i34 



NATURE 



[April i, 1920 



"applied research," which latter it is proposed to 

 restrict to military institutions. This seems an unfor- 

 tunate distinction. If a research is initiated in view 

 of a definite application, then that application must 

 never be lost sight of, and the whole should be co- 

 ordinated by the same brains, or else the "pure" 

 and the "applied" researchers will be at cross- 

 purposes. The co-ordination should be done by the 

 research worker himself, not by semi-scientific officials 

 appointed for the purpose. 



(4) The creation and development of firms willing 

 to carry out experimental work ought to be en- 

 couraged and subsidised. Even during the war, and 

 with the backing of a Government Department, it 

 was often a matter of the very greatest difficulty to 

 get firms not to neglect experimental work in favour 

 of mass production. 



(5) It would be well if officials would understand 

 that a scientific man does not work in the same way 

 or under the same conditions as, say, an orderly 

 officer or a clerk, and that he should be given the 

 utmost freedom of movement and of hours ; that he 

 should not be continually bothered with reports and 

 returns or unnecessary official correspondence ; and 

 that usually he does his real work, not in an office, 

 but in the solitude of his study, and sometimes during 

 wakeful hours in the night. They will also have 

 to realise that research work is individual, and that 

 one cannot hand it over frpm one person to another 

 every six months, as one does a platoon. 



(6) Finally, the Services must be prepared to put up 

 with negative results without making a wry face or 

 putting a black mark against the worker. The trail 

 of science is dotted with the bones of dead theories 

 and the remains of unsuccessful attempts, yet it is 

 largely by means of these that science has been built 

 up. 



Coming now to the other side of the question, 

 namely, the employment of scientific workers in the 

 Services in an emergency, this is a problem needing 

 urgent and careful attention. Undoubtedly the treat- 

 ment of it during the war left much to be desired. 

 The only co-operation which the War Office ap- 

 parently looked for from the universities, previous to 

 the outbreak of war, was that, through the Officers 

 Training Corps, they should provide a proportion of 

 Reserve officers — chiefly infantry — with a minimum of 

 military training of the normal pre-war tvpe. The 

 idea of using the specialised knowledge of the uni- 

 versities for the technical services of the Navy, Army, 

 and Air Force took shape only very slowly, as the 

 development of the actual fighting made it plain that 

 science would play an increasing, perhaps eventually 

 a predominant, part in modern warfare. By that time 

 much of the promising human material which the 

 universities might have supplied had already been 

 wasted. The main difficulty, however, which was 

 then encountered (and still exists) was that the 

 regular military or naval officer upon whom devolved 

 the choice of persons for appointments of a quasi- 

 scientific nature had not, in general, a suitable educa- 

 tion or training for estimating scientific abilitv. The 

 inevitable result was that large numbers of young 

 men with little or no qualifications got taken on in a 

 hurry at their own valuation, while the best use was 

 not made of such real experts as were available. 



I feel that the writer of the article in Nature has 

 hit the right nail on the head when he says : " Until 

 it is made obligatory for a proportion of them [the 

 General Staff] to have had such a training [in sciencel, 

 the fundamental reform will not have been effected." 

 The same, of course, applies even more strongly to 

 the hSx Force and the Navy. In the latter the 

 scientific tradition is much more powerful, and there, 

 on the whole, far better and more intelligent co- 



NO. 2631, VOL. 105] 



operation was obtained. I would suggest, however, 

 that what is most urgently needed for General Staff 

 officers is a course of scientific classification and 

 organisation where they would be taught the real 

 meaning of scientific qualifications and the names of 

 living authorities in various subjects. This would en- 

 able the military administrator at least to make an 

 intelligent selection. 



I also agree that " it is surely most desirable that, 

 for the future, science should have some scheme of 

 mobilisation ready." What is wanted is a mobilisation 

 register of all scientific workers, carried out under the 

 auspices of a committee on which the various scientific 

 bodies and the universities should be represented. 

 This mobilisation register would indicate, from the 

 scientific side, the age, qualifications, and grade of 

 the worker, the nature of the work which may be 

 expected from him, and the remuneration which he 

 is entitled to expect. The Service authorities could 

 then add medical category, arm or branch of Service 

 to which assigned, rank (if it be desired to give a 

 commission), unit, and place of mobilisation. 



So far I have dealt purely with the technical side 

 of the Services ; but brains are not unnecessary on 

 the executive side, and the suggested register might 

 well be extended to cover men with high intellectual 

 (not necessarily scientific) qualifications who hap- 

 pened also to have had an adequate amount of mili- 

 tary training, so that on the outbreak of war they 

 might be ear-marked for Staff appointments. In 

 1914 we had a highly trained, if small, General Staff; 

 unfortunately, most of them (to their own great 

 honour, but the nation's loss) rushed to the front 

 line, and a large proportion never returned. Their 

 places and the new vacancies created by the expan- 

 sion of the Army were necessarily filled in an un- 

 systematic way, as emergency dictated. Many of the 

 junior Staff appointments had to be given to men 

 who had had an inadequate general education and no 

 pre-war militarv training. 



The War Office might well consider the possibility 

 of instituting a General Staff Reserve, largely drawn 

 from among university men. The officers of this 

 Reserve should (by expanding the Officers Training 

 Corps organisation or otherwise) be kept in constant 

 touch with the growth of militarv thought and prac- 

 tice ; thev might be called up at ' fairlv frequent 

 intervals for courses, or attachments to Regular units, 

 or manoeuvres on a large scale, and they should be 

 adequately remunerated for the time thev gave. 



L. N. G. FiLON, 



University of London, University College, 

 March 20. 



I HAVE read the leading article on " Science and the 

 New Army " in Nature of March 18 with great interest 

 but with mixed feelings. The meaning of the word 

 "research" and the value of the investigator who 

 researches have, in my opinion, never been fully 

 appreciated by the official or military mind. 



The attitude of repression and discouragement so 

 general at the beginning of the war was particularly 

 depressing for those of us actually in one of the Ser- 

 vices, and therefore not free agents. Towards the 

 end, however, there certainly was a distinct and 

 gratifying change of front — a change which, at any 

 rate in the section I knew best, produced excellent 

 results. Yet, with the best intentions in the world, 

 the authorities in their experimental establishments 

 must needs call into existence a bewildering and un- 

 necessary maze of organisation, or rather over-organisa- 

 tion, in which ten men did badly the work of one, 

 and the few true investigators and designers, for 

 whom presumably all this had been arranged, found 



