LEADERS' THOUGHTS

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 138, 7 December 1912, Page 11

LEADERS' THOUGHTS

SPEECHES OF THE WEEK THE ORIGIN' OF LIFE. (From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, 25th Ocober. - Sir Oliver Lodge, in the Becqucrel memorial lecture:— "l have no objection to the construction of living matter out of artificially combined materials. It may be impossible, but the attempt is quite legitimate, and no one can positively say that it will never prove successful. Life demands energy for its peculiar manifestations. Energy is like gunpowder. Life is like the trigger-puller that makes the gunpowder work. It seems only to be an affair of atoms, but there is possibly much more in it than is imagined. Life is probably apart altogether— a control not a force, but something that di« rects forces, and incidentally controls matter. Radio-activity conies in incidentally, but it only tells of a greater store of energy than we knew of before. What life has to do is ' to control the spontaneous disintegration of protoplas* mic cells, to regulate the activity of the ganglia in the brain, to suspend the disintegration of organic material until some appointed time, and then to direct it along a determined channel. That is all that a sportsman or artilleryman does with the energy of gunpowder. He withholds its explosion until an appointed time, and then he liberates it in a definite direction. To say that he propels the projectile and thereby conflicts with the conservation of energy, is ab* surd. This process of timing and aiming is typical ot the control of life throughout. Those who hold that life cannot act at all unless energy is at its disposal (which is certainly true)— forget the spontaneous activity of complex organised molecules, forget the atomic disintegration manifested by radio-activity. Energy is not a guiding or controlling entity at all. It is a thing to be guided. Energy by itself is as blind and blundering as a house on fire or a motor care without a driver." MIDDLE-CLASS TALEXT. Lord Haldane, at Bristol University : "I am not without sympathy with the complaint of the democracy that the entrance to the higher positions of the Civil Service is by far too much the monopoly of a class, but I hold that the democracy is apt in its earlier stages to be unduly jealous, and to try to drag things down to a level which, because it is a general level, is in danger of being too low to provide the highest talent. The Labour leaders are quite right when they complain that the prizes of the State are in reality far too much reserved for .the upper classes. Where they are wrong I think, is in the remedy they propose. The State will' suffer badly if the level of its Civil Servants is lowered, and it will be lowered if the qualifications are lowered by a youth who has ceased his studies at eighteen. "Here is where the Civic University has a great part to play. It is idle to say, aa is sortletinies said, that Oxford and Cambridge include the democracy. Theoretically they do, but not one child of the people out of a thousand has a real chance of becoming an undergraduate there. More accessible universities are required, and these new universities will only successfully compete with Oxford and Cambridge in serving the requirements of the State if they keep their level very high."' THE NOBILITY OF WORK. The Bishop of Oxford : "What an extraordinarily full and complete message there is in the Bible with regard to Work. It is God's final requirement on man. If there are people who are content to live their lives, seek to amuse themselves, and live on the labour and toil of other people, they are as much outside the rudiments of the covenant of God as if they were denying the Articles of the Christian creed. I suppose that if a ploughman_ a> hundred years ago, sweating\ over his toil, had looked up and seen an old' gentleman lounging along by the side of the fields in Westmoreland and lying perhaps half the day dreaming, as it seemed, he would have said that he ,was a lazy old man. But it might have been Wordsworth, with all his facilities of mind and imagination aflame in the production of one of those incomparable sonnets which had changed the minds of men all the world oveft Truly, there is labour of the mind as well as of the body. Besides the work of the body and mind, there is the work of character. ' Manyposts in the world require not a very strong or able man or woman, but someone of a perfectly trustworthy character. _ We .know in all the conduct of life the incomparable value of character. Among ail the requirements of God and of social .progress it is pre-eminent. There have been clever people possessing vast powers who have lamentably and pitiably failed through the failure of character, either of that disgraceful sort which we call a moral lapse, or of the temperamental kind. The work of character is the hardest and most trenchaMb of all. There is the work of the spirit and the work of suffering which becomes work, by being turned : into sacrifice. The carelessness and selfishness of man towards his brothers and sisters has produced in the world an almost incredible hell, which reminds [ us that we haye I'not1 'not been sent into a finished world to enjoy it. but into an unfinished world to complete it." DRAGGED TO FAME. Lord Haldane : "In. these days a sol- | dier may be one who weajs a black coat. [ for there is a lot to be done in peace in order to be prepared for war, and civilians mu«t'ta'ke their part in it. Se\cn , years ago 4 when a new Ministry was be-, ing formed, the late Sir Henry Camp-bell-Bannerman sent for me, and suggested one or two offices. I replied to him,: 'There is another office I should like. L do not know much about it. but it i:full of the most fascinating problem, ' 1 Sir Henry asked :' 'What -is that" I answered : 'The War Office- if it full'/ Sir Henry exclaimed : 'Full ! No one will touch it. with a pole.' Well, I went there, and I really had, a a cry easy task. i I found a number of \oung geneialswith their minds full of our shoitromingp. because they had cornr* freeij from the South African War. with )t3 evidence of unpiepp-redness.. The Army was not organised in peace as it would require to be in var. so they all oat down. I was a layman who'scarcely knew the distinction between, a battalion and 1 a brigade. We sat down to. think together, and we did Ihink. " We may pray that/ war will never rome. It is a terrible calamity, arresting everything and inflicting misery ftnd misfortune on countless thousands, but we never know when it may be dpoii us. It may come like a thipf in the dark, and, therefore, the wisest, course, and thp one that mustmake for peace, is to be prepared for wai."' THE KAISER'S ANCESTIIY. I The Emperor of Germany, al Wilhelmshaven . "I have hastened hither to dedicate the statue of the great Huguenot leader, my ancestor, Admiral Gat.pard de Coligny.' On that night (St, ! Bartholomew's), whkh will nlwayn lemain ti jhcmelnl btain on Christianity, he became a maityr, just a*s hie son-in-law, the great Orange Prince, my an-

ccfctor, piescrved to the derttli that fidelity whkh it is the duly of all survivors to cherieh. Year after year I colno hero to Wtlhelmahaven to hold before the eyes of recruits llm,t fidelity to the King can only flourish in the soil I whole faith rulee, and there is jojl'ul enthusiasm in the belief in the personality of our Lord. And so will we warriors, my comrades of the navy, take Admiral do Coligny as an example. In e\ery situation, in every class, and at every age, temptation assails us. Hub if we ha\e the courage to fctrikc as de Coligny did when he wrote 'Rcgem habemuct,' we ehall prevail. So I hope that this statue will give to every one of you who paeses it. young and old alike, fresh strength and energy on his path of life^ and remind him to hold true to his King in his inner and outer man. and thai ho can only be prepared to do this if he holds true •to hie Heavenly King." SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. Sir Alfred Keogh, Rector of the Imperial College of Science and Technology : "We can have .no better illustration of the want of imagination of the, English manufacturer in the past than the case of Dr. Perkin, the inventor of the aniline dye. Dr. Perkin was an Englishman, and his work was done in England. Yet the fruit of his discovery went to Germany, where there is now a great industry. < I am ashamed to say that 1 can name quite half-a-dozeli industries where the same thing is happening. Our supremacy depends on the appreciation of our manufacturers of scientific discovery. The industries I can name are not alive to what is going on in the laboratories. They should see to it that the result of 'such research work does not go abroad, but that the factory and the workshop Bhould be linked up with the laboratory in BUch a fashion that the country keeps abreast of chemical and other scientific discovery. ''