34 /. A. McClelland on 



I shall deal very briefly on the present occasion Avith Scientific 

 Research because I think the present audience is more interested 

 in Industrial Research. It will be the duty of the Council to 

 take steps to ensure that the supply of men trained in methods 

 of research will be sufficient not only to staff our colleges and to 

 carry on research in Pure Science, but also to meet the growing 

 demand for such men that we hope to see in connection with 

 Industries in the immediate future. At present the Universities 

 are turning out such men — indeed as many as there is any 

 demand for — but still the actual numbers are small, and if the 

 demand increased to the proportions that it should assume, the 

 supply would be inadequate to meet it. 



It will be necessary to pi-ovide help for the best students 

 who have completed the undergraduate course in Science to 

 enable them to do post-graduate work and thus get a training 

 in the methods of research. A beginning has been made in 

 this direction, but in quite a small way, because the war has 

 absorbed nearly all such men either in the fighting services or in 

 scientific work on war requirements. 



There are some people I am aware who doubt the wisdom 

 of spending money to encourage more of our young graduates to 

 take up research work. It may well be argued that the few 

 fortunate or unfortunate people who have such habits of mind 

 as will enable them to make advances in our scientific knowledge 

 of any considerable value will find their way to a life of research 

 in any case. That is true to a large extent, but there seems no 

 reason why it should not be possible to train quite a large 

 percentage of our science graduates in methods of research, not 

 with the object of making all of them leaders in science, but 

 simply skilled and competent workers in the development of 

 scientific methods. That is what Germany has done. Germany 

 is not, and never has been, specially pre-eminent as regards the 

 number of her great leaders in scientific discoveries, but she has 

 had for some time a specially large percentage of her people 

 trained in methods of research. In the sphere of work we are 



