Science and World War I

Author(s): D. S. L. Cardwell
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A, Mathematical and
Physical Sciences , Apr. 15, 1975, Vol. 342, No. 1631, A Discussion on the Effects of the
Two World Wars on the Organization and Development of Science in the United
Kingdom (Apr. 15, 1975), pp. 447-456
Published by: Royal Society

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Proc. R. Soc. Lond. A. 342, 447-456 (1975)

Printed in Great Britain

Science and World War I

BY D. S. L. CARDWELL

University of Manchester Institute of Science & Technology

When the battle of Waterloo was won and lost and the fog of war finally cleared,
the peoples of Europe found themselves face to face with a unique spectacle: an
industrialized nation, Great Britain. During the Napoleonic wars the British had
completed their industrial revolution; they had built great textile mills, and had
equipped them with newly invented high-production machinery; they had even
installed lifts, which they called 'teagles '.1 They had developed great iron and coal
industries and covered the country with a network of canals for transporting
goods. The heavy machine-tool industry, vital for any developed economy, had
begun in Britain. The ubiquitous steam-engines were far more efficient, versatile
and powerful than any to be found in Europe. It was the successes of British steam-
engines, particularly the Cornish engines, that led Sadi Carnot to write his Be'-
flexions sur la puissance motrice du feu.
A hundred years after Waterloo history repeated itself, but this time with the
main details reversed. Now it was the outbreak of war that brought revelation;
and now it was Britain's turn to be surprised. For her enemy, Germany, was seen
to possess advanced industries based on scientific research and on complex tech-
nologies unknown in Britain.
There had been warning voices. Charles Babbage, Lyon Playfair, Henry
Roscoe, William Ramsay and Norman Lockyer had each, in turn, pleaded for pub-
lic and official recognition of the importance of science in national life. Lockyer
had, in 1905, founded the British Science Guild as a pressure group on behalf of
science. The admirable Devonshire Commission, 1872-5,2 put forward proposals
that, had they been implemented, would have gone far towards anticipating the
reforms and innovations that the Great War forced on the country. But they
were not implemented and the speculation is merely hypothetical.
In fact in 1914 science in Britain was still to some extent amateur in spirit,
even if the practitioners were now mostly professionals.3 Journals preferred the
expressions 'men of science' or 'scientific men' to the more professional word
'scientists'. The other side of this coin was revealed by an unofficial survey, in
1913, into the remuneration and status of scientists. Those employed by provincial
universities, were inadequately paid judged by their academic qualifications -
'less even than the church' - and had insecure tenure and inadequate pensions.4
Graduate chemists employed by the War Office were paid labourer's wages.5
Correspondingly there were far fewer science students in Britain than in Germany;
and the comparison was even more unfavourable in the case of research students.
To see what this meant let us look briefly at Manchester. Here was the largest
[ 447 ]

