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Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. [Sess. 
products of a defective educational system, if it can be called a system, 
which has refused to grant equal privileges for the teaching of science. 
The lack of appreciation of scientific methods and of the value of 
research is reflected in the development of some of our industries. A 
striking instance may be taken from the field of Applied Chemistry. 
Professor Meldola was an industrial chemist of a high order, with a great 
capacity for original research. He was a pioneer in the dyestuff industry 
after Perkin. He made many important discoveries, the full results of which 
were not realised in this country, but in Germany. Discouraged by the 
lack of enterprise on the part of the manufacturing firms that employed 
him, he accepted the Professorship of Chemistry at the Finsbury Technical 
College in 1885, a post which he held till his death in 1915. In a graceful 
tribute Lord Moulton says that Professor Meldola “ represented fully the 
type of intellect and personality which must be developed amongst us 
if this war is not to be a mere incident in a long-drawn-out decline of our 
national greatness. We must have leaders and followers who, like him, 
are inspired with an equal devotion to knowledge and to the utilisation of 
knowledge.” 
In 1910 Meldola uttered this severe indictment of British methods : 
“ The question of the cause of the decline of the British dyestuff industry 
resolves itself in reality into the question of the cause of Continental 
activity. The answer to this last question has been staring us broadly in 
the face for over thirty years. It is amazing that there should have ever 
been any doubt or any cause suggested than the true cause, which is 
Research, writ large. The foreign manufacturers knew what it meant and 
realised its importance, and they tapped the universities and technical high 
schools, and they added research departments and research chemists to 
their factories, while our manufacturers were taking no steps at all, or 
were calmly hugging themselves into a state of false security, based on the 
belief that the old order under which they had been prosperous was 
imperishable. It is true that when the effects of the new discoveries began 
to make themselves felt one or two factories did add a chemist *to the staff*, 
but the number and the means of work were totally inadequate. I 
happened to be one of them, and so I speak with some practical knowledge 
of the conditions. We were but a handful of light skirmishers against an 
army of trained legionaries. What could three or four — say half a dozen 
at a liberal estimate — research chemists, working under every disadvantage, 
do against scores, increasing to hundreds, of highly trained university 
chemists, equipped with all the facilities of research, encouraged and paid 
to devote their whole time to research, and backed up by technological skill 
