a VEC ie, 
a7 

THURSDAY, MARCH 18, tors. 


SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. 
HATEVER the political changes resulting 
from the present European struggle may 
be, it is certain that the industrial and economic 
changes will be of an equally striking and revolu- 
tionary character. Those of us who can remem- 
ber Europe as it was before the war of 1870 and 
now look back upon the forty-five years which 
have elapsed since that fateful conflict, cannot | 
fail to realise that the transfer of Alsace and 
Lorraine from France to Germany was an event 
of vanishing importance compared with the gigan- 
tic disturbance which has been brought about in 
Europe and throughout the world by the unprece- 
dented industrial expansion of Germany which 
has taken place during the same period. Some 
idea of the stupendous magnitude of this rapid 
development in the matter of chemical industries 
may be gathered from the figures cited by Prof. 
Percy Frankland in a lecture recently delivered 
before the Society of Chemical Industry, and of 
which an abstract was published in our last issue. 
The magnitude and variety of the German chemi- 
cal industries are surpassed in wonder only by the 
rapidity with which they have developed from the 
very small dimensions which they possessed prior 
to the war of 1870. Still more remarkable, how- 
ever, is the fact that a similar investigation of 
many other activities, such as the textile, mining, 
metallurgical, electrical, agricultural, and ship- 
ping industries, would reveal developments almost 
equally startling. 
It is this great industrial prosperity which has 
rendered possible the vast and amazing effort to 
secure German supremacy in Europe of which 
we are the spectators to-day. The older ruling 
class in Germany had but little interest in com- 
merce and industry as such but it had the sagacity 
to see that its dreams of empire could only be 
realised by fostering industrial and commercial 
enterprise in every possible way. The ruling 
class, at bottom despising the tradesman in every 
shape and form, has had the wisdom to recognise 
that its prejudices must be concealed, and that 
everything must be done to put the wealth- 
producing classes into the most favourable posi- 
tion. for competing with the similar classes of 
rival countries. The rulers of Germany had the 
discernment to apprehend that one of the most 
important weapons in that competition was edu- 
cation, and that education must not be of a uni- 
NO. 2368, VOL. 95] 
form, stereotyped, and antiquated pattern, but 
must be elastic and carefully adapted to the needs 
of each particular class of the community. . Edu- 
cation of every kind has been promoted, not only 
by pecuniary endowment but by the granting of 
exceptional privileges, both material and social, 
to those possessing attainments of a higher order, 
C3225 the reduction of military service to a 
period of one year only in the case of all boys 
who have passed beyond a certain school standard. 
Research of every description, not only in science 
but in every other branch of learning, has been 
fostered to an extent quite unknown in any other 
by 
country. 
This has resulted in Germany becoming beyond 
all other countries the land of the expert, 
‘“a country of damned professors,” as Lord 
Palmerston once called it in the language of a 
bygone day. It is the country in which every 
man is proud of knowing his own particular busi- 
ness, nor will he be listened to on any other sub- 
ject. In England, if a man succeeds in catching 
the public ear, his utterances on every conceivable 
subject will be accepted by thousands. Nothing 
is more astounding than the faith which large 
sections of people put in the omniscience of our 
prominent men. We can remember how 
Mr. Gladstone, who had adopted the plan of 
replying by post-card to his innumerable inquirers, 
was once not only asked for his opinion on the 
efficacy of vaccination, but actually thought fit to 
express it. Other and much more recent examples 
of the faith reposed in self-constituted oracles 
amongst us will occur to most of the readers of 
Nature. In Germany knowledge is so widely 
diffused, and it is so generally understood that 
real knowledge can only be attained by years de- 
voted to some kind of research, using the word 
in its widest sense, that most educated Germans 
are aware that any given individual, however 
brilliant, can only be an authority in a compara- 
tively limited field of knowledge. In Germany, 
therefore, it is only the opinion of the accepted 
expert that counts. If Germany is the land of 
experts, England is undoubtedly the land of 
amateurs, and, owing to the extraordinary genius 
of our countrymen, it is quite true that in the 
past most striking achievements must be credited 
to amateurs. Priestley and Cavendish were 
amateurs, as were Darwin and many others of 
high distinction that could be mentioned, but they 
assuredly became experts also in fact, if not in 
well 
| name. 
Science is the dynamic and creative force in 
D 

