22 THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 
of rather as a warning signal to be placed on her road: ‘ Dangerous 
Hill Ahead,’ perhaps, or ‘ Turn Right’; not, however, ‘ Go Slow,’ 
for that advice Science cannot follow. The indictment is of man- 
kind. Recognition of the truth it contains cannot be absent from the 
minds of those whose labours are daily increasing mankind’s com- 
mand of Nature; but it is due to them that the truth should be 
viewed in proper perspective. It is, after all, war, to which Science 
has added terrors, and the fear of war, which alone give it real 
urgency ; an urgency which must of course be felt in these days 
when some nations at least are showing the spirit of selfish and 
dangerous nationalism. I may be wrong but it seems to me that, 
war apart, the gifts of science and invention have done little to 
increase opportunities for the display of the more serious of man’s 
irrational impulses. ‘The worst they do perhaps is to give to clever 
and predatory souls that keep within the law, the whole world for 
their depredations, instead of a parish or a country as of yore. 
But Sir Alfred Ewing told us of ‘ the disillusion with which, now 
standing aside, he watches the sweeping pageant of discovery and 
invention in which he used to make unbounded delight.’ I wish 
that one to whom applied science and this country owe so much 
might have been spared such disillusion, for I suspect it gives him 
pain. I wonder whether, if he could have added to an ‘ Engineer’s 
Outlook’ the outlook of a biologist, the disillusion would still be 
there. As one just now advocating the claims of biology I would 
much like to know. It is sure, however, that the gifts of the engineer 
to humanity at large are immense enough to outweigh the assistance 
he may have given to the forces of destruction. 
It may be claimed for biological science, in spite of vague references 
to bacterial warfare and the like, that it is not of its nature to aid 
destruction. What it may do towards making man as a whole more 
worthy of his inheritance has yet to be fully recognised. On this 
point I have said much. Of its service to his physical betterment 
you will have no doubts. I have made but the bare reference in this 
address to the support that biological research gives to the art of 
medicine. I had thought to say much more of this, but found that 
if I said enough I could say nothing else. 
There are two other great questions so much to the front just now 
that they tempt a final reference. I mean, of course, the paradox 
of poverty amidst plenty and the replacement of human labour by 
machinery. Applied science should take no blame for the former, 
but indeed claim credit unfairly lost. It is not within my capacity 
to say anything of value about the paradox and its cure ; but I con- 
fess that I see more present danger in the case of ‘ Money versus 
Man’ than danger present or future in that of the ‘ Machine versus 
Man’! 