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 448 D. S. L. Cardwell (Discussion Meeting)
and most successful school of science in the provinces. The area had been a source
of the industrial revolution -'high technology' had appeared there in the early
1800s - and talented men had flocked there from all over Britain; but mainly from
Scotland for the Scots were the best educated people in the country. By 1914,
however, many of the leaders of new industries seem to have been if not Germans,
at least educated in German universities.6 Such names as Hans Renold (of Renold
Chain), Heinrich Simon (of Simon-Carves), Ivan Levinstein, the dye manufacturer
of Blackley, Charles Dreyfus (of Clayton Aniline) and Ludwig Mond make the point.
And what was true of industrial technology was also true of pure science. So we
had Carl Schorlemmer, Arthur SchUster and Chaim Weizmann, then an organic
chemist.
These men were important in the scientific life of Manchester, but they were
only the overspill as it were of the stream of German science; we may therefore
wonder what was the force of the main current in Germany itself.
The story of the synthetic dyestuffs has been told often enough;7 I shall give
only the barest outline here. In the 1830s and '40s there was considerable interest
in synthetic dyestuffs in the textile cities of Lyons, Mulhouse and Manchester.
The textile industries were progressive, accustomed to innovation and responsive
to the demands of novelty and fashion. Early synthetic dyestuffs such as picric
acid and murexide had been acceptable.8 In 1856 young William Henry Perkin
discovered the first aniline dye, mauve, while working in the Royal College of
Chemistry, a small educational establishment in Oxford Street: it was inspired by
German ideals of university education and was as exotic in its way as the famous
Academy had been in eighteenth century St Petersburg. One would have expected
the new coal-tar dyestuffs industry to have developed in Britain; and so it did, to
a small extent. But from about 1880 onwards it was increasingly dominated by
German firms and by 1914 was almost a German monopoly. About 80 % of the
dyes used in Britain, the great textile country with abundant coal, were imported
from Germany.
Germany's success was attributable to the enterprise of her businessmen and
to her educational system which provided her with well-trained research chemists,
chemical technologists, engineers, commercial personnel; in short all the specialists
required to make a modern industry function efficiently. Such men were not readily
available in Britain. Furthermore, by a chain-effect the development of the dye-
stuffs industry helped other science-based industries to grow: pharmaceuticals,
disinfectants, synthetic perfumes, photographic materials and fine chemicals
generally. And, with such a big market for scientific equipment the scientific in-
struments industry in Germany also flourished. What was true of chemicals and
pharmaceuticals was also true of other science-based industries, notably the
electrical and metallurgical industries.
War immediately stopped the importation of German goods on which Britain
had come imperceptibly to depend. Apart from Swiss imports and a trickle of
British products there were no dyestuffs. There was insufficient khaki dye to keep

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 Science and World War I 449

up with the production of soldiers' uniforms. The supply of pharmaceuticals was

cut off; so were supplies of laboratory glass-ware, balances, microscopes and other
laboratory equipment, porcelain for pyrometers, magnetos - which were almost
all made by Bosch of Stuttgart - gunsights for British artillery, thorium nitrate
for gas mantles, carbon for arc lamps, tungsten for high speed steel, potash and a
variety of zinc products.
The loss of the photographic and instruments industries must have been a blow
to Manchester's pride. Sixty years before the war Manchester had been a centre
of the photographic industry, as the superb work of James Mudd testifies. And
John Benjamin Dancer, the instrument maker of Cross Street, had invented
microphotography. Moreover, he had made balances, a travelling microscope and
the famous thermometers for James Prescott Joule.9
The outbreak of war soon convinced many people that the Germans, though
industrious and efficient, were singularly unoriginal, being parasitic on other
people for the really big ideas.10 The loss of so many science-based industries to
Germany seemed to confirm this; and it may well be that we have here the origin
of the popular belief that we (the British) have the original ideas but it is the
foreigner who exploits them and makes a profit. Curiously enough, the French have
exactly the same belief about themselves.11 No Victorian would have made such
a confession of failure!
The immediate national response to the war was a rush to the colours in which
many young scientists and, one must assume, even more potential young
scientists joined. Universities waived their regulations so that undergraduates
could join up without losing their academic rights, and they urged their staffs,
laboratory attendants and other college servants to enlist, if fit, with promises
of re-employment after the war. In many universities the number of under-
graduates of military age was, at the beginning of the Michaelmas term, down
by about a half. This did not satisfy one distinguished officer who thought that
the universities ought to be entirely empty.12 However, it was pointed out that
many of those returning were either unfit or were not British subjects. The
National Physical Laboratory was able to spare 25 % of its staff for the forces,
although it continued to function in reduced circumstances.13
Distinguished scientists who promptly wrote to the War Office to offer ideas,
inventions, or personal service received polite acknowledgments - and heard
nothing more.'4 The learned and professional societies - the Royal Society, the
Chemical Society, the Institution of Electrical Engineers, etc., formed committees
to coordinate war work and to draw up registers of members available for war
work. All this was given free of charge, as was service on a number of govern-
ment committees.15 It seemed that science had not entirely lost its amateur
status.
The absence of German products soon made itself felt. Before the end of August
a government committee of ten was trying to cope with the shortage of drugs. On
25 August a committee under Lord Haldane was set up to deal with the shortage

