August 19, 1920] 



NATURE 



775 



staffs, when they have been trained in the universities, 

 ihat the universities must later look for filling 

 I he professorships. A decrease, therefore, in the 

 number and the quality of the non-professorial staffs 

 of the universities means ultimately a decrease in the 

 number and quality of the professors throughout the 

 country. University teachers, particularly of profes- 

 sorial status, cannot be improvised or provided at a 

 moment's notice. Competent professors are the result 

 of attracting the requisite ability to the service of the 

 universities in the junior grades and providing those 

 junior grades with the opportunities for training in 

 teaching and in research until they have reached the 

 standard expected for professorial purposes. Unless, 

 therefore, the universities are properly staffed, in a 

 few years' time the whole standard of teaching and of 

 research and of knowledge throughout the universities 

 will inevitably drop; and it is desirable to remember 

 that on the maintenance of the standards of the pro- 

 fessoriate the training of the non-professorial staff 

 largelv depends. 



Serious as is the situation to-day, its full meaning 

 will not be apparent until some years hence, and it 

 will then be impossible to make good what can be 

 made good now, if we are not penny wise and pound 

 foolish. 



(2) Inadequate staffs, inadequate teaching, and 

 overworked professors mean a drop in the quality of 

 the students turned out by the universities. It is to 

 the university-trained student that the Government, 

 the municipalities, the schools, and the whole com- 

 merce and industry of the country must look for its 

 personnel. If the universities are not doing their 

 work up to the standard required, it is not the uni- 

 versities ultimately which will suffer most, but the 

 whole nation. We shall be beaten as a nation because 

 we shall be inferior as a nation. 



The policy of the Government and of the local 

 education authorities at present is to encourage, and 

 rightly to encourage, the extension and the elevation 

 of secondary schools in order to increase both 

 the number of boys and girls to be kept on until 

 they are eighteen years of age, and the number of 

 boys and girls who will be fit to profit by a university 

 education. What is the use of spending millions on 

 adding to and improving the secondary schools 

 throughout the country if the universities, which are 

 the apex of this educational system, are to be starved ? 

 The secondary schools will be pouring out students 

 which the universities will not be able to take ; or, if 

 they do take them, will not be able to give them a 

 ])roper university education under proper teachers. 

 Because you refuse to spend three millions, you will 

 waste twenty or thirty millions. 



Research in the universities, owing to the present 

 congestion and inadequacy in numbers of the staff, 

 is at present at a standstill ; and unless steps are 

 taken now to provide competent researchers, as well 

 as a proper organisation and opportunities for re- 

 search, the advancement of knowledge in Great 

 l?ritain will come to an end. Organised research 

 cannot be carried on anywhere except in a properly 

 equipped university ; and where industrial firms are 

 carrying it on in a few specialised branches of indus- 

 trial science from their own resources, thev rely upon 

 lx>ing provided from the universities with men and 

 women fit. to do the research required. It is not the 

 business of, nor is it possible for, great firms to do 

 the work of the universities in all the departments of 

 knowledge. 



The Government and the nation must make up 

 their minds not so much as to whether the universi- 

 ties are to continue as to seeing that the uni- 

 versities are really universities and doing university 



NO. 2651, VOL. 105] 



work. The funds cannot be provided from the 

 tuition fees of the students. Seventy-five per cent, 

 of the cost of maintaining a university must be pro- 

 vided from other sources than those of fees. I agree, 

 therefore, with Sir Michael Sadler that while we 

 welcome the additional half-million promised twelve 

 months hence, another million and a half at least are 

 required in order that the universities may be main- 

 tained on an adequate basis. 



-At Birmingham, as at Leeds, we need another 

 6o,oooi. a year in income in order to meet absolutely 

 necessary expenditure. C. Grant Robertson. 



The University, Birmingham, August 13. 



Aerial Navigation and Meteorology. 



Prof, van Evirdincen's outspoken criticism in 

 Nature of July 22, p. 637, of the meteorological 

 arrangements outlined in Annexe G of the Convention 

 for International Air Navigation is very welcome. 

 Prior to the war the International Meteorological 

 Committee met every tlfree years in friendly gather- 

 ings for social intercourse and the transaction of 

 business. Broadly speaking, the difficulties of the 

 members were in obtaining sufficient funds to 

 enable them, ia their respective services, to 

 achieve the ends upon which they were agreed 

 rather than in securing agreement on the desiderata 

 for international exchange. Now that the former 

 difficulties have been largely met as a result of the 

 achievements of meteorology in the war, it would be 

 calamitous if meteorologists failed to overcome the 

 latter, and disturbed the unity of European meteoro- 

 logy at a time when their efforts ought to be directed 

 to achieving unity in world-meteorology. 



I am convinced that the scheme of Annexe G is a 

 good one, and, that a frank discussion of the details 

 with the Continental meteorologists who were not 

 present at the Peace Conference in Paris in May, 

 1919, would lead to the general adoption of the 

 scheme with the slight modifications which experience 

 of its working has indicated. 



Prof, van Everdingen states that Annexe G was 

 discussed at the meeting in London of members of the 

 pre-war International Meteorological Committee. He 

 has been misinformed. Permission to put Annexe G 

 before that meeting Vias definitely refused. If such 

 a discussion had been permissible, it would probably 

 have removed many misapprehensions. 



To take some examples from Prof, van Everdingen 's 

 article : 



(i) He objects that in Appendix HI. (apparently a 

 misprint for Appendix I.) he finds " wind, temperature, 

 and humidity in the upper air as additional and 

 facultative." By "facultative " he means "optional." 

 But Annexe G neither says nor implies that such 

 reports are "optional." The exact words are: 

 " Reports will give information on [wind, etc.], and 

 also on upper air-currents and upper air-temperature 

 and humidity from stations where facilities are avail- 

 able for observation." All standard meteorological 

 stations are able to report wind, pressure, tempera- 

 ture. and weather phenomena three or four times daily 

 all the year round ; but only socially equipped stations 

 can report upper air-currents, temperature, and 

 humidity, and no station could in 1919, or can now, 

 report upper-air information with the same frequency 

 and regularity as standard stations report surface 

 observations. 



(2) Prof, van Everdingen states that the use 

 of the telegraphic scale 1--72 means . that an 

 accuracy of 5° is claimed for surface wind 

 direction. That is not so. In the past a 

 scale of 1-32 has been nominally used (actually the 



