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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. LIV. No. 1395 



be reorganized and its aims and functions 

 extended. The mode in which this should be 

 done has been discussed at the meeting in 

 Brussels, in June last, of the International 

 Union of Chemistry Pure and Applied, and 

 has resulted in strengthening the constitution 

 of the committee and in a wide extension of 

 its scope. 



The crisis through which we have recently 

 passed has had a profound effect upon the 

 world. The spectacle of the most cultured 

 and most highly developed peoples on this 

 earth, armed with every offensive appliance 

 which science and the inventive skill and 

 ingenuity of men could suggest, in the throes 

 of a death struggle must have made the angels 

 weep. That dreadful harvest of death is past, 

 but the aftermath remains. Some of it is 

 evil, and the evil will persist for, it may be, 

 generations. There is, however, an element 

 of good in it, and the good, we trust, will 

 develop and increase with increase of years. 

 The whole complexion of the world — material, 

 social, economic, political, moral, spiritual — 

 has been changed, in certain aspects immedi- 

 ately for the worse, in others prospectively 

 for the better. It behooves us, then, as a 

 nation to pay heed to the lessons of the war. 



The theme is far too complicated to be 

 treated adequately within the limits of such 

 an address as this. But there are some aspects 

 of it germane to the objects of this associa- 

 tion, and I venture, therefore, in the time 

 that remains to me, to bring them to your 

 notice. 



The Great War differed from all previous 

 internecine struggles in the extent to which 

 organized science was invoked and system- 

 atically applied in its prosecution. In its 

 later phases, indeed, success became largely 

 a question as to which of the great contend- 

 ing parties could most rapidly and most effec- 

 tively bring its resources to their aid. The 

 chief protagonists had been in the forefront 

 of scientific progress for centuries, and had 

 an accumulated experience of the manifold 

 applications of science in practically every 

 department of human activity that could have 

 any possible relation to the conduct of war. 



The military class in every country is probab- 

 ly the most conservative of all the professions 

 and the slowest to depart from tradition. But 

 when nations are at grips, and they realize 

 that their very existence is threatened, every 

 agency that may tend to cripple the adver- 

 sary is apt to be resorted to — no matter how 

 far it departs from the customs and conven- 

 tions of war. This is more certain to be the 

 ease if the struggle is protracted. We have 

 witnessed this fact in the course of the late 

 war. Those who, realizing that in the present 

 imperfect stage of civilization, wars are 

 inevitable, yet strove to minimize their hor- 

 rors, and who formulated the Hague Con- 

 vention of 1899, were well aware how these 

 horrors might be enormously intensified by 

 the applications of scientific knowledge, and 

 especially of chemistry. Nothing shocked 

 the conscience of the civilized world more than 

 Germany's cynical disregard of the underta- 

 king into which she had entered with other 

 nations in regard, for instance, to the use of 

 lethal gas in warfare. The nation that 

 treacherously violated the Treaty of Belgium, 

 and even applauded the action, might be ex- 

 pected to have no scruples in repudiating her 

 obligations under the Hague Convention. 

 April 25, 1915, which saw the clouds of the 

 asphyxiating chlorine slowly wafted from the 

 German trenches towards the lines of the 

 Allies, witnessed one of the most bestial epi- 

 sodes in the history of the Great War. The 

 world stood aghast at such a spectacle of 

 barbarism. German Kultur apparently had 

 absolutely no ethical value. Poisoned weapons 

 are employed by savages, and noxious gas had 

 been used in Eastern warfare in early times, 

 but its use was hitherto unknown among 

 European nations. How it originated among 

 the Germans — whether by the direct un- 

 prompted action of the Higher Command, or, 

 as is more probable, at the instance of persons 

 connected with the great manufacturing con- 

 cerns in Ehineland, has, so far as I know, not 

 transpired. It was not so used in the earlier 

 stages of the war, even when it had become a 

 war of position. It is notorious that the great 

 chemical manufacturing establishments of 



