_NATURE 
185 
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 1016. 
THE EMPIRE AT THE CROSS-ROADS. 
Eclipse or Empire? By Dr. H. B. Gray and 
S. Turner. Pp. x+316. (London: Nisbet and 
Co., Ltd., 1916.) Price 2s. net. 
TRS book will serve the useful purpose of 
directing popular attention afresh to the 
important questions of education and _ scientific 
research in relation to national prosperity, on 
which so many eminent scientific men have given 
emphatic warnings. It is the joint production of 
a scholar and of a man of business, and although 
primarily addressed to the man in the street, de- 
serves attention from everyone concerned with 
education or with commercial manufacture. Its 
principal aim is to show that Great Britain, which 
forty years ago was the workshop of the world, is 
so no longer. It supports this statement by an 
inquiry into the reason for this decadence and by 
useful statistics. 
The book is divided into three parts. The first 
is concerned with the development of the main 
thesis of the book and an analysis of the causes 
of this falling off in British productiveness, and 
then with a discussion of the defects of British 
education in its several stages of primary, 
secondary, technical, and university rank. The 
‘second part of the book deals more particularly 
with industry in its relation to pure science and 
to the State, and the third part is a glossary, or 
detailed examination, of various trades and indus- 
tries, with the object of supporting the conten- 
tion that in the last twenty to forty years most 
of the new ideas, inventions, and developments 
have been given to the world by other countries 
than our own. 
The second chapter, on “The Englishman at 
Home,” contains a short but searching analysis of 
our national character, its love of sport and 
recreation, restiveness under discipline, and dis- 
like of State organisation. The third chapter, on 
“The Slackening of Momentum,” shows by telling 
figures and statistics how serious has become our 
competition with better organised or more hard- 
working nations. Fifty years ago Great Britain 
produced per annum, according to the authors, 
nearly 5 million tons of iron and 225,000 tons 
of steel. Germany produced barely 1 million tons 
of iron and 100,000 tons of steel. Yet in 1913 
German: production of both iron and steel had 
risen to 19 million tons of each, whilst English 
production had only increased to 104 million tons 
of iron and 74 million tons of steel. 
We find the same deficiency in whichever 
direction we look. British production has_ in- 
creased at a far less rate than that in Germany or 
in the United States. As regards home-grown 
wheat it has fallen by 20 per cent. in the last 
thirty years in England, and increased in Germany 
by 50 per cent. Only 5 per cent. of the cultivated 
land of Great Britain is devoted to-day to wheat 
production. In the last thirty years the cost of 
NO. 2454, VOL. 98] 
raising coal to the pit’s mouth has nearly doubled - 
in England, but has slightly decreased in the 
United States. The value of the annual output 
per man in ten different trades reveals not a 
single case in which it is not much greater in the 
United States than in the United Kingdom. 
In the third part of this book these facts and 
figures are extended, and it is shown how fatal in 
its results has been the cherished conviction of the 
manual labourer and trade-unions that restriction 
of output operates to the benefit of the working 
classes. The direct opposite is, in fact, the truth, 
that high wages and high rate of production go 
together. Tracing, then, the causes of these 
erroneous ideas in the minds of manual workers, 
and the neglect of science in its applications by 
the manufacturer, our authors find it primarily in 
our defective systems of primary, secondary, and 
university education. They sketch out in detail 
the reforms that are required, and with their main 
suggestions most scientific men will be in sym- 
pathy. Science, they say, should be the first 
wheel of the educational coach and not the fifth. 
For our primary and public-school education they 
demand a more rational and useful syllabus, and 
a reduction in the time spent over the grammar of 
dead languages. We think, however, that the 
authors do not lay sufficient stress on the necessity 
for ethical and civic training. The man in the 
street regards the Germans, as seen in the light of 
the present war, as a nation of moral decadents, 
to whom cold-blooded murder, lies, cruelty, and 
treaty-breaking are only the natural expression of 
character. He says, though very illogically, if 
this be the result of a widely diffused scientific 
education, then the less we have of it the better. 
On the other hand he sees that our inefficient 
systems of education have at any rate produced a 
nation of young heroes, and he draws the con- 
clusion that they cannot be so bad after all. The 
point which needs pressing is that the German 
character is the result, not of an over-cultivation 
of science, but of a disastrous perversion and 
deficiency in moral and ethical training. We have 
nothing to fear from educational programmes 
which give predominance to science, provided only 
that they give the right position to character 
training as well. 
The second part of this book deals with the 
relation of science to industry and to the State. 
The authors do not, however, sufficiently distin- 
guish between pure and technical research. The 
former will always be chiefly conducted in the 
universities and technical colleges, and in public 
or private research laboratories. The technical 
research must be conducted by voluntary associa- 
tions of the trades concerned. The authors have 
not given sufficient attention to the opinions of 
those who have practical experience in this side of 
the subject. What is required from the State 
is a proper support for the existing institutions. 
The authors call for State endowed and provided 
laboratories, but the real difficulty is to find the 
right men and not the apparatus. 
One lamentable result of the war is the loss 
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