5IO RADFORD MATHER LECTURE 



of social problems to-day. And there is another pressing problem in 

 front of us — how to reduce cost of production without lowering standards 

 of life. Scientific invention properly used, I believe, will give us the best 

 chance to solve both problems. 



The other trouble is kept fresh and urgent by what we read every day 

 in our newspapers of the great advance due to science in the destructive 

 forces of the world, as shown in China and Spain, and to be repeated 

 with increased horror wherever war breaks out. If we cannot avoid war, 

 we cannot avoid the very worst that can happen in warfare. But this 

 raises issues which depend upon other considerations than those of the 

 field of science. Science increases power which can be applied both to 

 life and death. Science cannot help the men who have made air forces 

 possible, for instance. They have also created civil air fleets, and I con- 

 sider that a great benefit, and if the communities cannot make and keep 

 peace, or if they are so blind as to follow the aggressive actions of their 

 rulers, democratic or dictatorial, the responsibility is theirs. If peace is 

 not secured by, say, diplomacy, and the will not of one but of all nations 

 to keep peace, it is both a false judgment and a very cowardly one to blame 

 the scientific engineer and worker. The action of the farmer in growing 

 corn and food for war is exactly of the same kind as the engineer who makes 

 flying engines. Peace or war are not the responsibilities of scientists as 

 scientists, except in very special cases, so long (and it will always be) as 

 the discoveries which increase our peaceful and beneficial resources can 

 be used for war machinery. 



At the same time, there is a feeling among many scientists that the 

 ease with which their labours may be misused in this way should make 

 them, as citizens, active in creating and upholding the public opinion of 

 the nations to which they belong, interested in protecting their work 

 from being abused, as beneficial poisons and many chemicals essential to 

 peaceful industry can be. 



I have presided over a fair number of International Conferences — your 

 own people being represented — of chemists, engineers and others interested 

 in this question, and one and all gave a hearty response to every mention 

 of this interest and duty of theirs. Scientists will also remember that 

 from that distinguished body, the Royal Academy of Sciences at Amster- 

 dam, came a resolution which was discussed and improved at the Third 

 General Assembly of the International Council of Scientific Unions and 

 published in two issues of Nature of April 24 and May 22 last. It 

 recognised the social responsibilities of Science and scientific workers, 

 and the Assembly decided to have the question closely considered. 



This misuse of scientific discovery is the concern of the political organi- 

 sation of citizens, including scientists. In any event, we ought to be 

 careful not to go upon altogether false scents, or set up issues which are 

 too narrow to end the ills from which we suffer. We can go back to bows 

 and arrows but that will not remove the grievances of nations for which 

 they will fight, nor supply the enlightened diplomacy which can keep the 

 peace without injury to a nation's sense of injustice. Do not let us be 

 misled by thinking that the scientists as such can stop or cause war. The 

 military leader can use the triumphs of science as he likes to horrify us 

 with warfare. That is all. 



