PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS, 1915. 11 



A word or two is necessary as to the field which the Bureau will seek 

 to fill. The commercial world and its industries necessarily require the 

 advantage of scientific and industrial research as the universities give 

 it for educational purposes and the advancement of the public interests 

 in every way. A general scheme for scientific and industrial research 

 utilizing the universities, a Government Commission backing up the 

 universities may well be called upon to undertake. Into this field the 

 work of the Bureau will largely extend, but the commercial world and 

 its industries require in addition something of a different kind. The 

 individual factors, the corporations, the partnerships, the individuals 

 carrying on manufactures and enterprises require scientific and in- 

 dustrial research in their individual spheres and for their individual 

 benefit. This work to a large extent the universities may find means 

 to do. The selection of the best instrumentality, whether in a uni- 

 versity or in the Bureau itself, or otherwise, for any particular investi- 

 gation contemplated, necessarily calls for a competent body, capable 

 and organized, to put forth the necessary propaganda and to provide 

 a selecting body with machinery adapted for the negotiation with the 

 applicant, the proper choice of the investigator, and the making of the 

 agreement for a Fellowship, or other form of endowment of the investi- 

 gation between the applicant on the one hand and the proposed investi- 

 gator on the other. It is self-evident that the instructional functions 

 of the universities and their trust for the general public prevent their 

 taking upon them these functions of the Bureau of Scientific and In- 

 dustrial Research, which, however, in its investigations, will necessarily 

 depend largely upon and ask for the assistance of the universities wher- 

 ever it is available. 



In view of the action of the British Government in calling to their 

 assistance the great scientists and scientific manufacturers of Great 

 Britain to aid in the application of science to the production of efficient 

 munitions of war, your Council in its name, and in the name of the 

 members of the Institute, by letter to the Prime Minister of Canada, 

 has placed the services of the Institute, its Council, its Bureau, and the 

 use of its Library unreservedly at the command of the Government of 

 Canada for the same purpose. It is hoped that they may be as fully 

 availed of as they will be freely given. 



Although, apart from the special demands we have alluded to for 

 the employment of scientific methods and research, the war does not 

 seem to have retarded scientific progress generally. 



Necessity has created calls throughout the world which have been 

 answered by new applications of known scientific principles, and by 

 new discoveries and inventions, more particularly in the warring coun- 