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 450 D. S. L. Cardwell (Discussion Meeting)

of chemicals.t On 12 September a committee was set up by the Board of Trade

and the chemical societies to deal with the shortage of optical glass.
As a result of the evidence collected by the Haldane Committee,16 the Govern-
ment resolved to set up a Joint Stock Dye Manufacturing Company with a share
capital of ?3 million, one half of which was to be a government loan at 4 %, and
the remainder to be raised by the investing public. The details of the scheme were
announced on 22 December and the prospectus of British Dyes (Limited) put
before the country in March 1915. But it had a bad press. The Board did not include
a single scientist. Ramsay and Roscoe both protested publicly.17 Ramsay insisted
that if the company was to be successful there must be a scientist on the Board.
All the precedents showed that successful enterprises in the chemical industry
had been, and were, those controlled by chemists. Roscoe pointed out that
scientific direction was needed because the success of British Dyes would depend
on its capacity to innovate.
This may well have been the first instance of the argument that has frequen
been heard: successful firms are those that have scientists on their boards. In a
case the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade unwittingly confirmed
the argument when, at the conclusion of a debate, he said that a scientist would
be unfitted to sit on the Board, for if he did the others, being mere businessmen,
would be entirely in his hands. On which Nature commented scornfully :18

'We are thus authoritatively informed from his seat in Parliament, by the
Secretary of the very Board which is entrusted with the duty to look after the
commercial and industrial interests of the country, that the first qualification
of a director of a public company subsidised by the Government is that he must
know nothing of the business in which that Company proposes to engage.'

It is likely that the businessmen and the civil servants involved in the scheme
thought that German patent specifications were full and sufficient guides to
manufacture, while in practice they were usually deliberately inadequate and even
misleading. One could hardly hope to by-pass the thirty or forty years' expertise
that the Germans had built up merely by investing ?3 million, which in any case
represented only about a quarter of the capital value of the main German firms.:
The issue was undersubscribed and the scheme was withdrawn. In a new and
amended scheme the capital was reduced to ?2 million, and the Government
proposed to make ?100000 available for research spread over ten years. There
was to be a research department aided by an advisory council of scientists - but
there was still no scientific representation on the board of directors.

t Its members include G. T. Beilby, Ivon Levinstein, Raphael Meldola and W. H. Perkin,
Junior.
I Magnetos presented the same sort of problems. Small permanent magnets were not
manufactured in Britain, nor were things like hard rubber insulating material, fine enamelled
copper wire, and oiled silk or paper for insulation. These problems were all solved, for while
in 1914 Britain produced 1140 magnetos per annum, in the last month of the war she made
no less than 18000.

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 Science and World War I 451

Chemists were the most numerous, the most vocal and the most coherent group
of scientists in the kingdom. We may assume that the affair of British Dyes
had some influence on the next developments. In March 1915 the Royal Society
and the Chemical Society submitted a memorandum to the Government on 'the
state of the chemical industry as revealed by the War'. On 6 May 1915 a deputa-
tion of the societies called on the Presidents of the Boards of Trade and of
Education (Mr Runciman and Mr Pease) to consider the memorandum. A central
committee was called for to act as a link between the Government, the universi-
ties and industry. Such a body would have been most useful in setting British Dyes
on a firm basis. The deputation was told that the Government had under con-
sideration a scheme for substantial assistance for 'scientific education and
industrial research'. A week later, Mr Pease announced in the Commons that the
Government intended to set up an Advisory Council on Industrial Research. This
was to be composed of eminent scientists and among the priority researches would
be investigations into optical glass and hard porcelain.'9 Staff would be recruited
and the Government proposed to make ?25 000 or ?30 000 available in the first year.
The subsequent White Paper (Cd 8005) indicated that a Committee of the Privy
Council would be responsible for the expenditure sanctioned by Parliament and
would be guided in its decisions by the Advisory Council of scientists. The duties
of the Council were to initiate research studentships and fellowships, to advise on
specific researches and to consider proposals for developing research institutions.
The Council was to be smaller in order to be efficient but it was expected to work
through specialized sub-committees.t Office and staff were to be provided by the
Board of Education.
The allocation of research grants was to be made at the request of learned and
professional societies. It was expected that most research would be done in the
universities and the larger technical colleges. And this may have come at a most
opportune moment for the universities, for with a catastrophic fall in student
numbers, and therefore in income from fees, they were under pressure to
economize as much as possible. The Government, after all, had closed the great
London museums; why should all the universities remain open?
The Committee of the Privy Council for Scientific and Industrial Research was
set up in July 1915. The report of its first year's activities, published in September
1916, revealed that there was a severe shortage of research workers - hardly
surprising in the circumstances - and a lack of cooperative spirit between the
major parties involved.20 There had been, they observed ruefully, far too few
science graduates just before the war to allow a substantial expansion of resear
work. They also pointed out that small firms could not afford research so some
of combination would be necessary. But, as H. A. L. Fisher remarked shortly
afterwards, '. . .we are an old country, of old and small traditional businesses'.21

