158 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 
as the scientists say, runs through the public departments 
of the civil service, and is nearly universal in the House of 
Commons. Its existence has been demonstrated by the an- 
nouncement, on the part of a member of the government, 
that the possibility of making glycerine from lard was a 
recent discovery. Doubtless some other minister will short- 
ly allude to the law of gravitation or to spectrum analysis 
as phenomena which have recently come within the cogni- 
zance of the government. The remedy for this state of 
affairs, in the opinion of the distinguished scientists, “‘is 
a great change in the education which is administered to the 
class from which public officials are drawn’. Science 
should play a larger part in the civil servants’ examina- 
ions, to the exclusion of Latin and Greek. “Eventually, 
the Board of Trade would be replaced by a Ministry of 
Science, Commerce and Industry, in full touch with the 
scientific knowledge of the moment’. In those circum- 
stances, the manifesto goes on to say, with an optimism 
which is almost pathetic, “public opinion would compel the 
inclusion of great scientific discoverers and inventors as 
_a matter of course in the Privy Council and their occupa- 
tion in the service of the state.” But if the Privy Council 
is to be filled up with scientific discoveries, how are party 
hacks and political schemers to be rewarded for their 
sycophantic services where they can not afford to pay the 
price for a knighthood or a peerage? 
About the peremptory necessity of better scientific 
organization on national lines there can be no two opinions. 
It is not only a question of our prosperity, but of our ex- 
istence. The law of the survival of the fittest works just 
as inexorably among nations as it does among individuals. 
We can be the fittest if we like. Unless we do like we shall 
not survive. But if we are to tackle seriously this problem 
of scientific reorganization, we shall have to scrap the 
whole of our rotten and antiquated political machinery. The 
scientific mind and temper can not possibly flourish in an 
atmosphere of political trickery, nepotism and plunder such 
as that which has surrounded us for the last few centuries. 
For instance, what is the first characteristic of the true 
1 
| 
