8 THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 



depending always on principles of physical and chemical science, tested 

 at every stage by instruments which are a craft in themselves ! You may 

 think of the screw and of its design. You picture the curious and most 

 efficient thrust-block by which the force of the screw is brought to bear 

 upon the ship, and remember that Michell lately designed it on the basis 

 of the physical laws of liquids. You look aloft and see the wireless and 

 are reminded that this sprang directly from the physical laboratory. 

 Your sounding apparatus is based on your own Kelvin's designs ; it may 

 be that you have fitted your ship with the wonderful and still more recent 

 apparatus for sounding by echo, which enables her to find the depth of 

 water, shallow or deep, even when she is travelling at high speed. The 

 war forced this adaptation of the laws of acoustics. She is sure to carry 

 some form of refrigerating apparatus, and now we are reminded of all the 

 investigations into the production of cold by students of science like the 

 Frenchmen Cailletet and Pictet, by Onnes in Holland, and by Dewar, 

 whom, as befits the occasion, I will call a Scotsman rather than an English- 

 man. And so on, from one great feature of the ship to another, and 

 presently from detail to detail ; and you find that the whole structure is 

 linked by innumerable ties to the research work of the laboratories. 

 Craftsmanship in its urgent need has called upon scientific knowledge for 

 aid, and the mighty growth is due to the response. Indeed, it is not only 

 craftsmanship that has grown, but science itself. 



If you hinder the growth of science in any way you hinder the growth 

 of craftsmanship. Now it is an important fact that science advances 

 over a wide front, and the various branches of it move on together : not 

 absolutely keeping step with each other, but preserving a general line. 

 It has been suggested that science might refrain from development in 

 some directions or, even as our good friend the Bishop of Eipon said at 

 Leeds last year, we might proclaim a ten years' holiday. But you cannot 

 prevent interested men from making inquiry. You cannot prevent the 

 growth of knowledge, ■'you cannot even make a selection of those points 

 of advance which will lead to certain select classes of results. No one 

 knows what is over the hill. The vanguard moves on without any thought 

 of what is before it. That is why, if the march of science is to be con- 

 ducted in an effective and orderly way, were it only for the purposes of 

 industry, there must always be'a certain number of laboratories or parts 

 of laboratories where scientific research has no immediate thought of 

 possible applications. 



If I read modern industrial conditions rightly the closeness of the 



