Ope THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 
generations. There is, however, an element of good in it, and the 
good, we trust, will develop and increase with increase of years. The 
whole complexion of the world—material, social, economic, political, 
moral, spiritual—has been changed, in certain aspects immediately 
for the worse, in others prospectively for the better. It behoves us, 
then, as a nation to pay heed to the lessons of the War. 
The theme is far too complicated to be treated adequately within the 
limits of such an address as this. But there are some aspects of it 
germane to the objects of this Association, and I venture, therefore, in 
the time that remains to me, to bring them to your notice. 
The Great War differed from all previous internecine struggles in 
the extent to which organised science was invoked and systematically 
applied in its prosecution. In its later phases, indeed, success became 
largely a question as to which of the great contending parties could 
most rapidly and most effectively bring its resources to their aid. The 
chief protagonists had been in the forefront of scientific progress for 
centuries, and had an accumulated experience of the manifold applica- 
tions of science in practically every department of human activity that 
could have any possible relation to the conduct of war. The military 
class in every country is probably the most conservative of all the 
professions and the slowest to depart from tradition. But when nations 
are at grips, and they realise that their very existence is threatened, 
every agency that may tend to cripple the adversary is apt to be resorted 
to—no matter how far it departs from the customs and conventions of 
war. This is more certain to be the case if the struggle is protracted. 
We have witnessed this fact in the course of the late War. Those who, 
realising that in the present imperfect stage of civilisation wars are 
inevitable, and yet strove to minimise their horrors, and who formulated 
the Hague Convention of 1899, were well aware how these horrors 
might be enormously intensified by the applications of scientific know- 
ledge, and especially of chemistry. Nothing shocked the conscience 
of the civilised world more than Germany’s cynical disregard of the 
undertaking into which she had entered with other nations in regard, 
for instance, to the use of lethal gas in warfare. The nation that 
treacherously violated the Treaty of Belgium, and even applauded the 
action, might be expected to have no scruples in repudiating her obliga- 
tions under the Hague Convention. April 25, 1915, which saw the 
clouds of the asphyxiating chlorine slowly wafted from the German 
trenches towards the lines of the Allies, witnessed one of the most 
bestial episodes in the history of the Great War. The world stood 
aghast at such a spectacle of barbarism. German kultwr apparently 
had absolutely no ethical value. Poisoned weapons are employed by 
savages, and noxious gas had been used in Eastern warfare in early 
times, but its use was hitherto unknown among European nations. 
