3&6 



NATURE 



[January io, 191 8 



which needs offices quickly— the Board will have 

 to be encamped in the middle of the collections, 

 with all the increase of risk which such an en- 

 campment involves. 



Our concern for the museum is not prompted 

 by opposition to interference with the existence 

 and work of the threatened institution, but by the 

 desire to preserve national prestige and to prevent 

 the ruin of possessions which can never be re- 

 placed. Only if reduced to the last extremity— 

 and we are far from that condition— should a 

 scheme be adopted which would give the enemy 

 occasion to scoff at our willing sacrifice of the 

 glorious heritage represented by the collections in 

 the national museum. 



"We profess to feel shame and anger," says 

 Sir Henry H. Howorth, "and also terror for the 

 future of our race, when we find the champions of 

 German culture destroying Reims and Padua and 

 Ypres. We call them Huns for their pains, and at 

 the same time in another way, and for no urgent 

 military purpose, ourselves put in jeopardy the 

 noblest collections in the world of art and natural 

 science, which neither money nor skill can replace, 

 and which form the most valuable asset of the 

 country if its mental and moral training are to 

 count in this Armageddon of materialism." 



The gravamen of the case against the proposed 

 action is, indeed, that it shows a total lack of 

 imagination and of perception of the value of in- 

 tellectual studies on the part of responsible 

 Ministers. They accept lightly, and without in- 

 vestigation, a proposal which, on the face of it, 

 imperils the inestimable treasures of the gritish 

 Museum. They do not consult the trustees as to the 

 effect of their proposed action. They do not give 

 heed to their own Minister of Education. They 

 simply accept a scheme put forward by the First 

 Commissioner of Works, who avowedly has not 

 visited the museum to investigate its practicability, 

 and whose expert advisers had on two previous 

 occasions reported that the museum was not suit- 

 able for a public office. All this shows an indiffer- 

 ence to things of the mind ahd a materialistic spirit 

 which are of evil omen in statesmen whose business 

 it is to maintain the ideals of the country at a 

 high level, and thereby to hearten it to bear the 

 strain of war. Who is to believe them in future 

 when in their speeches they make play with 

 Germany's crimes against civilisation, or exalt our 

 ideals in comparison with German Kultur? They 

 are lowering the pitch of England's endeavour, 

 and the misfortune is that they do not realise that 

 they are doing any harm in this action. If the 

 members of the Government could be brought .to 

 face these facts, it is difficult to believe that they 

 would continue to insist on a policy which is bad 

 for the Air Board, bad for the museum, and a 

 discredit to the country. 



Though the spontaneous outbursts of indignation 

 from all parts of the country may yet induce the 

 Government to withhold the impious hand which 

 the Office of Works laid upon the collections and 

 buildings of the British Museum .at Bloomsbury, 

 NO. 2515, VOL. 100] 



the fate of the Natural History Departments at 

 South Kensington also trembles in the balance- 

 Yet the arguments drawn from unsuitability of 

 structure and fragility of irreplaceable specimens 

 are here no less strong, and they are reinforced 

 by two others. The work in all the Natural History 

 Departments bears directly on the material as well 

 as on the intellectual life of the nation — indeed, on 

 its very existence. Those who say that prosecution 

 of the war must come first should be the first to 

 insist on the continuance of the great help rendered 

 by the museum to all branches of our fighting 

 forces : we may refer them to an article in the 

 Times for January 5. To stop this work for the 

 convenience of the Registry of Friendly Societies 

 would be a fine stroke for our enemies. Secondly^ 

 the objects in the Natural History Museum form 

 the historical basis on which a great part of natural 

 science rests ; they are the standards to which 

 present and future generations must continually 

 refer. To destroy or damage them is to cut away 

 the ladder on which we climb. The distinguished 

 men responsible to the nation for the safety of its 

 unique possessions — trustees, indeed, for the whole 

 world now and to come — have already taken steps 

 against possible attack by the enemy, while leaving 

 the specimens available for accredited investi- 

 gators. But they cannot prevent the certain de- 

 struction and widespread confusion that would 

 result from a sudden clearance of more than half 

 the building as though it were just a mammoth 

 hotel. The removal from Bloomsbury took more 

 than three years, yet, for all the care with which 

 it was accomplished, it left damage which is not 

 yet, and can never be entirely, repaired. When 

 we think of the subsequent growth of the collec- 

 tions and the present depletion of an always in- 

 sufficient staff, our imagination fails to grasp the 

 threatened ruin. Generations could not restore it. 

 For many a year the science of our country would 

 be hampered. 



In the early days of the war we had to fight for 

 our national museum, and well was it that we won 

 a partial victory. Since then the members of the 

 staff unfit for military service have carried on, 

 with what good results a few bald statistics will 

 show. During the past year the Natural History 

 Museum has been consulted by at least fourteen 

 Government departments, as well as by numerous 

 individuals engaged in war-work. The number of 

 visitors, which in 1916 was more than 402,000, 

 was increased in 1917 by 20,000; among these are 

 soldiers receiving class-instruction in sanitary, 

 veterinary, and other subjects. The annual number 

 of acquisitions has decreased, because all purchases 

 are stopped, but donations continue to flow in with 

 a volume that seems to grow rather than diminish. 

 Am.ong these accessions have been thousands of 

 specimens of the highest scientific importance. The 

 dismantling of the museum would make the receipt 

 of donations impossible, and the stream would be 

 diverted elsewhere. In some cases it would never 

 return. 



"We are blamed," says the Government in 



