Dec. 6.
As a result of the war much attention has been given to scientific invention and research.
Phe public have become interested in this subject; the story of the tanks is one of the outstanding, features of the great conflict. All of us were always hoping that the Allies would suddenly produce some remarkable invention that would accelerate victory. We probably did not realize how rapidly improvements were made in aeroplanes and in technical details of which the non-scientific mind is unavoidably ignorant. We do not complain that our most eminent scientists are often incapable of explaining their work in popular language, but we do remember that Huxley did a great deal for science by his splendid essays and his tireless advocacy of the national importance of the experiments and writings of Darwin and other investigators. We were, this year, just little disappointed with the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, for it failed in that respect. There was nothing that made us really wonder. It is an art, this business of making an abstruse and complex subject understandable to the general public, but it has had its successful exponents and there are men in the ranks of the scientific workers who can prac-rise the art well, if they can be persuaded to devote the time to it.
We are reminded of these things by a Report which has recently been issued by the Committee of the Privy Council for Scientific and Industrial Research. The Report deals with the work done in the year 1919-1920. It is not easy reading, but after some considerable study of the contents the reader is satisfied tha it does record progress valuable from a national as well as a more general point of view. For it is fact that any new invention or discovery ultimately becomes serviceable to humanity. When Pasteur made his great discovery in France the whole world was the richer for it. In Shanghai we reap the benefit of his work. While we are at sea we are safer because of the researches of the men who made wireless communication possible. _China's most obvious need to-day is railways; and even if the Chinese forget, or never even hear of, the name of Stephenson in connexion
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.