444 



NATURE 



[September io, 1903 



referred to the views of Mr. Chamberlain and Lord Rosebery 

 on this point ; we know what Mr. Chamberlain has done at 

 Birmingham ; we know the strenuous efforts made by the 

 commercial leaders of Manchester and Liverpool ; we know, 

 also, the opinion of men of science. 



If while we spend so freely to maintain our sea-power our 

 export of manufactured articles is relatively reduced because 

 our competitors beat us in the markets of the world, what is the 

 end of the vista thus opened up to us ? A Navy growing stronger 

 every year and requiring larger votes to guard our commerce 

 and communications, and a vanishing quantity of commerce to 

 guard — a reduced national income to meet an increasing 

 taxation ! 



The pity is that our Government has considered sea-power 

 alone ; that while so completely guarding our commerce, it has 

 given no thought to one of the main conditions on which its 

 production and increase depend : a glance could have shown that 

 other countries were building universities even faster than they 

 were building battleships ; were, in fact, considering brain-power 

 first and sea- power afterwards. 



Surely it is my duty as your President to point out the danger 

 ahead if such ignoring of the true situation should be allowed 

 to continue. May I express a hope that at last, in Mr. 

 Chamberlain's words, " the time is coming when Govern- 

 ments will give more attention to this matter" ? 



What will they cost ? 

 The comparison shows that we want eight new universities, 

 some of which, of course, will be colleges promoted to university 

 rank and fitted to carry on university work. Three of them 

 are already named : Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds. 



Let us take this number and deal with it on the battleship 

 condition, although a modern university on American or German 

 models will cost more to build than a battleship. 



If our present university shortage be dealt with on battleship 

 conditions, to correct it we should expend at least 8,000,000/. for 

 new construction, and for the pay-sheet we should have to 

 provide (8 x 50,000/.) 400,000/. yearly for personnel and up- 

 keep, for it is of no use to build either ships or universities 

 without manning them. Let us say, roughly, capitalising the 

 yearly payment at 2\ per cent., 24,000,000/. 



At this stage, it is important to inquire whether this sum, 

 arrived at by analogy merely, has any relation to our real 

 university needs. 



I have spent a year in making inquiries, as full as I could 

 make them, of friends conversant with the real present needs of 

 each of the universities old and new, I have obtained statistics 

 which would fill a volume, and personally I believe that this 

 sum at least is required to bring our university system up to 

 anything like the level which is insisted upon both in the 

 United States and in Germany. Even Oxford, our oldest 

 university, will still continue to be a mere bundle of colleges, 

 unless three millions are provided to enable the university 

 properly so-called to take her place among her sisters of the 

 modern world ; and Sir Oliver Lodge, the principal of our 

 very youngest university, Birmingham, has shown in detail 

 how five millions can be usefully and properly applied in that 

 one locality, to utilise for the good of the nation the enthusiasm 

 and scientific capacity which are only waiting for adequate 

 opportunity of development. 



How is this money to be raised? I reply without hesitation, 

 duplicate the Navy Bill of 1888-9 5 do at once for brain- 

 power what we so successfully did then for sea-power. 



Let 24,000,000/. be set apart from one asset, our national 

 wealth, to increase the other, brain-power. Let it be assigned 

 and borrowed as it is wanted ; there will be a capital sum 

 for new buildings to be erected in the next five or ten years, 

 the interest of the remainder to go towards increased annual 

 endowments. 



There need be no difficulty about allocating money to the 

 various institutions. Let each university make up its mind as 

 to which rank of the German universities it wishes to emulate. 

 When this claim has been agreed to, the sums necessary to pro- 

 vide the buildings and teaching staff of that class of university 

 should be granted without demur. 



It is the case of battleships over again, and money need not 

 De spent more freely in one case than in the other. 



Let me at once say that this sum is not to be regarded as 

 practically gone when spent, as in the case of a short-lived 

 ironclad. // is a loan which will bear a high rate of interest. 



