question of drilled battalions against an undisciplined army, of the use of the scientific spirit as opposed to the hope of "muddling through."

Mr. Haldane has recently reminded us that "the weapons which science places in the hands of those who engage in great rivalries of commerce leave those who are without them, however brave, as badly off as were the dervishes of Omdurman against the Maxims of Lord Kitchener."

Without such a machinery as this, how can our Ministers and our rulers be kept completely informed on a thousand things of vital importance? Why should our position and requirements as an industrial and thinking nation receive less attention from the authorities than the headdress of the Guards? How, in the words of Lord Curzon,1 can "the life and vigour of a nation be summed up before the world in the person of its sovereign" if the national organisation is so defective that it has no means of keeping the head of the State informed on things touching the most vital and lasting interests of the country? We seem to be still in the Palæolithic Age in such matters, the chief difference being that the sword has replaced the flint implement.

Some may say that it is contrary to our habit to expect the Government to interest itself too much or to spend money on matters relating to peace; that war dangers are the only ones to be met or to be studied. แบน But this view leaves science and the progress of science at t ut of the question. Every scientific advance is now, th' and will in the future be more and more, applied to war. t is no longer a question of an armed force with cientific corps; it is a question of an armed force scientific from top to bottom. Thank God, the Navy has already found this out. Science will ultimately rule

1 Times, September 30, 1902.

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all the operations both of peace and war, and therefore the industrial and the fighting population must both have a large common ground of education. Already it is not looking too far ahead to see that in a perfect State there will be a double use of each citizen-a peace use and a war use; and the more science advances, the more the old difference between the peaceful citizen and the man at arms will disappear. The barrack, if it still exists, and the workshop will be assimilated; the land unit, like the battleship, will become a school of applied science, self-contained, in which the officers will be the efficient teachers.

I do not think it is yet recognised how much the problem of national defence has thus become associated with that with which we are now chiefly concerned.

These, then, are some of the reasons which compel me to point out that a scientific council, which might be a scientific committee of the Privy Council, in dealing primarily with the national needs in times of peace, would be a source of strength to the nation.

To sum up, then. My earnest appeal to you is to gird up your loins and see to it that the science of the British Empire shall no longer remain unorganised. I have endeavoured to point out to you how the nation at present suffers from the absence of a powerful, continuous, reasoned expression of scientific opinion, urging in season and out of season that we shall be armed as other nations are, with efficient Universities and facilities for research to uphold the flag of Britain in the domain of learning and discovery, and what they alone can bring.

I have also endeavoured to show how, when this is done, the nation will still be less strong than it need be if there be not added to our many existing councils another, to secure that even during peace the benefits which a proper co-ordination of scientific effort in the nation's

interest can bring shall not be neglected as they are at present.

Lest some of you may think that the scientific organisation which I trust you will determine to found would risk success in working on such large lines, let me remind you that in 1859, when the late Prince Consort occupied this Chair, he referred to "impediments" to scientific progress, and said, they are often such as can only be successfully dealt with by the powerful arm of the State or the long purse of the nation."

If the Prince Consort had lived to continue his advocacy of science, our position to-day would have been very different. different. His early death was as bad for Britain as the loss of a great campaign. If we cannot make up what we have lost, matters cannot mend.

I have done what I feel to be my duty in bringing the present condition of things before you. It is now your duty, if you agree with me, to see that it be put right. You can if you will.

APPENDICES

(1)

THE GERMAN UNIVERSITIES.1

WHAT Germany thinks of the place of the University in a modern State can be readily gathered from the large and everincreasing State endowments of the numerous Universities in Prussia and the other constituent countries.

The University activity of Prussia itself dates from the time after Jena, 1806, when the nation was, as Sir Rowland Blennerhassett has told us, a bleeding and lacerated mass, so impoverished and shattered that there seemed to be little future before it. King Frederick William III. and his councillors, among them Wilhelm von Humboldt, founded the University of Berlin, "to supply the loss of territory by intellectual effort." Among the universal poverty, money was also found for the Universities of Königsberg and Breslau, and Bonn was founded in 1818. Observatories and other scientific institutions were not forgotten. As a result of this policy, carried on persistently and continuously by successive Ministers, aided by wise councillors, many of them the products of this policy, such a state of things was brought about that Palmerston, a typical English statesman, is stated by Matthew Arnold to have defined the Germany of his day as a country of "damned professors," and so well have the damned professors done their work since that not long ago M. Ferdinand Lot, one of the most distinguished educationists of France, accorded to Germany "a supremacy in science comparable to the supremacy of England at sea."

The whole history of Prussia since then constitutes indeed a magnificent object lesson on the influence of brain-power on history. There can be no question that the Prussia of to-day,

1 Nature, March 12, 1903.

the leader of a united Germany, with its armed strength both for peace and war and craving for a wider world dominion, is the direct outcome of the policy of "intellectual effort" inaugurated in 1806.

The most remarkable thing about the German universities in later years is the constant addition of new departments, added to enable them to meet and even to anticipate the demands made for laboratories in which each scientific subject, as it has been developed, can be taught on Liebig's plan, that is by experiment, observation and research.

It is in such State-aided institutions as these that the members of the German Ministry and Parliament, and the leading industrials are trained, while in our case, in consequence of the lack of funds for new buildings at Oxford and Cambridge, and, until not many years ago, the lack of other high-teaching centres, our leaders have had to be content with curricula extant before Galileo was born, the teaching being, perhaps, not so good and the desire to learn generally much less.

No one will deny that the brain-power of a nation must, in the last resort, depend upon the higher mental training obtainable in that nation. It is well, therefore, to see how we stand in this matter.

The following tables will show what the German Government is doing to provide brain-power in Germany. Those who know most about our British conditions will see how we are likely to fare in any competition with Germany in which brain-power comes in, if indeed there can be any important sphere of activity undertaken by either King, Lords Commons in which brain-power does not come in.

or

We owe the first table giving the facts relating to the ordinary State endowments of the twenty-two German Universities to the kindness of Mr. Alexander Siemens, who was good enough to obtain through official sources an extract from the Preussische Statistik containing an article by Dr. Petersilie. This deals with 1891-2, the last year dealt with by the statistical bureau.

In the second table are given the extraordinary expenses incurred in the same year, also obtained from Dr. Petersilie's article. There have been added the State endowments for the years 1900-1 and 1902-3, so far as it has been possible to obtain them from Minerva, in order that the considerable yearly increase in the endowments may be noted.

It will be seen that those responsible for the continued well