BRITISH ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE. 



York, 1932. 



THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 



AN ENGINEER'S OUTLOOK 



BY 



SIR ALFRED EWING, K.C.B., F.R.S., 



PRESIDENT OF THE ASSOCIATION. 



I. 



Again, for the fifth time, the British Association meets in York, a 

 city of proved hospitality and the stage of great events. Y'ork is 

 a monument of history ; its very stones are eloquent of the past. 

 Not the least of the episodes it has witnessed was the birth of this 

 Association. Your city, my Lord Mayor, was our cradle : we hold 

 York in filial honour and affection. We are nomads who have 

 strayed to the ends of the earth : we have been as far-flung as the 

 British flag. We have enjoyed the welcome of many strange hearths. 

 But here there is nothing unfamiliar. We take delight in coming 

 home to a birthplace of happy memory and in recalling hopes 

 which the past hundred years have generously fulfilled. 



Last year the infant of 1831 celebrated its centenary in the vigour 

 of manhood, with a plenitude of pomp and circumstance which 

 demanded no less ample a setting than the metropolis of the Empire. 

 For President we had a man of world-wide fame, who fittingly 

 embodied the imperial aspect that is part of the glory of the British 

 Association. We had long known General Smuts as soldier and 

 statesman : to some it may have come as a surprise when they 

 found him also a philosopher, a student of ideas no less than a maker 

 of history and a leader of men. It would be an impertinence for any 

 successor in this chair to praise General Smuts ; to follow him is 

 perforce to follow far behind. But one may congratulate the execu- 

 tive on the happy instinct which recognised that the occasion was 

 unique, and so led them to an unusual — not to say a daring — choice. 

 It was amply justified by the event. Now they have returned to 

 the beaten track along which Presidents for the most part plod, 



