president's address. 25 



War to the British Treasury ! That some, indeed, were left open else- 

 where was not so much due to the enlightened sympathy of our politi- 

 cians, as to their alarmed interests in view of the volume of intelligent 

 protest. Our friends and neighbours across the Channel, under incom- 

 parably greater stress, have acted in a very different spirit. 



It will be a hard straggle for the friends of Science and Education, 

 and the air is thick with mephitic vapours. Perhaps the worst 

 economy to which we are to-day reduced by our former lack of pre- 

 paredness is the economy of Truth. Heaven knows ! — it may be a 

 necessary penalty. But its results are evil. Vital facts that concern 

 our national well-being, others that even affect the cause of a lasting 

 Peace, are constantly suppressed by official action. The negative 

 character of the process at work which conceals its operation from the 

 masses makes it the more insidious. We live in a murky atmosphere 

 amidst the suggestion of the false, and there seems to be a real danger 

 that the recognition of Truth as itself a Tower of Strength may suffer 

 an eclipse. 



It is at such a time and under these adverse conditions that we, 

 whose object it is to promote the Advancement of Science, are called 

 upon to act. It is for us to see to it that the lighted torch handed 

 down to us from the Ages shall be passed on with a still brighter flame. 

 Let us champion the cause of Education, in the best sense of the word, 

 as having regard to its spiritual as well as its scientific side. Let us 

 go forward with our own tasks, unflinchingly seeking for the Truth, 

 confident that, in the eternal dispensation, each successive generation 

 of seekers may approach nearer to the goal. 



MAGNA EST VERITAS, ET PR^VALEBIT. 



