Page:Science and the Great War.djvu/13

Rh essential thing which the leader must secure first of all as a foundation for everything else, it is revealed as something outside, something to be neglected until the nuisance of listening to its demands becomes more intolerable than the nuisance of acceding to them. And this, I am afraid, is too often a true picture of the attitude of the Government and the public opinion of the country towards science.

Professor Perkin has shown, in this year's presidential address to the Chemical Society, that the coal-tar industry, founded on the discoveries made by his father, now leads to our annual purchase of colouring matters to the value of £2,000,000, of which 90 per cent, comes from Germany; furthermore, that these dyes are essential to our textile industries, representing at least £200,000,000 per annum and employing 1,500,000 workers. He traces the decline of the coal-tar industry and its gradual transference to Germany, beginning during the period 1870–5, to the insufficient number of first-rate British chemists necessary for developing the existing processes, and especially for the all-important work of making new discoveries.

The same failure is apparent in other industries, as was shown by Professor Perkin in his evidence before the consultative Committee of the Board of