INDIAN NATIONAL LIFE 89 



The result has been the creation in Germany of a material 

 prosperity which is quite extraordinary. The example that 

 is often quoted is that of the German chemical industry. 

 That industry, developed within a period of half a century, 

 produces a yield of something like fifty million pounds sterling 

 annually. To take one single thing and a striking example 

 of what Germany has done in science in 1897 Germany 

 imported natural indigo of the value of six hundred thousand 

 pounds, and in 1912 she exported artificial indigo of the 

 value of over two millions, and a good deal of it to India ! 

 In Germany there are at the present time probably no less 

 than twenty thousand people being trained in science in the 

 institutions of university rank as against 2,600 in England ; 

 so that whilst the population proportion of the two nations, 

 Germany and England, is 13 to 9, in the highest education 

 the ratios are 13 to rj. There are over 4,000 highly 

 trained chemists employed in German industries. 



Now I have told you perhaps enough about France and 

 about Germany. I must get back to my main theme. It 

 is obvious from the examples I have chosen that the highest 

 science such as that of Pasteur and that of Germany ' pays '. 

 It effects great improvement on things that exist, and from 

 what exists develops great things that are new. I lay stress 

 on this last qualification for a particular reason. There 

 is a belief which is widespread, and to which utterance is 

 sometimes given, that research pure and simple is calculated 

 to produce very great material results. I have read since 

 I came to India, in the Hindustan Reweiv, an article on 

 'Scientific Research in India', which had many merits. But 

 so far as I could read, the paper seems to be fraught with 

 one most serious mistake. The author in one place says, 

 after alluding to one of the greatest workers of the past, 

 ' What urged the scientists to these battles and these victories 

 over nature which have become 'the heritage of the human 



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