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Memories and Reflections

By Professor A. V. Hill

Transcribed and edited from the files held by Churchill College by Roger Thomas Department of , Development and Neuroscience University of 2

Brief Biography Edited from Wikipedia

Born in , Archibald Vivian Hill was educated at Blundell's School and graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge as third wrangler in the tripos before turning to physiology. While still an undergraduate at Trinity College, he derived in 1909 what came to be known as the Langmuir equation. Hill made many exacting measurements of the heat released when skeletal muscles contract and relax. A key finding was that heat is produced during contraction, which requires investment of chemical energy, but not during relaxation, which is passive. While a student he had enrolled in the Officer’s Training Course; he was a crack shot. In 1914, at the outbreak of , Hill because the musketry officer of the Cambridgeshire Regiment. At the end of 1915, while home on leave he was asked by Horace Darwin from the Ministry of Munitions to come for a day to advise them on how to train anti-aircraft gunners. On site, Hill immediately proposed a simple two mirror method to determine airplane's heights. He was later awarded an OBE. Hill returned briefly to Cambridge in 1919 before taking the chair in physiology at the University of in 1920 in succession to William Stirling. Using himself as the subject —he ran every morning from 7:15 to 10:30 — he showed that running a dash relies on energy stores which afterwards are replenished by increased consumption. Paralleling the work of German Otto Fritz Meyerhof, Hill elucidated the processes whereby mechanical work is produced in muscles. The two shared the 1922 in Physiology and for this work. In 1923 he succeeded as professor of physiology at University College , a few years later becoming a Royal Society Research professor there, where he remained until retirement in 1951. In 1933, he became with Lord Beveridge and Lord Rutherford a founder member and vice-president of the Academic Assistance Council (which in 1936 became the Society for the Protection of Science and Learning). By the start of the Second World War, the organisation had saved 900 academics (18 of whom went on to win Nobel Prizes) from Nazi persecution. In 1935 he served with and Sir on the committee that gave birth to . He was also biological secretary of the Royal Society. He served as an independent Member of Parliament (MP) for Cambridge University from 1940 to 1945. In 1940 he was posted to the British Embassy in Washington to promote war research in the still neutral United States. The mobilization of Allied scientist was one of the successes in the war. After the war he rebuilt his laboratory at University College and vigorously carried on research. [13] In 1951 his advocacy was rewarded by the establishment of 3 a Department under his leadership. In 1952 he became head of the British Association for the Advancement of Science and Secretary General of the International Union of Scientific Organizations. He was President of the Marine Biological Association from 1955 to 1960. In 1967 he retired to Cambridge where he gradually lost the use of his legs. He died in 1977 "held in the greatest affection by more than a hundred scientific descendants all over the world". 4

These elegant little volumes were made by the Archives Centre of Churchill College Cambridge, with the help of, the Xerox Centre of the University Library. For several years I have been collecting and polishing material under the title Memories and Reflections But as one approaches 90 one ceases to be “news", so I have put my thoughts and experiences on record, while my wits are about me, so that future biographers or historians may be informed of some of the people and events in a happy and sometimes adventurous life. I am grateful to all those who have helped and encouraged me, particularly Iris Gaddum; some of them think there is still material for a final smaller volume. We shall see. (Note by AVH at the front of the original volumes he deposited at Churchill.)

Presented by Professor A. V. Hill, CH, OBE, FRS May 1974

Memories and Reflections Preface My last experiments in physiology were completed in 1967, just before we returned to Cambridge after forty seven years elsewhere. Their results were published in 1970 in a book, First and Last Experiments in Muscle . That left me free to turn to something else. At the age of twenty three I became a physiologist; and so remain today, at least in cast of mind if not in occupation. Being a physiologist has many advantages, not least that it saves one from believing in magic; and physiologists as a rule, like sailors or engineers, are pleasant companions. But at intervals I was persuaded, or was conscripted, or even deliberately chose, to do something quite different; which provided many friendships and adventures, as well as disappointments. These are reflected in various things I have written; which, when I read them again after many years, seem less dull than might have been feared. With much help and encouragement from others I have been collecting a lot of things together, as though for publication. It seems uncertain whether I shall ever publish these myself, but if I put them in order perhaps someone else will look at them later in a friendly way and decide which should be allowed to survive. But even if survival is allowed, how long can it last. I agree with a sentence in a letter from a wise friend: My belief is that we are witnessing something like the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, compressed into ten years instead of four hundred. 5

That is certainly no joke; but what can one do about it at eighty-seven if the lemmings are determined, as they seem to be, on self-destruction?

