May 20, 1915] 
NALORE 
317 

or more committees of the British Association could 
be named, one of which dates as far back as 1842, 
early days even for the British Association. There 
are, no doubt, many other enterprises in other 
branches of science which have a similar history. 
So the organisation of scientific effort on our side 
which corresponds with the Government organisation 
of Germany may be expressed by this precept for any- 
one who has a project for scientific work: ‘You 
first attend a meeting of the British Association and 
get a strong committee appointed; then you work 
for a number of years without pay, but with a mind 
conscious that you will thereby acquire merit with 
the Royal Society, the great discriminator; then if 
you have not money enough to pay for apparatus 
you can appeal to the Government Grant Committee 
with an assured prospect of success; then when you 
find it necessary for somebody to be paid, you can 
move the Council of the British Association to 
approach the Governmént for the money. The 
Government will then take the opinion of the Royal 
Society, and that will be quite all right, because your 
own committee will be in force there; and then, if 
you are moderately fortunate, Government will give 
you half of what you ask as a ‘ grant in aid,’ and for 
the rest you must look out for yourself.” 
We are therefore by no means devoid of organisa- 
tion; what we have is almost venerably historic and 
very elaborate; but it is long and tortuous and sadly 
inefficient for the following obvious reasons :— 
First, that in spite of our pride in private effort, and 
our prejudice in its favour as being vastly superior 
to anything that Government can do, our process leads 
ultimately to Government and nowhere else. It gives 
no footing in the universities or in any other body, 
corporate or incorporate, whose members control the 
temporary destinies of the British Association. Of 
course, at the end of the chapter the Government 
could approach the universities, but with the present 
relations between Government and the universities 
this is a perilous thing for a Government to do. It 
was done in one instance lately; and there is ‘‘a smile 
on the face of the tiger.” 
Secondly, it leads to accepting Government money 
in the form of what is called a ‘‘ grant in aid,’’? which 
means public money with public responsibility, but no 
official prestige and no official purpose. The grant is 
made as a concession to somebody’s enthusiasm; the 
responsibility for success rests with the unfortunate 
enthusiast, and the limitation of ways and means 
rests with somebody else. One of the common forms 
of our scientific attitude is that Government support 
chills and discourages private effort. The scientific 
societies are fond of -adopting it because it leaves 
them in a sort of control of things; and, of course, 
Government ‘‘as at present advised”’ is not likely to 
demur. But what attracts and stimulates private 
effort is really efficiency, whether public or private ; 
it is frequently the case that support by Government 
lacks that stimulating quality simply because it repre- 
sents not a purpose, but a concession. The situation 
recalls a remark once heard at a college dinner-table, 
when a country clergyman thus expressed himself 
concerning the Nonconformist discontent about educa- 
tion: ‘‘I cannot see what these dissenters have to com- 
plain of; we tolerate them.’’ So with our national 
organisation of scientific effort: it ends in toleration 
by the Government, and the ‘‘establishment’’ looks 
on with a sort of bewildered wonder at our insatiable 
discontent. 
Among the changes which will follow the war, 
whatever the issue may be, the reorganisation of 
scientific effort must find a place. All the after- 
dinner speeches about the parsimony of the Treasury, 
Nama 7. VOL. 95) 

and all the complaints in Science Progress and at the 
meetings of the British Science Guild, punctuated by 
what has been brought to light since the war began, 
mean at least that. 
We may learn from our enemies and let the 
Government take over the control of our scientific 
effort, or, appalled by the result in the case of Ger- 
many, and sharing the feeling of Prof. Brants and 
the Dutch for whom he speaks in the March number 
of the Nineteenth Century and After, we may have 
the courage to be ourselves and manage things in 
our own way. The future will show; only we must 
have a way which is recognisable and recognised. 
Behind the Government, whether in association with 
a special Minister or not, there must be a powerful 
advisory committee with facilities for initiation as 
well as discrimination, a sort of Privy Council for 
Science with public responsibilities, to whom the public 
as well as the Government can appeal. 
Before that can be established the Royal Society 
must settle what its function is to be. At present it 
claims to discriminate in its corporate capacity, and 
leaves to its individual members the duties of initia- 
tion. The British Science Guild has sought to 
remedy this state of affairs, and is prepared to take 
the initiative in an organised way. But it is evident 
that, if the Royal Society is to exercise the 
power of discrimination, the two bodies must be in 
reality the same persons, as in the case of the initia- 
tive of the British Association, or the scientific body: 
politic will be divided against itself; therefore the 
first question to be settled is whether the Royal 
Society’s claim to the power of discrimination is to 
be confirmed and supplemented by the faculty of 
initiative, or whether both faculties are to be vested 
in a recognised and responsible body of Government 
advisers. 
The Royal Society is by no means an ideal institu- 
tion for the purpose, and it was not created for such 
work ; its full body of four hundred and fifty members 
is too mumerous to carry the responsibility, 
and its Council of twenty-one too small, too 
much selected for the purpose of personal dis- 
crimination, too transitory, too full of work of 
other kinds, too much unpaid, and not sufficiently 
representative of the subjects with which a national 
organisation must deal in the long run because they 
are not adequately represented at the universities. 
The point is obviously a difficulty; but in the long 
last it can only be settled in one way, and the sooner 
the Royal Society takes the field with a proposal for 
an initiating and discriminating advisory body other 
than its own Council the sooner will it be possible 
to take a definite step in the direction of the national 
organisation of scientific effort. aR. 
Osmotics. 
IN connection with the recent discussion, at the 
Faraday Society, on osmotic and vapour pressures, it 
seems worth while to state that a long and laborious 
series of vapour pressure measurements which Mr. 
Hartley and I have undertaken is nearly completed, 
and I hope will be published shortly. 
The results so far go to show that by taking 
RT=22-3909 (in litres and atmospheres, and with 
O=16), which is the value for nitrogen and close to 
that derived from water vapour at 30° C., a very good 
agreement is obtained between the direct and indirect 
values of the osmotic pressure of cane-sugar at 0° C., 
and incidentally of calcium ferrocyanide. 
I also take the opportunity of mentioning that if p 
be the osmotic pressure, V and v the volume of solu- 
tion and volume of water containing one gram-mole- 
