WORK OF SCIENTISTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22332, 1 February 1936, Page 15

WORK OF SCIENTISTS

EFFORTS FOR MANKIND CHEMICALS IN PEACE AND WAR A denial of any suggestion that chemists were more concerned with the production of substances and materials of destruction than with making things which would be useful to mankind was given by Mr. G. A. Lawrence, of Wellington, in his address to the New Zealand section of the Institute of Chemistry of Great Britain and Ireland, in Dunedin. "The fact that the last war was a war of science has unfortunately given the public an impression that chemists are all the while searching for new Jind devilish explosives, chemicals, gases and devices for use in war," he said. "Actually very few chemists are ongaged in the production of explosives and general munition work, while hundreds of thousands are employed in supervising research and production of almost every article required for the good of mankind." The speaker recalled that in a recent address, Professor E. F. Armstrong, speaking on this question, said: "In peace times chemicals are definitely and absolutely not munitions, though there are cranks sufficiently crazy to claim the contrary. Neither the chemist nor chemistry makes war. In war everything becomes a prospective munition, from a lump of coal and a blade of grass to the most complex optical instrument. Glycerine and nitre have very different uses in peace and war."