140 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 
on a large scale in sea-going ships, trading on more than one route. An 
experiment of this kind is well worth the making. It is a matter of 
national moment to help a threatened industry by finding an increased 
use for coal; that aspect of it should not be overlooked by those who are 
willing to subsidise industrial research. Such expenditure would be a 
casting of bread upon the waters with a good prospect of its ultimate 
return. 
And now, ladies and gentlemen, we take leave of our prophet of 1881. 
We may fancy him borne aloft in a chariot whose fires are unseen only 
because they burn within the cylinders. If we were to catch from him the 
mantle of prophecy, we should wear it ruefully ; we should all be Cassandras 
or Jeremiahs, obsessed with the cheerlessness of the industrial outlook, 
and finding no escape from the conviction that the easy supremacy of 
Britain, as Bramwell knew it, can never be recalled. But my last word 
must not be an unqualified Ichabod. The engineers of to-day have as 
much courage and enterprise as their fathers, and they have an infinitely 
better understanding of the scientific principles on which, as on a smooth 
highway, the advance of engineering must steadily proceed. Moreover, to 
recognise evils, and the causes of evils, may be the first step towards their 
cure. The world has learnt, through a sharp lesson, that the gifts of the 
engineer are good gifts only if they are wisely used; that the new powers 
he has evoked have brought new dangers against which mankind must 
resolutely guard if it is to save its soul alive. The malignity of individuals 
and the madness of nations now command forces of destruction such as 
more primitive communities never knew, and were happier not to know. 
And apart from clamant and appalling abuses of gifts which ought to be 
beneficent, we have become aware of a more subtle and perhaps graver 
social menace. We see the mechanised arts of production over-reaching 
themselves, supplying commodities in a volume which cannot be absorbed, 
and with a facility that tends to deprive man of his richest blessing to body 
and spirit—the necessity of toil. 
But these thoughts take us too far afield. They point to problems 
now conspicuously urgent, which, for the salvation of society, the engineer, 
the economist and the moralist must jointly set themselves to solve. 
Nore. 
In 1903 Sir Frederick Bramwell established a trust in the Association under 
which at the Centenary Meeting ‘a paper .. . dealing with the whole question of the 
prime movers of 1931, and especially with the then relation between steam engines 
and internal combustion engines,’ should be prepared by ‘a gentleman to be selected 
by the Council.’ 
The preceding Address discharges this trust. 
ee 
ed ie) oe 
a oe 
5 
