Page:Science and the Great War.djvu/12

6 done 'valuable service'! And some people speak of science as tending towards a low and material outlook! Our scientific men were denied the recognition accepted by Italians and Germans, while the French Government and the French Chemical Society were rudely treated,—and all this on the strength of regulations signed by a statesman who was himself keenly interested in science!

The attitude towards science and learning which I have reason to fear is common in the army is illustrated by the words of a British officer I met, while travelling through Canada in the autumn of 1897, with a number of scientific friends—members of the British Association. When he realized that we were a scientific party he asked us whether we knew a certain officer who, he said, had become a 'bloke' and held some kind of 'blokeship'. This was his genial way of showing his respect to his fellow travellers, and also to an absent brother officer who was the most distinguished living exponent of his particular branch of learning. This is the kind of wind—a poison gas more deadly than any German invention—which has not indeed brought the whirlwind but has sapped the strength of our defence.

To take another example. I once expressed the opinion that the greatest mistake of the Boer War was made by Lord Roberts when he neglected to fortify the waterworks of Bloemfontein and so compelled the troops to use the infected wells of the place. The reply of one closely associated with the military life was, 'You make a mistake in blaming Lord Roberts. It was the fault of his principal medical officer, who was not strong enough to insist on the Commander-in-Chief providing the guard.' This seems to me a very significant saying. Instead of science, in this case the science of health, being an