APOLOGIA The reader may think that a good deal of nonsense has been included in Chapters 1 to 6. Some indeed was put in deliberately as in Alice in Wonderland, Just for fun. But there was usually a better reason. Over the years I have been in frequent conflict with the inhumanity of nonsense, ranging from Hitler's to anti-vivisection, from politics to panic, from religious conservatism to persecution, from snobbery to racial violence, from belief in the inheritance of acquired characteristics to murder. Nonsense is generally best defeated by counter nonsense, or derision; that is better than arguing about it seriously.

Contents

First come six chapters 1 – 6; the ch.7, an autobiographical sketch; and finally descriptions of eight previous books, made by using their prefaces or introductions. The numbers, 1 to 130, of the articles in chapters 1 to 6 are used for the main index; also for cross-references in the text, where they are shown (without other indication) in heavy (bold face) type. There are no cross-references between chapters 7 and 8, and then rest.

EDITOR’S NOTE. Given how easy it is now to search a word or pdf file, I have not tried to prepare a new index or recreate any of the original cross-referencing. I have also failed to insert most of the accents in the quotations from the original French. 6

LIST OF CONTENTS Chapter 1 ABOUT PEOPLE 1. Holland, Lord Knutsford of the London Hospital, (1855-1931). 2. P.S. Kupalov (-1964), Russian physiologist, pupil, friend and colleague of Pavlov; with "Pavlov's Bequest! 3. Karl Pearson, mathematician, statistician and philosopher (1857-1936). 4. Diphtheria and Prejudice, Ernest Brown and Wilson Jameson; the useful. guinea-pig, 1941 and 1943. 5. Jewels in my acquaintance with C.S. Sherrington (1857-1952). 6. Vinogradov, Maisky and Henry Dale; 1942 and 1946 7. W.R. Hardy, sailor, biologist, physical-chemist; venturing beyond the visible horizon (1864 -1934). 8. "On doing things poorly"; Al, Jerry and Lem, pilots or Liberators, 1943. 9. A Pathan "grandson" and others, 1952. 10. 10. J.F. Hill, embryologist, and an unusual missile,1931. 11. Frederick Kenyon (1863-1952). 12. Jack Egerton as Secretary of the Royal Society, 1938-38. 13. Tizard. Review of book, 1965, and speech by H.T.T.,1942. 14. G.H. Hardy (1877-1947), mathematician, on prostituting one's brains, 1916. 15. Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), An adventurous life. 16. Camille Soula, Toulouse. (1888-1963) A bitter enemy or a devoted friend. 17. Captain V. Lord (-1963). I loved every timber in the old ship. 18. Simon the Bird and Alan Cress, 1944. 19. Lord Cherwell and the Archbishop; about 1943. 20. James Thomson (1823-1854), a splendid understatement; and Boris Babkin (1877-1950), who never forgot. 21. Louis Lapicque: I cannot distinguish between one kind of fascism and another, 1935. 22. Gaetano Martino: from a physiologist to Foreign Minister (not by P.G. Wodehouse), 1927-54. 23. G.H. Hardy - a message of reconciliation, 1940 and 1952. 24. L. Orbeli, in Cambridge1909-10. 25, Gouraud and Birdwood: magicians, 1917. 26. W.H. Gaskell (1847-1914). The origin of vertebrates. 27. W.K. Slater (1693-1970). A tribute. 28. Fairfield Osborn (167-1969). A story, 1909. 29. Baldie Maton (?1887-1965) A rough usage trial. 30. Trenchard (1873-1956). An argument. 31. Henry Archdall (1886- ). A “hymn” and a German pastor. 32. Old soldiers and others. 7

