The Ricur How. Lorp RavLErGH'S Presidential Address to the British Association at Cambridge on August 17, 1938
During the Great War itself, few scientific men in any country doubted that it was their duty to do what they could to apply their specialized knowledge to the purposes of war; nor was it often suggested by pub-lieists that there was any countervailing consideration: on the contrary, they urged strongly that our resources in this direction should be ciently mobilized. It is chiefly in vague general discussions that the opposite view becomes vocal.
Science, it is urged, is the source of all the trouble: and we may look to scientific men for some constructive contribution to finding a remedy. It is worth while to inquire what basis there is for this indictment, and whether, in fact, it is feasible for men of science to desist from labours which may have a disastrous outcome, or at any rate to help in guiding other men to use and not to abuse the fruits of those labours.
I may' say at the outset that I have no sanguine contribution to make, I believe that the whole idea that scientific men are specially responsible is a delusion born of imperfect knowledge of the real course of the process of discovery. Indeed, very much the same complaint was made before ihe scientific era. Let me refer you to Shakespeare's play, "Henry IV"
"Great pity, so it was "This villainous saltpetre should be digged Out of the bowels of the harmless earth Which many destroyed So cowardly." good tali fellow had The quotation leads us to inquire how far the further development of this particular kind of frightfulness into modern-high explosives was deliberate or not.
Ju the course of systematic study of the chemistry of carbon compounds it was inevitable that the action of nitric acid on substances like ben-zone, toluene, glycerine, cellulose, and the like should be tried. No one could foresee the result. In the case of benzene, we have niirobanzone, the key to the aniline dye i dustry. In the case of glycerine, Sobrero obtained in 1848 the highly explosive liquid called nitro-glycerine. He meant no harm, and in fact his discovery lay dormant for many years, until Nobel turned his attention to the matter in 1868, and showed how by mixing nitroglycerine with other substances, solid explosives could be made which admitted of safe handling. Dynamite was one of them. They proved invaluable in the arts of peace, for example, in mining and in making railway tun-mels, such as those through the Alps. They were used by the Irish Fenians in the dynamite outrages of the -'eighties. These attempted outrages were not very successful, and so far as I know no one was inclined to blame science for them, any more -than for the Gunpowder Plot. Like the latter, they came to be considered slightly comic. It anyone doubts this, he may agreeably resolve his doubts by reading R. L. Stevenson's story, "The Dynamiter". At all events, high explosives had been too long in use in peaceful industry for their misuse to be laid directly to the account of science.
Coming next to poison gas. We read that Pliny was overwhelmed and killed by sulphur dioxide in the eruption of Vesuvius in ad. 79. During the Crimean War, the veteran admiral Lord Dundonald urged that the fumes of burning sulphur should be deliberately used in this way, but the suggestion was not adopted. Even if it had been, scientific research ad hoc would obviously have had little to do with the matter. During the Great War, chlorine was used on a large scale. I need scarcely insist that chlorine was not isolated by chemists for this purpose. It was discovered a hundred and forty years before, as a step in the inquiry into the nature of common salt, Coming to the more recondite substances, we may take mustard gas—really a liguid—as typical. It is much more plausible to suggest that here vas a scientific devilment, deliberatcly contrived to cripple and destroy. Out what are the real facts?
Referring to Watts's "Dictionary of Chemistry" (edition of 1894), there is an article of less than forty words about mustard gas (under the head-jing of dichlordiethy sulphide). After the method of preparation used by Victor Meyer has been mentioned, the substance is dismissed with the words, "oil, very poisonous, and violently inflames the skin. Difference from diethyl sulphide."
There are sixteen other compounds Geveribed at comparable length on the same page. So far as I know, none of them is of any importance. A not uncommon type of critic would probably say that the investigation of them had been useless, the work of unpractical dreamers, who might have been better employed. One of these substances, namely mustard gas, ix quite unexpectedly applied to war, ud the production of it is held by the critics to be the work not of dreamers, but of fiends whose activities ought to be suppressed!
Finally, at the bottom of the page begins a long article on chloroform. This substance, as you know, has relieved a great deal of pain, and on the same principle the investigator who produced it was no doubt an angel of mercy. The trouble is that all the investigators proceeded in exactly the same spirit, the spirit that is of. scientific curiosity, and with no possibility of telling whether the issue of their work would prove them to be fiends, or dreamers, or angels.
Again, there is the terror of thermite incendiary bombs, spreading fire broadcast throughout great cities. The notion is sometimes encountered that thermite was invented for this purpose. Nothing could be further from the truth. I first made acquaintance with it myself in 1901 by hearing a lecture at the Royal Institution by the late Sir William Tis Austen on'"Metals as Fuel".
He|directed attention to the great amount of energy which was liberate ed when aluminium combined with gen, and showed how aluminium powder mixed with red oxide of iron would react violently with it, withdrawing the oxygen from the iron, and becoming brilliantly incandescent in the process. He showed further how this mixture, called thermite, could be used for heating metal work locally, so as to make welds, for example, in joining two iron pipes end to end. I venture to say that never occurred to him or to any of his hearers that thermite had' any application in war.
In discussions of this kind a distinction is often implied between what I may call old-fashioned knowledge and modern Pentific knowledge. The latter is considered to be the special handmaid of frightfulness', The futility of this distinction is easily seen by considering a special case, Iron is thought of as belonging to the pre-scientific s era, while aluminium is the lit to belong to the scientific era.
From the point of view of chemistry both 1 are metals, and the problem of producing them in either case is a chemical one. When produced they both have their function in frightfulness' iron to cut and stab; alummium to make thermite bombs "to burn and destroy. If modern science makes its contribution to frightfulness' in giving us aluminium, ancient craft did so in giving us iron. It is obviously absurd to make any distinction in principle between the two cases. Science properly understood includes all real knowledge about material things, whether that knowledge is old or new.
All these terrors have only become applicable against a civilian population by the development of aircraft Military objects were certainly not the incentive of the successful pioneers of artificial flight. They were fascinated at first by the sport of gliding, and afterwards by a mechanical transport problem.
It is true that brilliant writers of imaginative fiction, such as Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, had foretold all, and more than all, the horrors that have since come to pass. But U.S. Navy Move to Aid Peace Effort Fleet Concentration In Atlantic Seen as Significant Gesture London, - Sept. 12.
Official circles here today believed the United States Navy activities 1h ihe Atlantic Ocean indicated America was taking a strong, friendly stand in an effort to avert war in Europe.
This belief was persistent here as the U.S.S. Nashville, new American cruiser, sailed into Portland today amid the roar of British and American salutes. The Nashville fired a 21-gun salute as she sailed into Portland and the British battleship Royal Oak promptly responded.
Meanwhile officials here were Interested in the transfer of crack American cruisers from the Pacific to the Atlantic during the past week. Although these have been explained in Washington as mere "shake-dow! cruises," officials here believed they were connected with possible Amertcan efforts to preserve peace in Europe.—United Press.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.