i8 THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 



to the matter in 1863, and showed how by mixing nitro-glycerine 

 with other substances, soUd explosives could be made which admitted 

 of safe handling. Dynamite was one of them. They proved 

 invaluable in the arts of peace, e.g. in mining and in making railway 

 tunnels, such as those through the Alps. They were used by the 

 Irish Fenians in the dynamite outrages of the eighties. These 

 attempted outrages were not very successful, and so far as I know 

 no one was inclined to blame science for them, any more than for 

 the Gunpowder Plot. Like the latter, they came to be considered 

 slightly comic. If anyone doubts this, he may agreeably resolve his 

 doubts by reading R. L. Stevenson's story The Dynamiter. At 

 all events, high explosives had been too long in use in peaceful 

 industry for their misuse to be laid directly to the account of science. 



Coming next to poison gas. We read that Pliny was overwhelmed 

 and killed by sulphur dioxide in the eruption of Vesuvius in a.d. 79. 

 During the Crimean War, the veteran admiral Lord Dundonald 

 urged that the fumes of burning sulphur should be deliberately used 

 in this way, but the suggestion was not adopted. Even if it had been, 

 scientific research ad hoc would obviously have had little to do with 

 the matter. During the Great War, chlorine was used on a large 

 scale. I need hardly insist that chlorine was not isolated by chemists 

 for this purpose. It was discovered 140 years before, as a step in 

 the inquiry into the nature of common salt. 



Coming to the more recondite substances, we may take mustard 

 gas — really a liquid — as typical. It is much more plausible to suggest 

 that here was a scientific devilment, deliberately contrived to cripple 

 and destroy. But what are the real facts ? 



Referring to Watts's Dictionary of Chemistry (edition of 1894), 

 there is an article of less than forty words about mustard gas (under 

 the heading of dichlordiethyl sulphide). After the method of 

 preparation used by Victor Meyer has been mentioned, the sub- 

 stance is dismissed with the words ' oil, very poisonous and violently 

 inflames the skin. Difference from diethyl sulphide.' 



There are sixteen other compounds described at comparable 

 length on the same page. So far as I know, none of them is of any 

 importance. A not uncommon type of critic would probably say 

 that the investigation of them had been, useless, the work of un- 

 practical dreamers, who might have been better employed. One 

 of these substances, namely mustard gas, is quite unexpectedly 

 applied to war, and the production of it is held by the critics to be the 

 work not of dreamers, but of fiends whose activities ought to be 

 suppressed ! Finally, at the bottom of the page begins a long article 

 on chloroform. This substance, as you know, has relieved a great 

 deal of pain, and on the same principle the investigator who pro- 

 duced it was no doubt an angel of mercy. The trouble is that all 



