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nation.' He further remarked with great prophetic insight : ' War is no longer 

 carried on by means of mere animal courage and brute force ; on the contrary, 

 we perceive,' much to our amazement, I believe, that the highest branches of 

 mechanical science and the most refined processes of the mechanical arts are 

 resorted to by the modern warrior for the purposes of offence and defence. And 

 we are taught by the logic of the facts that the modern soldier must cease to 

 remain a passive machine, but on the contrary, must henceforth be trained as a 

 skilled labonjer, if not indeed as a skilled artisan.' 



I do not think, however, that either Mr. Hawksley or anyone else could 

 anticipate what refinements of skill and science would be brought to bear, not 

 merely on the destruction of the human species but of those ancient edifices of 

 beauty which cost hundreds of years to build, and which cannot be replaced, or 

 even the loss of those great works of engineering in the form of bridges and other 

 structures which, though doubtless replaceable, represent the accumulated wealth 

 of mankind. All this does not con.stitute, however, the worst feature of the war 

 which is still raging. I do not know which will hereafter stand out in the 

 blackest light — the callous disregard by our enemy of the recognised laws which 

 have governed warfare amongst civilised countries hitherto, of which the recent 

 murder of a defenceless submarine crew in neutral waters is an example, or the 

 fad., of which there is now abundant and overwhelming proof, that this conntry, 

 while animated only by peaceful intentions, was itself the real object and 

 ultimate aim for the destructive effort of our enemy. 



Fortunately we now all know that our determination at any cost to our- 

 selves to stand by our treaty obligation to a weaker country was really a fateful 

 moment in the history of our Empire. Had we then failed, such failure would 

 have spelt our own doom. 



This is not the place to dwell at any length on this subject; but I cannot 

 help pointing out that the whole attitude of scientific and professional men in 

 this country at the beginning of the war shows how little they realised the real 

 nature of what was before us. Thus my own predecessor, after the war had 

 begun, in his Presidential Address in Australia, used the words ' The discoveries 

 in pure science, and their innumerable applications to practical ends, are ever a 

 potent factor working for the common good.' The truth is that the great 

 majority of us did not realise to what uses science would be put in the mutilation 

 and destruction of our fellow creatures. 



Still we are told by soldiers that practically any applications of science con- 

 stitute legitimate warfare, and that the only way to escape from destruction 

 ourselves is to employ all the resources of science in our own defence. 



It is on these grounds that the Meeting of the British Association for the 

 Advancement of Science has been held this year, because science is proving such 

 an all-important factor in the present war. 



The mere holding of this meeting, however, with a vague sort of idea that 

 science is associated with war, does not seem to most of us to meet the real needs 

 of the case. The decision to hold the meeting was made in March, i.e., six 

 months ago. Since that time the nation has awakened to the fact that matters 

 have become very much more eerious, and we scarcely needed the solemn 

 warnings of oxvc responsible statesmen to enable us to realise this. We see oxit 

 foe turning every resource towards the active prosecution of the war, and 

 bringing in the aid of every man towards that end. If the result were a small 

 m'ltter, we might pursue our way, as we did at first, with the fatuous cry, 

 ' Business as usual ' ; but day by day it is brought home to us that the Hymn 

 of Hate, childish though it may seem, really represents the serious mind and 

 deadly intention of our enemy. When I say this I know there are exceptions, 

 and it is gratifying to find that at least one German guest of the British 

 Association acknowledged in print the generous manner in which the German 

 guests were treated in Australia after the war broke out, even being given a 

 passage home.' This and much else warns us that our failure in this war means 

 the loss of what has been built up in so many centuries, and what we value 

 above all other things, viz., our freedom, and that this loss would be accom- 

 panied by atrocities and degrad<ation beyond the most savage happenings of the 



1 I regret to say this forms a striking contrast to the brutal treatment meted 

 out in many cases to British visitors in Germany. 



