20 REPOKT— 1903. 



University system up to anything like the level which is insisted upon 

 both in the United States and in Germany. Even Oxford, our oldest 

 University, will still continue to be a mere bundle of colleges unless three 

 millions are provided to enable the University, properly so called, to take 

 her place among her sisters of the modern world ; and Sir Oliver Lodge, 

 the Principal of our very youngest TJniversity, Birmingham, has shown 

 in detail how five millions can be usefully and properly applied in that 

 one locality to utilise for the good of the nation the enthusiasm and 

 scientific capacity which are only waiting for adequate opportunity of 

 development. 



How is this money to be raised 1 I reply, without hesitation, 

 JDujdicate the Wavy Bill of 1888-9 ; do at once for brain-power what we 

 so successfully did then for sea-power. 



Let 24,000,000^. be set apart from one asset, our national wealth, to 

 increase the other, brain-power. Let it be assigned and borrowed as it is 

 wanted ; there will be a capital sum for new buildings to be erected in 

 the next five or ten years, the interest of the remainder to go towards 

 increased annual endowments. 



There need be no difficulty about allocating money to the various 

 institutions. Let each University make up its mind as to which rank of 

 the German Universities it wishes to emulate. When this claim has been 

 agreed to, the sums necessary to provide the buildings and teaching staff 

 of that class of University should be granted without demur. 



It is the case of battleships over again, and money need not be spent 

 more freely in one case than in the other. 



Let me at once say that this sum is not to be regarded as practically 

 gone when spent, as in the case of a short-lived ironclad. It is a loan 

 which will bear a high rate of interest. This is not my opinion merely ; 

 it is the opinion of those concerned in great industrial enterprises and 

 fully alive to the origin and effects of the present condition of things. 



I have been careful to point out that the statement that our industries 

 are suffering from our relative neglect of science does not rest on my 

 authority. But if this be true, then if our annual production is less by only 

 two millions than it might have been, having two millions less to divide 

 would be equivalent to our having forty or fifty millions less capital than 

 we should have had if we had been more scientific. 



Sir John Brunner, in a speech connected with the Liverpool School of 

 Tropical Medicine, stated recently that if we as a nation were now to 

 borrow ten millions of money in order to help science by putting up 

 buildings and endowing professors, we should get the money back in the 

 course of a generation a hundredfold. He added that there was no better 

 investment for a business man than the encouragement of science, and 

 that every penny he possessed had come from the application of science 

 to commerce. 



According to Sir Robert Giffen, the United Kingdom as a going 

 concern was in 1901 worth 16,000,000,000^ 



