Abstract
WAR conditions, though they may make unprecedented demands on our scientific knowledge and technical skill, throw us, in some of their aspects, back to simpler ways of living and to the use of more primitive appliances. The horse has come into his own again; venerable carriages, bearers of long-forgotten names—who, in this twentieth century generation, can readily distinguish between barouche, victoria, cabriolet and whisky?—appear in provincial streets and country roads, astonishing all but the oldest inhabitants; and we find new merits in the performances of (duly-shaded) hurricane lamps and wax candles. A railway journey, prolonged after sunset, adds a new terror to life for those of us who are not content to sit and think. We look back with something of envy to those spacious days when our grandparents travelled luxuriously and read in comfort by the light of some candle-bearing contraption which could be hooked to the back of a railway-carriage seat. Meetings, even in neutral and reception areas, are not to be attended without due consideration of the perils associated with a journey through ‘blacked-out’ streets.
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Science Meetings in War-Time. Nature 144, 763–764 (1939). https://doi.org/10.1038/144763a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/144763a0