- 

 cal power, to force the subject of provision for 

 research upon the attention of successive Govern- 

 ments until the desired ends were achieved. The 

 first attempt to awaken the public to a sense of 

 national danger on account of neglect of the sub- 

 NO. 2503, VOL. lOOj 



ject was made by Sir Norman Lockyer in his 

 presidential address to the British Association in 

 1903. Then, as thirty years earlier in the Report 

 of the Science Commission, a convincing case was 

 presented for the State endowment of universities, 

 on a scale which would make our facilities for 

 highest education and research comparable with 

 those of our chief competitors. As a natural out- 

 come of this appeal, the Treasury grant to 

 universities and colleges in England and Wales 

 was doubled in the following year, and further 

 increased later, until it reached the present amount 

 of about 200,000/. a year instead of the 28,500/. 

 available in 1903. But even this increased sub- 

 sidy is less than the ordinary annual State endow- 

 ment of Berlin University alone, while the 

 total of the Government subsidies to univer- 

 sities in Germany is as much as 1,500,000/. 



It is clear, therefore, that, though much has been 

 done, the nation must be prepared for a further 

 increase of expenditure upon scientific and techno- 

 logical education and research if we are to make 

 good our shortcomings in the past. Mr. Fisher, 

 President of the Board of Education, speaking at 

 Cardiff on October 10, said that the way- to estab- 

 lish a strong and powerful university was to get 

 great men, and that not a bad way to secure 

 these was to pay them well. The opportunity has 

 come to ensure that generous provision is made 

 for such assistance to university work as well as 

 to establish a system of education better than that 

 enjoyed anywhere else in the civilised world ; and 

 it is the duty of all who believe in these factors 

 of national progress to support the eff"orts now 

 being made to strengthen them. 



The work of the British Science Guild in these 

 directions has been of great national advantage. 

 Inaugurated in 1905 to convince the people "of 

 the necessity of applying the methods of science 

 to all branches of human endeavour, and thus to 

 further the progress and increase the welfare of 

 the Empire," the Guild has been in the forefront 

 of all recent movements for promoting the develop- 

 ment of education and industry by the application 

 of scientific principles. Early in its history it 

 directed attention to the need for increased pro- 

 vision for agricultural research, and presented a 

 memorial on the subject to the Prime Minister. 

 The Development Act of 1909 gave the means of 

 supplying this need ; and the result is that during 

 the year 1914-15 the total amount distributed 

 by the Board of Agriculture in the form of grants 

 for agricultural education and research was 

 92,000/. instead of the 16,000/'. available ten years 

 ago. Another State endowment of research was 

 provided for by the National Insurance Act of 191 1, 