t The first members were Lord Rayleigh, G. T. Beilby, W. Duddell, Bertram Hopkinson,
J. A. M'Clelland, Raphael Meldola and R. Threlfall with Sir William M'Cormick as
administrative chairman.

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 452 D. S. L. Cardwell (Discussion Meeting)

It was inappropriate for the new organization to be an adjunct to the Board

of Education when so many of its activities were concerned with industrial re-
search. It was therefore decided to establish a new department under the Privy
Council: the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research.22 The second report
of D.S.I.R. revealed that the Government was prepared to make ?1 million
available over a period of five years to help industry set up research associations.
Apart from tax concessions, the Government would provide subsidies of up to ?1
for ?1. It was hoped that the research associations would soon be self-supporting.
Progress had already been made toward the establishment of the various textile,
the photographic manufacturers and, oddly enough, iron-puddling research
associations. At the same time the National Physical Laboratory was to be trans-
ferred from the Royal Society to the D.S.I.R. and the first research board - the
Fuel Research Board - was instituted.
So much for the impact of the war on the organization of science as far as
industry and the state were concerned.t
When we consider the impact of the war on education, scholarship, and learning,
we notice a curious parallel with the Napoleonic period. At a low point in the
military fortunes of Prussia, Wilhelm von Humboldt founded the University of
Berlin (1809); this was the first significant event in the development of the
German educational system, with all its implications for industrial success. In the
same way, in the terrible year 1916, the British educational system entered a
period of urgent reform.
This was logical. If the war had shown the importance of science and, at the
same time, there was a shortage of qualified, competent scientists it was reasonable
to look at the system of education. On 2 February a memorandum, signed by
leading scientists, appeared.24 It asked that science be given its proper place in
education. And it pointed out that of 35 leading public schools, 34 had classicists
as headmasters; furthermore, Sandhurst was probably the only military academy
in Europe that did not require science as an entry qualification and did not include
science in the curriculum. Shortly after this it was shown that of 114 headmasters
in the Headmasters' Conference, 92 had classic degrees.25
On 3 May a conference, with Lord Rayleigh in the Chair, was held at the
Linnean Society; it was decided to form a 'Neglect of Science' committee. 13000
copies of the Report of the Proceedings of the Conference were distributed. The
reformers asked that university scholarships should not unduly favour Latin and
Greek; that natural science should be considered part of a liberal education; and
that science should be included in the examinations for the Home and Indian
Civil Services as well as for Sandhurst. All these reforms should encourage science
teaching in schools and universities.

t At the end of the war, Levinstein's and British Dyes announced that they were going
to amalgamate, while it was learned that the German firms - Meister, Lucius; Leopold
Cas~sella; Badische Aniline; etc. had combined to make a group with a capital of 1 000 million
marks23 - a step toward the formation of I. G. Farben Industrie.

