PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 141 



issued) they are to a great extent to be replaced by the Public School cum Sand- 

 hurst young gentlemen, -who. it appears, are the ' pucea ' officers par excellence. 



The old system of the rule of politician chiefs whose only or main function 

 is to sign the edicts of heads of departments seems to have returned in full 

 force, and the coming of the cleansing Hercules that many people desire for 

 the War Office does not seem to be within the bounds of possibMity. 



The real cause of the prevailing neglect of science, with all its pernicious 

 results, is that almost all our political leaders have received the most favoured 

 a.nd fashionable form of public school education, and are without any scientific 

 education. An education in classics and dialectics, the education of a lawyer, may 

 be a good thing — for lawyers ; though even that is doubtful. For the training of 

 men who are to govern a State whose very existence depends on applications of 

 science, and on the proper utilisation of available stores of energy, it is 

 ludicrously unsuitable. We hear of the judicia'l frame of mind which lawyers 

 bring to the discussion of matters of high policy, but in the majority of scientific 

 cases it is the open mind of crass ignorance. The restilt is lamentable : I myself 

 heard a very eminent counsel declare in a case of some importance, involving 

 practical applications of science, that one of Newton's laws of motion was that 

 ' friction is the cause of oscMlations ' ! And the helplessness of some eminent 

 counsel and judges in patent cases is a byword. 



As things are. eminence in science is no qualification ; it would even seem 

 to be a positive disqualification, for any share in the conduct of the affairs of 

 this great industrial country. The scientific sides of public questions are 

 ignored ; nay, in many cases our rulers are unconscious of their existence. 

 Recently in a discussion on the Fnrestrv Bill in the House of Lords a member 

 of that illustrious body made the foolish assertion that forestry had nothing to 

 do with science; all that was needed was to dig holes and stick young trees 

 into them. Could fatuity go fiirther ? This hereditary legislator who, as 

 things are, has it in his power to manage, or mismanage, the conversion into 

 available energy of the radiation beneficently showered on a certain area (his 

 area) of this country of ours does not seem tc be aware that the growing of 

 trees is a highly scientific industry, that there are habits and diseases of trees 

 which have been nrofoundlv studied, that, in short, the whole subject of silvi- 

 culture brist'les with scientific problems, the solutions of -which have by patient 

 labour been to a considerable extent obtained. 



Take also the case of the Dyes Industries. The publicists and the ' good 

 business men ' — the supermen of the present age — who wish to control and foster 

 an industry which owes its very existence to an English chemist refuse to have 

 on the Committee which is to manage this important affair any man of scientific 

 eminence, and no remonstrance has any effect. These great business men are 

 as a rule not scientific at all. They are all very weW for finance, in other 

 respect's their businesses are run by their works-managers, and. in general, they 

 are not remarkable for paying handsomely their scientific assistants. 



I myself once heard it suggested by an eminent statesman that an electrical 

 efficiency of 98 per cent, mieht by the progress of electrical science be increased 

 fourfold ! This, I am afraid, is more or less typical of the highly educated 

 classical man's appreciation of the law of conservation of energy; and he is, 

 save the mark, to be our minister or proconsul, and the conservator of our 

 national resources. It is not surprising, therefore, that in connection with a 

 subject which for sever*! weeks occupied a great space in the newspapers, and 

 is now agitating a large section of the community, the nationalisation of our 

 coal mines, there was not a single word, except perhaps a casual vague 

 reference in the Report of the Chairman, to the question, which is intimately 

 bound up with any solution of the problem which statesmen may adopt. I mean 

 the question of the economic utilisation, in the interests of the country at large, 

 of this great inheritance which Nature has best-owed upon us. In short, are 

 Tom. Dick, and Harry, if we may so refer to noble and other coalowners, and 

 to our masters the miners, to remain free to waste or to conserve at their own 

 sweet will, or to exploit as they please, this necessity of the country's existence? 



The fact is that until scientific education has gone forward far beyond the 

 point it has yet reached, until it has become a living force in the world of 

 politics and statesmanship, we shall hardly escape the ruin of our oountty. 



