THE NATIONAL GALLERY IN WAR-TIME

Abstract

IT is one of the necessary sorrows of war that scientific workers are bound, for the most part, to apply their knowledge and skill for the time being to the work of destruction. It is also true, as is already obvious, that some good comes out of evil, but the primary aim is, and must be, to destroy. Naturally, there are heroic efforts to mend and to repair, perhaps even to restore ; yet they are hard pressed to keep pace with the forces of obliteration. In this article, however, we are contemplating a happier theme, in which applied physics and kindred branches of technics have been harnessed deliberately and specifically to a project of conservation. Consideration of some such scheme is usually simplified a little by financial reasoning-the relative value of the things to be kept safe and the cost of doing so. But with the nation's heritage of pictures, in some respects the most precious and representative in the world, these terms become largely meaningless. It is the bare fact of irreplaceability which dominates thought. Loss or serious damage admits of no compensation. If science can help in this great quest for security, it will have shown that even in war its part is not wholly to undo. To save for posterity becomes an overwhelming urge.