JULY 29, 1915] 
NA1 URE 
593 

made of the society’s desire to be of national 
service. It is regrettable on all grounds that 
the scientific resources of the nation have not 
been systematically utilised by the Government. 
Some help, he admitted, has been rendered, but 
more, he thought, might have been done by a 
more efficient organisation—say, by the creation 
of a “central body” which should have the duty 
on the one hand of keeping in intimate touch with 
the Admiralty, the War Office, and the Ministry 
for Munitions, and on the other of referring 
to the societies representative of the different 
branches of pure and applied science the ques- 
tions with which each is particularly fitted to deal. 
How far this conception of a scientific clearing- 
house differs essentially from that which has 
actually been set up by the Royal Society is not, 
however, very clear. 
Naturally, too, Prof. Henderson bemoans our 
backsliding as regards the position and future 
prospects of our chemical industries :— 
We have been made to realise more clearly than 
ever before that during the last forty years chemical 
industry in Germany has made marvellous strides in 
advance, whilst in this country it has by comparison 
stood still or even gone back. We have to admit 
that certain branches of applied chemistry, particu- 
larly the manufacture of dyestuffs, of synthetic drugs, 
and of organic compounds and fine chemicals in 
general, have passed almost wholly out of our hands, 
or rather have never been taken up to any notable 
extent in this country. 
As to the real reasons for German progress 
and British backwardness there is little doubt, in 
Prof. Henderson’s mind. He shares the con- 
viction of Profs. Perkin and Meldola that it is 
due partly to our failure to realise that “scientific 
research work, carried out in the laboratory, is 
the soul of industrial prosperity,” and partly to 
the mutual aloofness and reserve of manufacturers 
and teachers. But, whatever may be the true 
causes, Prof. Henderson is emphatically of the 
opinion of most sensible men that it is about time 
“we cut the cackle and came to the ’osses’’—or, 
as he prefers to put it, “that we shall refrain 
from talk and proceed to action.” “Let us admit 
frankly that we have left undone many things 
which we ought to have done, and, having con- 
fessed our sins, let us unite in striving to secure 
the future prosperity of our industries.” 
We might well apply this injunction to certain 
papers which followed the president’s address. 
Of them it may be said they were Vox, et practerea 
nihil. The author of one paper bewails our prone- 
ness to label-worshipping, and the ‘stupid con- 
fusion ” which paralyses “a bewildered public ” 
in its efforts to distinguish the chemist, properly 
although not legally so called, from the phar- 
macist. or apothecary. He tilts against the 
system under which our schools and colleges are 
: “victimised 
governed, considers that teachers are ; 
by the principle of the hole-and-corner,” and is 
of opinion that appointments should be made by 
the candidates making the selection themselves. 
Another author tilts against everybody and 
everything in general—whatever is, is wrong, is 
NO. 2387, VOL. 95] 


the refrain of his paper—English education 
and English life, the British public, the 
Board of Trade and the War Office, the 
Home Office, the Local Government Board 
in particular, the Government of course, 
collectively; lawyer-politicians as a class, with 
special reference to the late Lord Chancellor 
and Lord Moulton of Bank for interfering in 
matters with which they had no concern; Oxford 
and the Royal Society and the general body of 
men of science—all alike come in for cavil, cen- 
sure, and condemnation. Even the society he 
was addressing ‘‘needs to wake up.” It “must 
intervene actively in the promotion and protection 
of chemical industry.” In spite of what others 
regard as more than thirty years of creditable 
activity, the members were told it has been 
“almost supine hitherto,” and has “allowed 
others to tinker with matters” which primarily 
should be its concern. No doubt the somnolent 
members, when they did wake up, rubbed their 
eyes in hopeless wonderment as to who had been 
poaching upon their preserves. But they were 
probably reassured when they learned that it was 
only the deputation, “nominally representing the 
Royal and Chemical Societies ”—‘‘academic par- 
ties in science”? and “first cousins to the lawyer- 
politicians ’’—-who recently waited upon the Presi- 
dents of the Boards of Trade and Education, and 
so presumably they went comfortably to sleep 
again. 
It is one of our national characteristics that 
we rather enjoy self-depreciation, and that we 
have a good-humoured toleration of the critic who 
reminds us of our national shortcomings. But 
something depends upon how it is done. The 
implied reproof, to begin with, must be intrinsically 
just and merited. If it is so recognised, it adds 
to its effectiveness when administered with a cer- 
tain delicacy and restraint of statement. But no 
useful purpose is served by reckless assertion 
and indiscriminate blame, declaimed in an 
exuberant philippic. 
It is a relief to turn to the paper by Dr. Beilby 
on chemical engineering, and to that by Sir 
W. H. Lever on copartnership in chemical 
industries; for it is papers like these that are 
of real use to us at the present juncture. 
According to Dr. Beilby our “colleges have 
two distinct functions to perform, and it is 
best that this should be clearly recognised ; first, 
to allow the future leaders in applied science to 
come naturally to the top during their training ; 
and secondly, to prepare a large number of well- 
trained professional men for the organisation and 
development of industry.” He fears that the 
making of practical chemists has suffered severely 
from the fallacy that all students ought to aim 
at being pioneers in some branch of their science. 
“Science and industry alike call aloud for real 
pioneers, for without these the highest type of 
progress cannot be realised. This call, however, 
cannot be met by the premature stimulation of 
‘ originality’ in men of very ordinary endow- 
ment. The effect of this stimulation is not merely 
