THE IMPERIAL ASPECTS. OF CHEMICAL SCIENCE. 
Every one is aware that the German and the smaller British coal- 
tar factories have played a large part in the provision of high explosives 
during the last few years. In any future war they will undoubtedly 
play a much larger part in view of the introduction of poisonous 
materials as a new military weapon. The use of poisonous substances 
in warfare is forbidden by the Hague Convention, but notwithstanding 
this the Germans launched an attack on ‘the Allies with the poisonous 
gas, chlorine, on 22nd April, 1915, and it soon became clear that this 
operation was but the precursor to an elaborate programme for the 
extensive use of such materials. This action was greeted with universal 
horror, but the disgust expressed must be supposed directed not against 
the use of poisonous gases but against their use in the face of a covenant 
to the effect that they should not be used. : ’ 
Apart from this vital point there scems little legitimate reason why 
poisonous materials should not be used in warfare; it is no less noble 
and chivalrous an action to kill an individual one never meets or sees 
by a whiff of poison gas or to leave him to die miserably from lung 
trouble caused by mustard gas than it is to tear his intestines to pieces 
by high explosive shell fired at a range of 20 miles. Every advance in 
military science has aroused a storm of execration; the use of large ° 
mechanically actuated catapults, which were introduced early in the 
twelfth century, against Christian troops, was forbidden by the second 
Lateran Council, under pain of excommunication. 
Over 30 per cent. of all the casualties suffered by the American 
armies in Europe were due to chemical warfare; this preponderating 
effect of one arm, produced so short a time after its introduction, added 
to the heavy and costly equipment required for protection against gas, 
makes it certain that chemical warfare will become one of the main 
factors in future military struggles between civilized nations. The. 
whole subject has been developed hurriedly on an emergency basis, and 
will be necessarily perfected to such a degree during the coming years 
of peace as will render the effects of chemical warfare catastrophic to 
the less well prepared of two adversaries. . 
The provision of the offensive and defensive needs of chemical 
warfare constitutes an Imperial aspect of chemical science upon which 
our whole future existence as an Empire may depend. The investiga- 
tion of the possibilities of those needs calls, in the first place, for 
chemical research of a high order of excellence; the provision of the 
needs can only be met by the establishment of a large and flourishing 
fine chemical industry within the United Kingdom. 
It will be remarked that I have laid stress in this lecture mainly 
upon the achievements of chemical technology, and have dwelt upon 
the necessity for intensive development in our islands of a branch of 
human activity which has*been neglected to such an extent as constitutes 
an Imperial danger. This must be considered, however, in conjunction 
with the undoubted fact that all progress in chemical technology 
originates in scientific discovery and from research which, in the 
majority of cases, is undertaken with no eye to its future use in manu- 
facture. The history of science abounds in illustrations of this prin- 
ciple. The purely scientific discovery of benzene in oil-gas by Faraday 
formed the foundation of the greater part-of the fine chemical industry ; 
C 11276.—4 Cee y fe 
