Science and the State

Abstract

IN the Chemical News of April 30 there is a very moderate article emphasising what has been frequently preached in vain: the necessity of a close connection between the public Services and men of science. It is argued that the present is a special opportunity of again advocating the necessity of intimate co-ordination of effort; the societies have ever been willing to render gratuitous service; the Royal Society, for example, has for long put at the disposal of the Government the knowledge and advice of experts in all branches of science. The writer of the article, however, directs attention to the comparative scarcity of young men trained in research, and points out that it is by no means easy for a young graduate to obtain employment otherwise than by teaching. To rectify this state of affairs, he suggests the foundation of research institutes, where such young men could find employment (remunerative, it is to be presumed). These institutes should, it is remarked, be directed by men of eminence in their own branches, free from the irksome duty of teaching. The writer of the article further points out that while the average quality of German research is not high, still its quantity is great; and that British inventiveness is relatively higher. It is questionable whether his statement holds that the result of the German methods of scientific education has been the production of men of resource, men who are able to act promptly and on their own initiative in emergency; this power he believes that we British lack in the present crisis. I do not agree; it is not that power in which we are deficient, but the faculty of organisation, where each man is willing to do only the share which is allotted to him. That is the essential characteristic of the German; he lacks originality, but is content to form a cog in a system of wheels directed from above. Nor are the brains of this human machine original; they have learned how to appropriate and render commercial the ideas of inventors, chiefly those of the non-Germanic nations.