SCIENCE, THE PRESS, AND THE PUBLIC. 
materials he uses in his daily life. Take, for example, the one subject 
of the chemistry of cellulose, with its wonderful actualities and almost 
bewildering possibilities. This may not sound interesting, but it can be _ 
made interesting, and it is, in fact, a subject of the most direct and 
practical importance to every man, woman, and child. Cellulose is 
Nature’s great structural material, and without it the earth would be 
bare of vegetation, an arid waste, without grass, or trees, or flowers. 
There would be no agriculture, no textiles, no papers, and no picture- 
theatre shows! Thus, although cellulose vitally concerns the average 
man in a host of things which he uses, or with which he comes into contact 
in his daily life, he has probably never had the opportunity of learning 
anything about it. ‘The same’thing is true in regard to practically all 
subjects of scientific research. The average man does not, in fact, 
realize that there is not a business, from shoe-blacking to banking, 
which is not really based on the application of the results of scientific 
research. 
The matter of imbuing the public with an appreciation of the 
actualities and possibilities of scientific research and the removal of 
the lack of sympathy and understanding between the scientist and the 
public are of immense importance to our Australian Democracy. Not 
only is our future as a nation largely dependent on the application of 
science to industry, but our most grievous lack, as a people, is our ignor- 
ing of experts and our fiction that the merely practical man is the man 
who is fit for the job. Germany did, at all events, teach us one lesson 
which we must not permit the war to unteach us, that is the lesson of 
valuing and trusting the expert. And, if we fail to learn that lesson, we 
may ultimately inflict on the Commonwealth an even greater material 
damage than that which we suffered through German arms. It is, 
therefore, the duty of the Australian expert, even at the cost of some 
repugnant self-exploitation, to make himself understood and respected 
by the Democracy. This he cannot do in the laboratory and the scien- 
tific journals alone. ‘He must make himself known to the public, and for 
this purpose the daily press is indispensable. Any scientific facts, or 
anything calculated to imbue the layman with the scientific spirit, that 
can be got into the daily newspaper will reach further than it can do 
in any other way. 
In America, science has been regarded as a three-legged stool, of 
which one leg stands for teaching, the second for research, and the 
third for extension, or publicity. Tf science, then, is to stand firm 
and strong, it is necessary that the publicity side should be developed 
equally with the other phases, and in America this has been done. Many _ 
of the State Universities have “established extension divisions, which 
have as their specific work the duty of acting as a medium between 
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