140 TRANSACTIONS OP SECTION A. 



judgment. It is legitimate to copy from the enemy, and in several important 

 things we have not been slow to do so. 



The delays that occurred •were to some of us at home, who were anxiously 

 dealing with all kinds of contrivances, exceedingly exasperating. Some were 

 undoubtedly unavoidable, but others were, as I have indicated, far otherwise. 

 Deficiency in scientific education was the cause. It is to enforce the need for 

 such education that I refer to such matters at all. The " playing fields of Eton " 

 are all very well. I for one do not scoS at what the old saying stands for, 

 but scientific laboratories and good intelligent work in them are indispensable. 

 A man who directs in whole or in part a great machine must know something 

 of its structure and capabilities. This apparently does not hold in politics. 



I feel bound to allude to another aspect of the inventions business which to 

 my mind was very serious. In doing so, however, I wish it to be clearly 

 understood that I am criticising a system and in no way here referring to particu- 

 lar individuals concerned in its administration. Various inventions which had 

 passed satisfactorily the first examinations by responsible judges were sub- 

 mitted to technical departments at home to be subjected to practical tests. 

 These inventions were, frequently, solutions proposed of problems on which 

 technical officers, of the departments required to conduct the tests, had long 

 been engaged. It was natural, indeed inevitable, that some of these ofiicers 

 should have come to regard the solving of these problems as their own special 

 job, and so did not much welcome the coming of the outside inventor. Then, 

 no doubt, they often felt that they were just on the point of arriving at a 

 solution — a feeling that certainly could not facilitate the avoidance of delay. 

 It was manifestly most unfair to ask them to judge the work of the outside 

 inventor, or to place in their hands details of his proposals, for exactly the 

 same reason which in civil life restrains a man from acting ae a juror in a 

 case in which he is personally interested. Nobody of good sense feels offended 

 when attention is called to such a rule in practice. 



Thus I have no hesitation in expressing the opinion that a testing board of 

 practical, well-qualified physicists and other experts, with .a properly qualified 

 staff, should be formed for the purpose of carrying out all tests of inventions. 

 No insuperable difficulty wou'ld, I believe, be experienced in forming such a 

 board. It should be formed carefully, not by more or less casual nomination 

 of one another by a few persons. Expert knowledge of a subject 

 should be a necessary qualification ; the so-called ' open mind ' of the much- 

 lauded but untrained practical man is not worth having. But on that board 

 neither inside nor outside inventors of tlie same kind of appliances should have 

 any place, though of course consultation with the author of an invention under 

 test would be absolutely necessary. Also those actually carrying out the tests 

 and those collating the results should not be men in any way in the employ- 

 ment of or under the supervision of inventors, whether 'outside ' or 'inside.' 

 It is imperative in the interests of the country that delay in such matters 

 should be avoided, and that all such work should be done without fear or 

 favour. 



The value of University and College men trained in science has been 

 thoroughly proved in the Artillery, the Engineers, and in their offshoots, the 

 Special Sound Ranginsj and Survey Corps, though its recognition by the 

 authorities of Whitehall has been scanty and grudging. Some of the oid- 

 fashioned generals and staff officers could not be got to see the use of men who 

 had not been trained to field exercises by a long course of drill. What is the 

 good of officers, they said, who are not skilled leaders of men? This is the 

 old crude idea aa;ain of destroying Germans with rifles, bayonets, and hand 

 grenades. The falsity of these antiquated notions has now, I believe, been 

 amply demonstrated. 



The objection to these men, however, lies a good deal deeper. Even those 

 scientifically educated officers who came into the new armies when they were 

 formed, and were trained by the service of years of warfare superadded to the 

 initial course of drill, have been demobilised in a nearly wholesale manner, 

 without the least regard to even very exceptional qualifications. Many of these 

 were, it seems to me, the very men who ought, above all, to have been retained 

 in the service. Now (though, as I write, improved regulations are being 



