PROCEEDINGS OF THE THIRTY-FIRST ANNUAL SESSION 13 
each member of the Academy may well give serious considera- 
tion. 
Your attention is called to a change in the last volume of the 
Proceedings. Instead of being printed on soft paper, with the 
illustrations printed on calendared paper and tipped in, as has 
been the case with former volumes, the text and illustrations of 
this volume are printed together on a thinner, finished book 
paper. This effects an economy in paper and binding and gives 
a smaller, less bulky volume. In this connection may I suggest 
the advisability of keeping papers for the Proceedings within 
reasonable limits as to size. While there is no legal limit on the 
number of pages in our Proceedings it would be well to have the 
papers short enough so that the volume will not attain undue 
dimensions. There is a feeling that sixty pages, for example, a 
number which was reached by three papers in the last volume, 
is too much for one member to demand in a publication such as 
ours. I commend this suggestion also to your consideration. 
This is the day of preparedness. Every people in the forefront 
of civilization is issuing the call to its citizenship to prepare, 
whether it be to advance to the attack against the high cost of 
living — or the cost of high living, as the case may be — or to ward 
off the encroachments of a foreign foe. In such a time of stress 
the men and women of science must not and will not be found 
wanting. Whether the call comes to us to serve in the laboratory 
or on some more strenuous field it is for us each one to do our 
bit — to appropriate a popular phrase — to advance the cause of 
democracy and of the ideal social order in every way that lies 
within our power. The world is making demands upon science 
on a scale which is entirely unprecedented in history. Undoubt- 
edly as strenuous demands will be made for the amelioration and 
the improving of the conditions of human existence as are now 
being made for the aid of science in destroying human life. 
Here, too, the devotees of research must not be found wanting. 
This call too must find us proven men and women of action, pre- 
pared still to measure up to the need and to the responsibility 
which our opportunities have put upon us! You who now are 
and who are to be the leaders in intellectual and social progress 
will not shirk the duty which your country expects you to fulfill. 
Respectfully submitted, 
James H. Lees, 
Secretary. 
