324 
NATURE 
[May 20, 1915 

the position at that small sum. I hope that the 
Government will be the first to take to heart the lesson 
which the Right Hon. gentleman has given. There 
is only one other word I want to say at the present 
time. I heard with great satisfaction that it is pro- 
posed in the scheme to which the President referred 
that the Board of Trade shall be associated with the 
Board of Education. I attach great importance to 
that, because we do not want in this work merely 
theoretical scientific men. We want men who are 
imbued with the commercial spirit, and it is desirable 
that in any body who are to direct instruction by 
giving suggestions you should combine those who 
have an intimate knowledge of the trade requirements 
with those who at the same time are developing the 
scientific instruction itself. Personally, in the thirty- 
five years during which I have been associated in, 
it may be, a feeble endeavour to bring science to 
some extent to bear upon industry, I have always 
been most careful to see that the commercial require- 
ments of those engaged in the trade are carefully 
considered by those who have the task of organising 
the schemes of instruction. I am glad to see that 
same policy is likely to be carried out by the Presi- 
dent of the Board of Education acting in conjunction 
with the President of the Board of Trade. 
Sir James Yoxati: I think that the Right Hon. 
gentleman even to-night attached more importance 
to the highly technical education which has been pro- 
curable in Germany under the German system of 
education than was just. The impression I have been 
able to form after years of study has been that it is 
probable that during the last twenty or twenty-five 
years as many capable men of science, highly skilled 
chemists and physicists, have been produced by the 
educational system of this country as has been pro- 
duced in Germany. My impression is that probably in 
number, and certainly in quality, even our somewhat 
unorganised and uncoordinated British system has 
produced quite sufficient men to provide the industries 
of this country with sufficient guides, leaders, and 
captains. The fault has been not with them, 
or with the schools, colleges, and universities, but, 
no doubt, with the manufacturers and employers of 
this country, who have been blind to the opportunities 
which this material has presented to their hands. 
Even now, when my Right Hon. friend has created his 
excellent Advisory Committee, and has used his new 
grant and has developed further this admirable 
attempt on the part of the Government to provide 
for what may happen with regard to industry after 
the war, little will be the result so long as it is rooted 
in the minds of employers and capitalists that rule 
of thumb is better than rule of brain. I would sug- 
gest to my Right Hon. friend that he might consider, 
as a development of what he has submitted to-night, 
the running of this great concern which he has in 
view on a commercial basis, so that if manufacturers 
and capitalists will not take up this work, the State 
itself should take it up, and provide and sell to the 
manufacturers the results of researches which other- 
wise they would not obtain. 
Mr. ANDERSON : Perhaps the most important matter 
raised by the President to-night was that of establish- 
ing an Advisory Council to deal with matters relating 
to science and industry, and to bring science into 
closer touch with industry. That is a very important 
statement. Personally, I believe that it is along these 
progressive lines, and not by adopting reactionary 
policies, that the nation is going to hold its own in 
regard to industry and trade. We have not in the 
past spent anything like the amount of money we 
should have spent in regard to scientific research and 
technical training. We ought to equip ourselves to 
the fullest extent along these lines, and it is by doing 
NOE2877, VOL. Q5)| 

so rather than by adopting backward policies that we 
are going to make headway in the future. You ought 
to try to bring science and industry into closer touch 
with each other and to make science the great servant 
of industry, to make it a more practical matter 
rather than merely be taken up with abstract ques- 
tions, and you ought to avail yourselves to the fullest 
extent of the practical knowledge and experience of 
the working people who are now employed in the fac- 
tories, in the mills, in the workshops, and so on, 
and I believe in regard to that, that your Advisory 
Committee ought to have representatives of labour so 
as to show that you are going to bring the practical 
knowledge and experience of the workpeople into 
account in this matter, and I believe it will be impor- 
tant from the point of view of the success and welfare 
of your scheme. 
Mr. LyncH: Whatever we think of the material 
aspects of Germany, we really have in her history 
one of the most extraordinary examples in the whole 
history of the world of a nation gradually rising to 
great material power on a foundation of high scien- 
tific education. The rise of Germany does not date, 
as some have said, merely from the great victories in 
1870, but from a much earlier epoch when a German 
with a less salary than the then President of the 
Board of Education held that office for only two 
years, and yet within those two years left such a 
stamp on the education of Germany that it has re- 
mained ever since, and has been the real source of the 
education of the nation—Wilhelm von Humboldt. 
Let us consider now one of the questions referred 
to by the President of the Board of Education to-night, 
technical education. When we speak: of technical educa- 
tion in this country we are too apt to think of trifling 
details, such as wood carving and filigree work, or 
such as crewel-work or crocheting impossible parrots 
on the background of some fancy cloth. In Germany 
technical education has a very different and a much 
higher meaning, and having had the advantage of 
studying in the University of Berlin myself, I can 
say that one of the most abiding impressions of my 
whole life was the extraordinary revelation I had 
there, not merely of the devotion to science itself, 
but of the manner in which that widened out the 
whole horizon and prospect of the nation’s view, and 
the way in which science was seen to be the vital 
influence in great enterprises and wonderful indus- 
tries. I would not labour this question to-night, but 
those who have leisure might refer to an article by 
Sir William Ramsay, first published in Nature in 
November, 1914, but to which my attention was called 
in the French paper La Revue Scientifique. The 
French recognise the value of that article, and in 
France I think it got wider publicity than in this 
country. Sir William Ramsay analyses the causes of 
the greatness of Germany in the industrial world, and 
he finds several very interesting points which he tabu- 
lates. The first is that in a great German industry 
the board of directors are not a set of ornamental 
magnates with a peer thrown in to give respectability 
or publicity, but are a board of specialists on that 
subject which is the basis of the industry, keen and 
hard-working men. Secondly, that there is another 
agency definitely appointed with the definite active 
functions to watch out for new inventions in other 
countries. I could enter into this question very deeply, 
and I could show that right throughout the range of 
industry there are cases where the real central idea 
of that industry has not originated in Germany, but 
in France, England, or America. I believe if I were 
to ask which is the nation most fertile in ideas and 
most inventive, from my own brief experience I would 
, be inclined to place the French in inventive genius 
} above even the Americans. The Germans are always 




