DISCOVERY 



A MONTHLY POPULAR 

 JOURNAL OF KNOWLEDGE 



Vol. II, No. 22. OCTOBER 1921. 



PRICE Is. NET. 



DISCOVERY. A Monthly Popular Journal of Know- 

 ledge. 



Edited by Edward Liveing, B.A., Rothersthorpe, 

 Northampton, to whom all Editorial Communications 

 should be addressed. (Dr. A. S. Russell continues to 

 act as Scientific Adviser.) 



Published by John Murray, 50A Albemarle Street, 

 London, W.i, to whom all Business Communications 

 should be addressed. 



Advertisement Office: 16 Regent Street, London, 

 S.W.I. 



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Binding cases for Vol. I, 1920, are now ready. Price 

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Editorial Notes 



The speech of the President of the British Association 

 at Edinburgh this year was quieter in tone than the 

 usual presidential address. There was nothing about 

 our coal or our supplies of wheat getting rapidly ex- 

 hausted, or about the origin of life, or of continuity 

 of life after death. This was rather hard on the 

 daily press. The press hkes the president to make 

 sensational statements, so that when appropriately 

 written up they may keep interest going for a few 

 days at least. Yet the speech was a good one. Sir 

 Edward Thorpe dealt with three main topics;' the 

 work of the department of Science and Industrial 

 Research, the recent work on " isotopes " and the 

 structure of the atom, and the relation of organised 

 science to the prosecution of war. 



* * * * * 



Of the second of these topics little need be said here, 

 for two or three articles upon it have already appeared 

 in our columns , but a word or two on the manner in 

 which this subject was reported in some of the London 

 daihes may not be out of place. It was not well done. 

 Some reporters treated it as entirely new work, carried 

 out perhaps in secret during the last 'fortnight of August 



and whispered into the president's ear as he wTote his 

 speech, and in many papers the description of the work 

 even by Our Special Correspondent was not informed. 

 Now the nation's attitude towards science and scien- 

 tific research is of great importance with regard to its 

 position and continued existence, and the daily press, 

 if it chose to take a little more trouble, could do yeoman 

 service in the creation of the right attitude. Any kind 

 of accuracy on scientific matters will not do, but the 

 press does not realise this. If a contributor were to 

 declare that Consols are to be redeemed at par a week 

 next Friday, that by insisting on laying ten to one on 

 every horse that ran in a race a backer would speedily 

 make a fortune, his editor would speedily tell him to 

 desist, yet mistakes on scientific matters as glaring 

 as these occur in papers accurate enough on finance 

 and sport. And the advancement of science is of 

 greater importance than finance or horse-racing. 

 ***** 



With regard to the third topic of the president's 

 speech, the relation of organised science to war, the 

 speaker opened up many interesting problems. One 

 of these, which will keep many people busily arguing, is, 

 " Was the war due in some measure at least to the 

 possession by the warring nations of the deadly weapons 

 which the discoveries of science have produced ? In 

 other words, is not science a curse ? Or was the war 

 due to the fact that progress along moral and ethical 

 lines had failed to keep pace with man's increasing 

 mastery over nature, to the fact not of man's inherit- 

 ance, but of his failure to be worthy of it ? " 

 ***** 



An interesting problem in conduct also arises. 

 Should a research worker, whose views of war are those 

 of Sherman, consent to undertake scientific work which 

 he feels sure will be utilised in what cynics and others 

 call the next war ? Should a chemist, for example, 

 consent to experiment with new forms of poison gas ? 

 It is often argued that very well he might, for, if war be 

 inevitable, poison gas is far less fatal and far less cruel 

 than any other instrument in finishing the " inevitable " 

 war in the shortest possible time. For it has been 



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