NO. 1767, VOL. 68] 



This is not my opinion merely ; it is the opinion of those con- 

 cerned in great industrial enterprises and fully alive to the 

 origin and effects of the present condition of things. 



I have been careful to point out that the statement that our 

 industries are suffering from our relative neglect of science does 

 not rest on my authority. But if this be true, then if our annual 

 production is less by only two millions than it might have been, 

 having two millions less to divide would be equivalent to our 

 having forty or fifty millions less capital than we should have 

 had if we had been more scientific. 



Sir John Brunner, in a speech connected with the Liverpool 

 School of Tropical Medicine, stated recently that if we as a 

 nation were now to borrow ten millions of money in order to help 

 science by putting up buildings and endowing professors, we 

 should get the money back in the course of a generation a 

 hundredfold. He added that there was no better investment 

 for a business man than the encouragement of science, and that 

 every penny he possessed had come from the application of 

 science to commerce. 



According to Sir Robert Giffen, the United Kingdom as a 

 going concern was in 1901 worth 16,000,000,000/. 



Were we to put aside 24,000,000/. for gradually organising, 

 building and endowing new universities, and making the 

 existing ones more efficient, we should still be worth 

 15,976,000,000/., a property well worth defending by all the 

 means, and chief among these brain-power, we can command. 



If it be held that this, or anything like it, is too great a price 

 to pay for correcting past carelessness or stupidity, the reply is 

 that the i«o,ooo,ooo/. recently spent on the Navy, a sum five 

 times greater, has been spent to correct a sleepy blunder, not 

 one whit more inimical to the future welfare of our country 

 than that which has brought about our present educational 

 position. We had not sufficiently recognised what other nations 

 had done in the way of ship building, just as until now we have 

 not recognised what they have been doing in university building. 



Further, I am told that the sum of 24,000,000/. is less than 

 half the amount by which Germany is yearly enriched by having 

 improved upon our chemical industries, owing to our lack of 

 scientific training. Many other industries have been attacked 

 in the same way since, but taking this one instance alone, if 

 we had spent this money fifty years ago, when the Prince 

 Consort first called attention to our backwardness, the nation 

 would now be much richer than it is, and would have much 

 less to fear from competition. 



Suppose we were to set about putting our educational 

 house in order, so as to secure a higher quality and greater 

 quantity of brain-power, it would not be the first time in history 

 that this has been done. Both Prussia after Jena and France 

 after Sedan acted on the view :— 



" When land is gone and money spent, 

 Then learning is most excellent." 



After Jena, which left Prussia a " bleeding and lacerated mass," 

 the King and his wise counsellors, among them men who had 

 gained knowledge from Kant, determined, as they put it, " to 

 I supply the loss of territory by intellectual effort." 



What did they do? In spite of universal poverty, three 

 I universities, to say nothing of observatories and other institutions, 

 were at once founded, secondary education was developed, and 

 in a few years the mental resources were so well looked after 

 that Lord Palmerston defined the kingdom in question as " a 

 country of damned professors." 



After Sedan, a battle, as Moltke told us, " won by the school- 

 master," France made even more strenuous efforts. The old 

 University of France, with its "academies" in various places, 

 was replaced by fifieen independent universities, in all of which 

 are faculties of letters, sciences, law and medicine. 



The development of the University of Paris has been truly 

 marvellous. In 1897-8, there were 12,000 students, and the cost 

 was 200,000/. a year. 



But even more wonderful than these examples is the "in- 

 tellectual effort " made by Japan, not after a war, but to prepare 

 for one. 



The question is, shall we wait for a disaster and then imitate 

 Prussia and France ? or shall we follow Japan, and thoroughly 

 prepare by "intellectual effort" for the industrial struggle 

 which lies before us ? 



Such an effort seems to me to be the first thing any national 

 or imperial scientific organisation should endeavour to bring 

 about. 



