10 PRESIDENT S ADDRESS. 



Comparatively recently, too, Lord French remarked : ' We have 

 failed during the past to read accurately the lessons as regards the 

 fighting of the future which modern science and invention should have 

 taught us.' 



In view of the eminent services which scientists have rendered 

 during the war, I think that we may be justified in I'egarding the 

 requirement stated by Lord Eosse as having at last been satisfied, 

 and also in believing that such a criticism as Lord French rightly 

 uttered will not be levelled against the country in the future. 



Though British men of Science had not formerly been adequately 

 recognised in relation to war and the safety of their country, yet at 

 the call of the sailors and the soldiers they whole-heartedly, and with 

 intense zeal, devoted themselves to repair the negligence of the past, 

 and to apply their unrivalled powers and skill to encounter and over- 

 come the long-standing machinations of the enemy. They worked in 

 close collaboration with the men of Science of the Allied Nations, and 

 eventually produced better war material, chemicals, and apparatus 

 of all kinds for vanquishing the enemy and the saving of our own men 

 than had been devised by the enemy during many years of preparation 

 planned on the basis of a total disregard of treaties and the conventions 

 of war. 



Four years is too short a time for much scientific invention to 

 blossom to useful maturity, even under the forced exigencies of war 

 and Government control. It must be remembered that in the past the 

 great majority of new discoveries and inventions of merit have taken 

 many years — sometimes generations — to bring them into general use. 

 It must also be ,mentioned that in some instances discoveries and inven- 

 tions are attributable to the general advance in Science and the Arts 

 which has brought within the region of practical politics an attack on 

 some particular problem. So the work of the scientists during the 

 war has perforce been directed more to the application of known prin- 

 ciples, trade knowledge, and properties of matter to the waging of war, 

 than to the making of new and laborious discoveries ; though, in effecting 

 such applications, inventions of a high order have been achieved, some 

 of which promise to be of great usefulness in time of peace. 



The advance of Science and the Arts in the last century had, how- 

 ever, wrought a great change in the implements of war. The steam 

 engine, the internal combustion engine, electricity, and the advances in 

 metallurgy and chemistry had led to the building up of immense indus- 

 tries which, when diverted from their normal uses, have produced 

 unprecedented quantities of war material for the enormous armies, 

 and also for the greatest Navy which the world has ever seen. 



The destructive energy in the field and afloat has multiplied many 

 hundredfold since the time of the Napoleonic wars; both before and 



