"THE NEGLECT OF SCIENCE."

Otago Daily Times, Issue 16782, 25 August 1916, Page 3

"THE NEGLECT OF SCIENCE."

ITS APPLICATION TO INDUSTRY,

In an ablo article tho Glasgow Evening' News deals with tho evil consequences of the idiotic neglect of science in this country. " Stupendous folly," were tho words recently used by ilr Hughes in speaking of the way m wli.ch hq allowed tho Germans to obtain a monopoly of tungsten powder, essential for hardening ceitam kinds of steel, and our contemporary points out that probablj, however, tew people even yet have any clear idea of the facts which underlie that statement, apart from _ the many parallels which could be cited. "Tungsten steel is used not only for highspeed tools, but for guns and armour plate. Que district of Burma produces a quarter of the total world's consumption. When the war bioke out at was discovered that Burma had been sending ore to Germany, whence tho finished product was shipped back to us, and as_ the extracting process did not exist in this country, tho Burmese industry nearly collapsed. Only sincc then has* tho Government of India set itself to develop tho industry." As the Glasgow journal further observes, this is only ono case, and reference is made to the fact mentioned by tho T;mcs that quite recently the Germans found on the coast of Travantore 12 square miles of deposits of monazite. and when the -war began they were controlling the entiro_ output in the interests of the gas mantle industry. Again, nearly the whole industry of making magnetos, practically indispensable for motor vehicles, was centred m Germany, and but for the fact that the Br.tish and American brandies of tho German industry held \ enlarge stocks when tho war broke out, the British motor industry might have been in a desperate position before British and American manufacturer could have supplied the hugely increased demand. With respect to tho essential chemical pioducts, inter alia, "the Government has had to commandeer all tho benzole in the country, but the Government was asked years ago to encourage tho manufacture of benzole (which is made from coal tar) in order to minimiso our dependence on imported petrol, and flatly refused. Now, it seems, wo are short of petrol, and all tho benzole made is required for explosives. Tho Germans had developed the'r benzole industry, and Jiavo evidently plenty for explosives and some over to eke out their supply of petrol " Our contemporary's statement that additional instances of ineptitude might bo mentioned almost interminably is, unfortunately, only too true. "The root of the trouble is that we are not a scientific people. We hate new ideas, and actuallv sneer at science. If we can call any now proposition a ' scientific theory,' wo feel we have placed it whero no practical man will tioublo his head about it. Our attitude was strikingly displayed by a recruiting pamphlet in winch chemists from tho highest grades downwards were lumped with navvies and tunnellers as unskilled labourers. A French professor estimates that the number of chemists cmployed in various countries in proportion to their-population is in tho latio of 300 for Switzerland, 250 for Germany, and 6 for England. Clearly, we shall ha\c to alter all that Let us leave aside all ihetoric about the resources of tho Emp-re. The simple fact is that if wo arc to hold our own tho modern world Ave shall have to acquire a new respect for science; wo shall have to give tho natural Faiences a far more important place in education, and we shall have to be readv to accept and pav for the work of our trained scientists."—British Food Journal.