THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 19 



the investigators proceeded in exactly the same spirit, the spirit that 

 is of scientific curiosity, and with no possibiHty of telHng whether 

 the issue of their work would prove them to be fiends, or dreamers, 

 or angels. 



Again, there is the terror of thermite incendiary bombs, spreading 

 fire broadcast through our great cities. The notion is sometimes 

 encountered that thermite was invented for this purpose. Nothing 

 could be further from the truth. I first made acquaintance with it 

 myself in 1901 by hearing a lecture at the Royal Institution by the 

 late Sir William Roberts Austen on ' Metals as Fuel.' ^ He drew 

 attention to the great amount of energy which was liberated when 

 aluminium combined with oxygen, and showed how aluminium 

 powder mixed with red oxide of iron would react violently with it, 

 withdrawing the oxygen from the iron, and becoming brilliantly 

 incandescent in the process. He showed further how this mixture, 

 called thermite, could be used for heating metal work locally, so 

 as to make welds, e.g. in joining two iron pipes end to end. I 

 venture to say that it never occurred to him or to any of his hearers 

 that thermite had any application in war. 



In discussions of this kind a distinction is often implied between 

 what I may call old-fashioned knowledge and modern scientific 

 knowledge. The latter is considered to be the special handmaid 

 of ' frightfulness.' The futility of this distinction is easily seen by 

 considering a special case. Iron is thought of as belonging to the 

 pre-scientific era, while aluminium is thought to belong to the 

 scientific era. From the standpoint of chemistry both are metals, 

 and the problem of producing them in either case is a chemical one. 

 When produced they both have their function in ' frightfulness ' : 

 iron to cut and stab ; aluminium to make thermite bombs to burn 

 and destroy. If modern science makes its contribution to ' fright- 

 fulness ' in giving us aluminium, ancient craft did so in giving us 

 iron. It is obviously absurd to make any distinction in principle 

 between the two cases. Science properly understood includes all 

 real knowledge about material things, whether that knowledge is old 

 or new. 



All these terrors have only become applicable against a civilian 

 population by the development of aircraft. Military objects were 

 certainly not the incentive of the successful pioneers of artificial 

 flight. They were fascinated at first by the sport of gliding, and 

 afterwards by a mechanical transport problem. 



It is true that brilliant writers of imaginative fiction, such as Jules 

 Verne and H. G. Wells, had foretold all, and more than all, the horrors 

 that have since come to pass. But it is perhaps more to the point to 

 inquire what were the contemporary views of practical men. The 



1 Proc. R.I., Feb. 23, 1901, vol. xvi, p. 496. 



