48 CHEMISTRY AND NATIONAL PROSPERITY 



science students, who take chemistry as one of the 

 three subjects required for the B.Sc. And of this 

 last, relatively very small class, one-third, perhaps, 

 intend to take up the study of chemistry seriously, 

 and at the end of their training have made any real 

 beginning at all towards the qualification of a trained 

 chemist. 



Speaking, not even purely as a chemist, and gauging 

 the relative value to the nation of all this teaching, it 

 is to my mind in the inverse ratio to that in which it 

 would be regarded if numbers, or revenue earned to 

 the university, were the criteria. You need the small 

 army of professionally-trained students to keep the 

 machine going. But a machine that just keeps itself 

 going is not a prime mover. A university that does 

 not provide training, the best it can afford, at 

 whatever seemingly unremunerative expenditure, for 

 those who are to be pioneers, who are to stand erect 

 for the first time and know their way, where all before 

 have been befogged, in whose solitary footsteps the 

 small army can follow, such a university is to my 

 mind oblivious to the more important and more 

 repaying side of its dual function. 



