Abstract
IT was remarked by Prof. W. J. Pope, in an address to which we referred last week, that if suitable provision had been made by the State for the pursuit of scientific research twenty years ago we should have been saved from the horrors of the present conflict. He asked why the Govern ment did not then make the experiment which it has now undertaken by the establishment of a Department of Scientific and Industrial Research with an endowment of 1,000,000l. The answer to the question is that our statesmen have never had sufficient knowledge of science to understand its relation to national advancement or sufficient faith in scientific discovery to believe that provision for it would ultimately benefit the community both industrially and politically. The public mind has been awakened to the essential value of research in all progressive industries, and every manifesto recently issued by organisations concerned with the future development of British trade insists upon its importance. Principles which have, been persist ently urged in these columns by a couple of generations of scientific men are now being pro claimed from the housetops and are heard in the highways, with the result that our political leaders are beginning to follow them.
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Research and the State. Nature 100, 121–123 (1917). https://doi.org/10.1038/100121a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/100121a0