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 Science and World War I 453

There was opposition from the humanists, but in early July 1916, it was
announced that there would be a Government Committee, headed by Sir J. J.
Thomson, on the place of natural science in education, and at the same time
a committee to study the role of modern languages. Less than a year later a
Treasury Committee's Report (20 June 1917, Cd 8657) placed science on a par
with the classics and made a paper on the principles of science compulsory for all
candidates for the Higher Civil Service. The consequential demand for science
teachers could only be beneficial. And it was hoped that the diffusion of science
among senior civil servants would obviate mistakes of the type said to have been
committed earlier in the war. Perhaps this was an early instance of the hope that
scientists and scientific method could cure the ills of the world?
The shortage of graduates with research experience had been noticed by the
Committee of the Privy Council. But already, in May 1916, W. H. Perkin, junior,
at Oxford had got approval for a Statute that research be an essential requirement
for an honours degree in chemistry. Ten months later, on 13 March 1917, Oxford
approved the establishment of the doctorate of philosophy degree. Other univer-
sities followed suit.
The Ph.D. degree had, I believe, two sources. Perkin, like many chemists, had
experienced German university education and valued the research training it had
given him. To adopt the Ph.D. degree in 1917 was therefore almost an instance
of imitation being the sincerest form of enmity. But a more direct reason seems
to have been the demand from the wider English-speaking world. The American
and Canadian universities had long accepted the Ph.D. degree; the war had brought
the English-speaking world closer together and many young Dominion and (later)
American soldiers passed through Britain. Some wished to return to Britain to
study after graduation. A Ph.D. would be an approriate recognition for post-
graduate work. A request, in such terms, from peoples to whom the British owed
so much was ultimately irresistible. In the last year of the war, Lord Balfour
proposed that representatives of British universities should visit the States to
promote the interchange of students. British Ph.D.s would be greatly valued by
our cousins and allies. The Balfour mission reached the States at the very end of
the war.
From this distance we can, I think, begin to see World War I as a historical turn-
ing point in British, and perhaps in world science. It saw the final professionaliza-
tion of science in Britain, the disappearance of the old devotees (the class to which
Darwin and Joule had belonged), the national recognition of science and scientific
education, and the setting up of appropriate state and industrial scientific institu-
tions. In a sense Britain was given a second chance - but at what a cost!
On the debit side it also saw the destruction of the old European structure of
science. Germany was ostracized. Europe was ruined, with the nations further
apart than before the war - witness the rigorous application of the passport
system. From now on Britain looked rather to America. And yet, historically
speaking, science had been a European affair, a series of debates, conjectures and

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 454 D. S. L. Cardwell (Discussion Meeting)

refutations if you like, conducted between Germans and Italians, Scotsmen and
Frenchmen, Austrians and Swedes, Englishmen and Germans. Something
valuable had been lost here.
And more still was lost through the appalling slaughter. Many were worried
about this, for it was the energetic, the fit, the public-spirited who went first.
From professors to schoolboys, from science masters to professional astrono-
mers and government scientists, the slaughter was quite impartial. As Nature
remarked:

'Most readers will, we believe, know personally, of several highly distinguished

and markedly original men, whose deaths on the field have left the race, what-
ever statisticians may say, very definitely the poorer... we know not how to
replace them'.26

What was true of Britain was also true of France, Germany, Italy and Russia.
One conclusion is I think unavoidable: the war was a disaster for science, con-
sidered as an international intellectual endeavour.
Finally it is pertinent to ask what was the standing of science after the war.
As far as I can see it must have been enhanced. Lord Cromer, one of the
humanists in the 1916 debate, believed that the Germans were barbarians because
they were notoriously scientific. But the statesmen and other civil leaders of
Germany, in fact of all nations in the war, had been educated in the traditional,
humane disciplines: law, classics, history and philosophy. The exponents of
' might is right' were historians such as Heinrich von Treitschke and von
Bernhardi, and philosophers of the school of Hegel with their doctrine that the
state is above morality. We may usefully contrast here Bernard Bosanquet's
Hegelian work, The philosophical theory of the state, (1899), with L. T. Hobhouse's
refutation, The metaphysical theory of the state, (1918). And if one argued that
evolutionary biology justified the emergent bully-boy, as indeed certain German
extremists did,27 British scientists could always point out that T. H. Huxley, had,
in his Romanes Lecture of 1893, argued powerfully that it was impossible to derive
ethical principles, or social philosophies from evolutionary biology.28 Even on the
battlefield the record of science was, with the exception of the use of poison gas,
a good one. None of the main weapons could be ascribed to recent scientific
research: even the Flammenwerfer had a history going back to the Byzantines
and their Greek Fire, while the machine-gun had been invented at the end of the
American Civil War. On the other hand sanitary and medical science had saved
the lives of countless soldiers, while the Commander-in-Chief, Sir Douglas Haig,
had publicly thanked the scientists for the skill and promptitude with which they
had produced effective gas-masks.
I infer that science may have been one of the few institutions to emerge
from the war comparatively untarnished and with enhanced prestige. Much else
was discredited: national politics, traditional forms of education, organized
religion, the economic order. Science, on the other hand, showed that men could

