THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 23 



sense, the very preparations for war, through the character which 

 science gives them, make for peace.' And in his concluding pages 

 he expressed the hope that the brotherly meeting between the 

 English and French Associations at Dover and Boulogne might be 

 looked upon as a sign that science, by nobler means than the develop- 

 ment of armaments, was steadily working towards the same great end. 

 And, in a time of still greater need and perplexity, may we not, in 

 the same hopeful spirit, look upon the recent visit by which members 

 of the French Association have honoured us, and feel strengthened 

 in the belief that the great end will be reached. 



There are, I know, very many people who look upon the Great War 

 with later wars and rumours of wars as the close of Sir Michael Foster's 

 dream. The words in which Sir Arthur Schuster concluded his 

 address at Manchester in 191 5, and Sir Edward Thorpe at Edin- 

 burgh in 1921, indicate, I hope, that the British Association does not 

 thus despair, and in this belief I bring before you a passage from the 

 far earlier address which Sir Richard Owen delivered to the 

 Twenty-eighth Meeting at Leeds in 1858 — a passage which makes 

 a special appeal at a time when the British and American Associa- 

 tions are confidently hoping to strengthen still further the bonds of 

 sympathy and mutual appreciation by which they have been happily 

 united for so many years. 



Referring to the transatlantic telegraph Sir Richard said : 



' We may confidently hope that this and other applications of 

 pure science will tend to abolish wars over the whole earth ; so that 

 men may come to look back upon the trial of battle between mis- 

 understanding nations, as a sign of a past state of comparative 

 barbarism ; just as we look back from our present phase of civilisation 

 in England upon the old border warfare.' 



Confident words inspired by the forging of a new link between 

 the two great English-speaking nations. Nearly eighty years have 

 passed since they were spoken, but with all the terrible disappoint- 

 ments there has been great progress, and a time will surely come, 

 and may it come quickly, a time which shall prove that the visions of 

 the young and the dreams of the old were prophetic of a glorious 

 reality. 



