248 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 



each other. They should not be studied apart, but together as parts of a 

 great whole. Each gains thereby. Nor can we detach soil science 

 completely from those other branches of science like Chemistry, Physics, 

 Geology and Biology, on which it is founded and out of which it grew. 



But to what are we heading ? Of what use is it all ? Are we only in- 

 creasing sorrow by increasing knowledge ? Our increased knowledge should 

 give us increased power to use the soil, and that surely means increased 

 production. We are told there is already over-production and that what 

 is required is restriction of production. We read in our papers of crops 

 being destroyed because they cannot be used, or because it does not pay 

 to harvest them. In the United States, and elsewhere, the growth of 

 fundamental food crops, like wheat, has been restricted. In our own 

 country arable land is decreasing while at the same time the import of 

 food- stuffs is being restricted. 



Has everybody in this country, and in every other country, too much, 

 or even enough, food ? Do we not at the same time as we are crying out 

 about over-production, hear an equal outcry about malnutrition and 

 under- feeding even in this comparatively prosperous country ? The two 

 things do not fit together. They cry out against one another. They 

 cannot both be right. But we all know that there are many people, 

 forming quite a large section of the population, who have not over- 

 abundance, who have not even enough. This, which is true of this 

 country, is, unless we are strangely misinformed, true in a much higher 

 degree of the world at large. This is not a problem of soil science, but a 

 problem for the statesman, the social reformer and the economist. The 

 soil scientist can safely go on and increase our knowledge of soils, and 

 hope, that in the long run, it will increase production and lessen labour. 

 Increased wealth, especially in the essential things produced from the 

 soil, is a blessing not a curse, and if it can be obtained more easily, and 

 more certainly, through the power and control provided by increased 

 knowledge, that is all to the good. 



The solution of our difficulties must be looked for by the increase of 

 impartial scientific knowledge in other directions. It is not for us to 

 offer any advice to a section so much our senior as Section F, but this 

 difficulty is much more their problem than ours. It is our social organ- 

 isation, our statesmanship, our economic system which are at fault when 

 the abundance which is produced cannot be brought to the many who are 

 in need of it. Social and political sciences and even economic science 

 are no doubt applying themselves to this problem, and let us hope they 

 will be able to remove it from an atmosphere of social prejudice and party 

 bias to the calm, truth-seeking atmosphere of pure scientific investigation. 

 Agricultural science can go forward fearlessly to increase knowledge in 

 the good hope and belief that increased knowledge will be in itself a 

 blessing. 