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 Science and World War I 455

achieve things that were still worth while. I suggest that science was a great solace
in the 'twenties and 'thirties and this may go far to explain its popularity in those
decades.29 But this is another matter altogether.

NOTES AND REFERENCES

The 'teagle', or lift, or elevator, appears to have been invented by one of the Strutt
family toward the end of the eighteenth century, and was first installed in one of their cotton-
mills. There is an account of the invention in Abraham Rees' Cyclopaedia, (1819), vol. 22,
article 'Manufacture of cotton'. See also Andrew Ure, The philosophy of manufactures
(London 1835), and R. S. Fitton & A. P. Wadsworth, The Strutts and the Arkwrights (Man-
chester University Press, 1958), p. 215. I am grateful to M. Jean Gavois for calling my
attention to the important and interesting, if undramatic, invention of the lift.
2 Report of Royal Commission on scientific instruction and the advancement of science (4 vols.,
1872-5).
3 D. S. L. Cardwell, The organisation of science in England (Heinemann, London 2nd ed.,
1972), p. 229.
4 'Sweating the Scientist', Science Progress (1913-1914), vol. 8, p. 559; and, ibid. (1914-
1915), vol. 9, p. 197.
5 Chemical News (1915), vol. 111, p. 108. A letter from Sir William Tilden, published in the
issue of 26 February 1915, called attention to the fact that the Inspectorate Department of
the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich, was advertising for Temporary Assistant Chemists, of graduate
or equivalent status, at ?2. Os. 6d. per week (less 4d. p.w. insurance). The advertisement
received wide and unfavourable publicity; it also caused lasting bitterness.
6 Carl Friedrich Beyer, Herbert Schunck and Friedrich Engels were among the earlier
scientific and industrial leaders of Manchester who were either Germans or of German
extraction. But the German element was prominent in the middle ranks, as well as in the
leadership, of local industry. The trade directories confirm that, before 1914, a surprisingly
large number of smaller and specialized firms seem to have been controlled by Germans.
7 See, for example, W. M. Gardner (ed.), The Rritish coal-tar industry: its origin, development
and decline (London, 1915), which contains a selection of key papers by W. H. Perkin (senior),
Sir H. E. Roscoe, Raphael Meldola, A. G. Green and others; also J. J. Beer, 'Coal tar dye manu-
facture and the origin of the modern industrial research laboratory', Isis (1958), vol. 49, p. 123.
8 W. V. Farrar, 'Synthetic dyestuffs before Perkin', Endeavour, vol. 33 (1974), p. 149.
9 Joule had originally bought his thermometers from Paris. J. B. Dancer, in his view,
'completed the first accurate thermometers which were ever made in England'; J. R. Ash-
worth, 'List of apparatus now in Manchester which belonged to Dr J. P. Joule, F.R.S.; with
remarks on his MSS, letters, and autobiography', Memoirs of the Manchester Literary and
Philosophical Society, (1930-1), vol. 75, p. 105. For J. B. Dancer, see Manchester Memoirs,
(1964-5), vol. 107, p. 115, and (1972-3), vol. 115, p. 80.
10 Thus Sir William Ramsay considered that the best science coming from Germany ha
done by Jews, for the Germans were unoriginal; Nature (1914-1915), vol. 94, p. 137. Others
who argued that the Germans were unoriginal were Karl Pearson and Sir E. Ray Lankester;
ibid, p. 527. Although the alleged unoriginality of German scientists was a recurrent theme
during the war, it is only fair to recall that many British scientists were prepared to pay
tribute to Germany's contributions to knowledge while deploring her militarism. When Emil von
Behring died in 1917 a long and respectful obituary notice appeared in Nature (1917), vol. 99.
11 Andre Siegfried holds this view, and so does Jean Cocteau. See Andre Siegfried, The
character of peoples (Jonathan Cape, London 1952), p. 55.
12 Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge, The Times, 29 August 1914.
13 The National Physical Laboratory began in 1902 with 26 employees; in July 1914 it
had 187. After the sharp fall at the outbreak of war, numbers recovered strongly so that by
December 1918 there were about 550, of whom about 200 were women. Many of these had
been employed on secret war work.

