October 24, 1919] 



SCIENCE 



379 



its president and council, its members and its 

 associates, will be jealous for science, and espe- 

 cially for physics. It ought to be a thoroughly 

 hard-working body, without any frills, desti- 

 tute of work value. They have an example in 

 the General Medical Council, which has so 

 eilectively cared for the interests of the med- 

 ical profession. 



I am glad that something is being done at 

 last for the organization of scientific research. 

 This movement has started well in several, if 

 not in all, respects, and I wish it all success. 

 There are, however, one or two dangers to be 

 avoided, and I am not sure — I may be much 

 too timid and suspicious — that they are fully 

 recognized, and that the result will not be too 

 much of a bureaucracy. Somehow or other I 

 am reminded by the papers I have seen of the 

 remark of a poor man who, asking charity of 

 some one in Glasgow, was referred to the 

 Charity Organization Society of that city. 

 " No, thank you," he said : " there is a good 

 deal more organization than charity about that 

 institution." So I hope that in the movement 

 on foot the organization will not be more 

 prominent than the science, and the organizers 

 than the scientific workers. 

 1 There is to my mind too much centraliza- 

 tion aimed at. Everything is to be done from 

 London: a body sitting there is to decide the 

 subjects of research and to allocate the grants. 

 There may be a good deal to be said for that 

 in the case of funds obtained in London. But 

 apparently already existing local incentives to 

 research work are to be transferred to Lon- 

 don. The Carnegie Trust for the Universities 

 of Scotland, soon after its work began, inaug- 

 urated a scheme for research work in connec- 

 tion with these universities. The beneficiaries 

 of the trust, it is well known, must be students 

 of Scottish nationality. The action of the 

 trust has been most excellent, and much good 

 work has been done. Now, so far as chemis- 

 try and physics are concerned, it has been 

 proposed, if not decided, to hand over to the 

 organization in London the making of the 

 awards, a process of centralization that will 

 probably not end with these subjects. I ven- 

 ture to protest against any such proceeding. 



The more incentives and endowments of re- 

 search that exist and are administered in the 

 provinces the better. Moreover, this is , a 

 benefaction to Scottish students which ought 

 not to be withdrawn and merged in any pro- 

 vision made for the whole country, and admin- 

 istered in London by a bureau which may 

 know little of the Scottish universities or of 

 Scottish students. The bureau might, with 

 equal justice or injustice, be given command 

 of the special-research scholarships of all the 

 universities both in England and Scotland, 

 and administer them in the name of the fetish 

 of unification of effort. I do not know, but 

 can imagine, what Oxford and Cambridge and 

 Manchester and Liverpool would say to that. 

 But even Scotland, where of course we know 

 little or nothing about education of any kind, 

 may also have something to say before this 

 ultra-centralization becomes an accomplished 

 fact. 



There is, it seems to me, another danger to 

 be avoided besides that of undue centraliza- 

 tion in London. In most of the statements I 

 have seen regarding the promotion of research 

 work the emphasis seems to be on industrial 

 research, that is in applied science. This land 

 of research includes the investigation of phys- 

 ical and chemical products of various kinds 

 which may be used in arts and manufactures, 

 and its deliberate organized promotion ought 

 to be a commercial affair. I observed, by the 

 way, with some amusement, that according to 

 the proposals of one committee for applied 

 science, which is prepared to give grants and 

 premiums for researches and results, the pro- 

 fessor or head of a department, from whom 

 will generally come what are most important, 

 the ideas, is to have no payment. He is sup- 

 posed to be so well paid by the institution he 

 belongs to as to require no remuneration for 

 his supervision of the committee's researches. 

 And the results are to be the sole property of 

 the coromittee! 



There is in this delightfully calm proposal 

 at least a suggestion of compulsion and of 

 interference with institutions and their staffs, 

 which ought to be well examined. Also some 

 light is thrown on the ideas of such people as 



