Education 119 



was needed before the War, but when peace is declared 

 and we all glide into smooth waters again, that want will 

 have increased tenfold. 



Who is going to do for England and the British Empire 

 what Treub did for Holland and for us ? 



Will this country repeat, in connection with the scientific 

 development of the economic potentialities of the Tropics, 

 the same glaring mistake, now recognized by all, that was 

 made when, by ignoring the crying need for first-class 

 chemists in England, we allowed that most remunerative 

 industry, the chemical one, including the manufacture of 

 aniline dyes, to pass over to Germany? If steps are not 

 taken soon to place tropical agriculture on the same 

 deservedly lofty basis that Germany has all along placed 

 the organic chemical industry, we run a very good chance 

 of cutting as sorry a figure in connection with the produc- 

 tion and preparation of tropical crops as we have cut ever 

 since the War broke out in connection with drugs, dyes, 

 and a host of prime necessities to the W^ar Office and the 

 nation generally because they were all " Made in Germany." 

 We believe that all these could and would have been made 

 here if those in whose hands the fate of our educational 

 system laid in the past had not failed to recognize the 

 importance of organic chemistry to such a degree that 

 many of our universities, and particularly those of Oxford 

 and Cambridge and in Scotland, contributed practically 

 nothing to its advancement, whilst in Germany schools 

 were specially devoted to the subject, where the leading 

 experts taught and directed the efforts of willing and clever 

 students.^ Having once failed to train our young scientists 

 to best advantage in connection with chemistry, are we 

 to sit up and see the same mull repeated in connection 

 with tropical agriculture ? With the organic chemistry 

 industry we can never recall the past ; the scientific basis 

 of tropical agriculture is still within our grasp, so we trust 

 that those who wish well for the Empire's progress in the 

 future will see that, for the sake of 7f,'ioo,ooo, this country 

 does not have another black mark put against it, as it has 

 got, and always will have, in connection with the millions 

 that our folly enabled Germany to pocket since 1870, and 

 with which they are now iinancing the War that is costing 

 us so dear. Foolish enough to allow Germany to fleece 



' See the Presidential Address ilelivered by Dr. \V. II. Perkin (son of 

 the late Sir William Perkin, F.R.S., the discoverer of aniline dyes) 

 before the Chemical Society at the end of March, 1915. 