29 Vol. 342. A.

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 456 D. S. L. Cardwell (Discussion Meeting)

14 Dr Chaim Weizmann wrote that at the outbreak of the war he re

from the War Office inviting all scientists to hand over discoveries that might be of military
value. He replied at once, offering his fermentation process, but his letter was ignored and it
was not until 1916 that his process for making acetone was taken up, Chaim Weizmann, Trial
and error (Hamish Hamilton, London 1949), p. 218. Nearly a year after the war began J. A.
Fleming complained that his services had not been called on; Nature (1915), vol. 95, p. 419.
See also Nature (1917), vol. 99, p. 85.
15 'Scientific Committees on National Problems', Nature (1915-16), vol. 96, p. 525.
16 Lord Moulton, K.C., F.R.S., 'The manufacture of aniline dyes in England', Gardner,
op. cit. (7), p. 351. See also Nature (1914-15), vol. 94, p. 5.
17 The Times, 10 March 1915.
18 'Science and Industry', Nature (1915), vol. 95, p. 57.
19 'An Advisory Council for Industrial Research', Nature (1915), vol. 95, p. 321.
20 Report of Committee of the Privy Council for Scientific and Industrial Research
1916, (Cd 8336). The absence of a cooperative spirit was noticed for at least two more years.
The minutes of the Chemistry Sectional Committee of the Manchester College of Technology
(now U.M.I.S.T.) meeting on 9 July 1918 record that of all the firms in the dyestuffs and allied
industries only Levinstein's were willing '. . . to cooperate with the College in work connected
with their industries and, in particular, to send their chemists to work in the College under
the direction of Professor (A. G.) Green'. From Reports of Sectional Committees in U.M.I.S.T.
archives.
21 H. A. L. Fisher, speech at Mansion House on 30 April 1917, 11th Annual Report of the
British Science Guild (June 1917).
22 Statement of Lord Crewe, Chairman of Committee of Privy Council, to Deputation of
Board of British Scientific Societies on 1 December, 1916, Nature (1916-17), vol. 98, p. 272.
23 Nature (1918-19), vol. 102, p. 66; The Times, 6 January 1919.
24 The Times, 2 February 1916.
25 'The Public Schools and National Supremacy', Nature (1917-18), vol. 100, p. 41. The
champions of classical education included A. C. Benson, Lord Bryce, John Burnet, Lord
Cromer and Lord Curzon.
26 'One lamentable result of the War is the loss to the country of many brilliant and
promising younger research workers who cannot be quickly replaced', J. A. Fleming;
NVature (1916-17), vol. 98, p. 184. See also Nature (1914-15), vol. 94, pp. 208 and 544; (1917),
vol. 99, p. 431; (1918-19), vol. 102, p. 48; Contemporary Review (March 1915); Science Progress
(1915-16), vol. 10, p. 73; (1917-18), vol. 12, p. 132; Eugenics Review (October 1918).
27 In particular Ernst Haeckel, Wilhelm von Ostwald and the members of the German
Monist League. See Daniel Gasman, The scientific origins of National Socialism (MacDonald
Elsevier, New York and London, 1971).
28 T. H. Huxley, 'Evolution and ethics', Collected essays (London, 1893-4), vol. 9. Huxley's
lecture was reprinted fifty years later together with his grandson's Romanes Lecture of 1943;
Sir Julian Huxley, 'Evolutionary ethics'.
29 I refer to the works of A. N. Whitehead, Sir Arthur Eddington, Sir James Jeans and the
other able writers whose efforts to popularize the philosophy of science were so gratefully
received by the reading public in those troubled decades.

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