WAT ORE 
449 
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 6, 1870 
SCIENTIFIC ADMINISTRATION 
IN? reflecting Englishman can contemplate the great 
events of the present time without desiring to 
extract from them such warnings and instruction as may 
be serviceable to his country in case she should be 
drawn into war. Accordingly the press teems with dis- 
cussions on every branch of the military art. We leave 
these to others. In what respects the constitution, the 
discipline, the training, and the arming of one army are 
superior to those of the other, it is scarcely the function 
of this journal to point out. Taking the broad fact that 
the Prussian army has, up to the present point, proved 
itself superior on the whole to that of France, and in- 
deed to any army that has ever existed—a fact that no 
unprejudiced person will deny—let us ascertain, if we can, 
whether there may not be recognised some one broad 
cause to account for so broad a fact. 
In this inquiry we have been almost forestalled by 
the Chancellor of the Exchequer at Elgin. Mr. Lowe 
recited the lessons which he considered we have to learn 
from the Prussians. He spoke of their “intelligence,” 
their “organisation and docility,” their “extraordinary 
knowledge, forecast, and diligence.” He enumerated 
nearly all the qualities that command success. But 
there was one word which that profuse enumeration did 
not contain—a word which Mr. Lowe no doubt felt 
unable to utter, and that word is—Science. A Govern- 
ment which refuses aid to astronomers anxious to observe 
so rare a phenomenon as a total solar eclipse, cannot be 
expected to vaunt the prowess of science. Mr. Lowe’s 
statement of the causes of Prussian success was there- 
fore incomplete ; it was a mere reckoning of the bricks 
of the building, without a word of its architecture and 
design. 
The Prussians, whatever their other qualities, are em- 
phatically a scientific people, and to that predominating 
characteristic first and foremost are their recent military 
triumphs due. We do not mean that because they are 
great chemists, astronomers, and physicists, therefore are 
they necessarily great soldiers ; so narrow a proposition 
would hardly be tenable. What we mean is that the 
spirit of science possesses the entire nation, and shows 
itself, not only by the encouragement given throughout 
Germany to physical research, but above all by the scien- 
tific method conspicuous in all their arrangements, What 
does the word Science, used in its wider sense, imply ? 
Simply the employment of means adequate to the attain- 
ment of a desired end. Whether that end be the consti- 
tution of a government, the organisation of an army or 
navy, the spread of learning, or the repression of crime, 
if the means adopted have attained the object, then 
science has been at work. The method is the same, to 
whatever purpose applied. The same method is neces- 
Sary to raise, organise, and equip a battalion, as to per- 
form a chemical experiment. It is this great truth that 
the Germans, above all other nations, if not alone amongst 
nations, have thoroughly realised and applied. In all the 
vast combinations and enterprises with which they have 
astounded the world, no one has been able to point to a 
VOL. Il. 
single deficiency in any one essential element. Every post 
has been adequately filled and every want provided for; 
from the monarch, the statesman, and the strategist, to the 
lowest grade in the army—each department complete, each 
arm of the service, whether cavalry, infantry, or artillery, 
trained to its own special duties, and efficiently equipped 
for their performance. This is the method of science, 
literally the same method which teaches the chemist to 
prepare his retort, his furnace, and his re-agents, before 
commencing his experiment. 
This, we maintain, is the great lesson, of a material 
kind, which the war should teach us. Where is our science? 
At the Admiralty and the War Office, partisan placemen 
preside over technical administrations. Is that science ? 
Under pressure of the newspapers or of private influence, a 
ship of war is built by an amateur in spite of the demon- 
stration of our professional adviser that she must be unsafe, 
and she goes accordingly to the bottom with 500 souls in 
the first gale of wind. Is that science? One-half of the 
forces on which we reckon for the defence of the nation is 
composed of patriotic volunteers, with whom training is 
optional, and to whom efficient officers and arms are 
denied. Is that science? The government of London, 
the greatest metropolis in the world, is parcelled out to 
scattered knots of ignorant, sordid tradesmen, on whom 
no ingenuity has ever been able to fix a shadow of respon- 
sibility. Is that science? Have we before us the crudest 
outline of the strategical and military operations with 
which it is proposed that an invasion of this country should 
be repelled? Coming political policies always, in England 
cast their shadows long before. Have we any indications 
of a coming military policy? Have we the means of 
calling together, in a short space of time, properly pro- 
vided with the necessaries of a campaign, the forces 
requisite for carrying out a given military policy? Do we 
know, for instance, how our volunteers, who are reckoned 
on, man for man, as equivalent to regular troops, are to 
be employed ? 
We fear it is a terrible truth that absence of scientific 
method is as conspicuous with us as its presence is with 
the Germans. Asa nation, we have never realised the 
necessity for system and completeness in utilising our 
material resources. The use for the scientifically trained 
mind has, in our idea, been limited to chemicals and 
the like. 
In courage, energy, intelligence, and wealth, natural 
and acquired, England need shrink from no compari- 
sons with other nations, but she has yet to awake to 
the want of that something in her arrangements that 
shall enable her to turn her enormous advantages to the 
best account. Science, using the word in its sense of the 
method applied to things, not to the things themselves, 
is that something. 
f 
OWENS COLLEGE, MANCHESTER 
(8) gee may sometimes arise, and in fact have 
already arisen, when it becomes a necessity for a 
journal like ourselves, devoted exclusively to scientific 
matters, to direct some attention to what is going on 
around it in the general world. One of these lately 
occurred, and caused us to make the remarks we did 
recently on the apathy displayed by the Government 
2A 