33. "I don't think a professor ought to kick a chap below the belt", 1939. 34. Alexander Maxwell (1880-1963), Now I can tell the story. 35. Beveridge (1879-1963).The defence of free learning,1959 36. Stalin (1879-1952) and Vavilov (1885-1943). 37. Wilfrid Trotter (1672-199) at Buckingham Palace,1936. 38. Commander V.L. Bowring (1875-1951), "Friend and Counsellor". 39. Bertram Hopkinson (1874-1918). Alpine Journal 1919. 40. William Hartree (1870-1943). A tribute. 41. H.H. Fowler (1889-1944), The Times. "A prince among men", E.A. Milne. 42. H.H. Dale (1875-1968). Written for the British Council 1948 43. A.D. Ritchie (1891-1967) scientist and philosopher. A review, 1959, of his book, History and Methods of the Sciences. 44. "Three Corners", 1927-1961. "The nearest to heaven I shall ever get". Chapter 2 POLITICAL 45. How I became a Member of Parliament in 1940. 46. Titles and Honours. 47. The Secretaries of the Royal Society. 48. Equality, 1776 - 49. Per ardua ad Aspra, 1941-2. 50. India's real problem, 1944. 51. Democracy, 1910- 52. Anglo-Soviet Relations,1942; or, Too good to be true,1970 53. Is this a racial war? 1940. 54. Illegitimis non carborundum, 1947. 55. On cat-fights,1898-1972. 56. The adoration of the Royal Family. 57. The Atlantic Charter in Standard and Basic English 1943 58. The Social Sciences, The Times, December 1941 59.. Conversion by bomb, boycott -,or banter 60. Panic. 61. The Central Register of the Ministry of Labour and National Service,1938- . 62. Instant wit, about 1942. Chapter 3 Science, Citizenship, Morality and History 63. Scientists are quite ordinary folk,1951. 8

64. Scientists and morals, 1954. 65. The responsibilities of scientists in modern society. Talk to A.Sc.W.1946. 66. International Relations between Scientific Men, 1945. (Soviet bullies in Romania) 67. Science and Humanity, B.B.C. 1958. 68. The need for moral and intellectual leadership, 1946. I. Lord Samuel II A.V. Hill 69. I. The Sciences are an integral part of general historical study. 1931. And II The Price of Progress, 1972 70. Let his children be fatherless, 1913. 71. Biology or theology. 72. I am not a pessimist, when I expect evil what happens is generally worse than I expect. (G.M.T.to A.V.H.) 73. Scepticism and Faith, 1931. 74. The use and misuse of science in government, 1941. 75. The Ethical Dilemma of Science, 1952. 76 Do I believe in God? – 77. Whosoever will be saved: Athanasius (296 - 373) 78. Scientific Research and Development in the Empire, 1942. Chapter 4. Experiments on Animals and Man 79. Humanity without knowledge can be a very cruel thing, 1929-54, 80. Assassination by prayer, 1912. 81. How antivivisection societies lost their status as Charities; about 1944. 82. The laughter that lightens life. 83. On punishing Nazi criminals, 1945. (Hitler's animal protection law). 84. The effect of body temperature on athletic performance in tortoises and men, 1964. 85. Tortoises and intelligence, 1946-51. 86. The Communists new weapon, germ warfare,1953. 67. A,B,C,D.E.F. Spooks, frauds, ectoplasm and self-delusion1920-1933. 68. A great fish, 1970. 69. Go up you baldhead! about B.C.696 (Usher) 90. Tact 1943-4. 91. On wangling in a good cause, 1916, 1945. Chapter 5 WAR 92. 'Feebleness of mind? or moral obliquity? 1913 9

93. The Society of Brigands, 1918. 94. The Royal Navy Club, 1954. 95. If ------(1916-72). 96 He blew with his winds and they were scattered, 1917 97. ''Even Littlewood could not make ballistics respectable”,1940. 98. The point of destruction, 1915-1918. 99. On shooting down a Zeppelin (honoris causa), 1916, 1944. 100. Who is your commanding officer? 1919 101. Fruits of provocation, 1936. 102. An untimely prayer,1943 - 44. 103 A message from another world, 1941. 104. The real reason was highly discreditable, 1942. 105. Science in the war, 1941. 106. Three letters from America, 1940. 107. The world of tomorrow, 1940. Chapter 6 Grave or Gay 108. Magic or chance? 1926. 109. Magic or chance? 1951. 110. The XIII International Congress of Physiologists, Boston, Mass. 1929. 111. The absurdity of antisemitism, 1945. 112. Retrospective sympathetic affection, 1966. 113. India - Scientific development or Disaster, 1944. 114 Obscenity, ancient and modern, 1965. 115. On re-investing milk, 1936. 116. If e'er you ride without a light‚.1910. 117. Beware river running up hill, 1909. 118. Grave, gay, satirical or silly. 119. Large streams from little fountains flow, Tall from little acorns grow, 1911- 1974. 120. Arithmetic for fun, 1961. 121. Mugwumps, 1946. 122. My tree, 1953-1971. 123. Sympathy - or compassion? 124. The merging of with biology, 1950. 10

125. Independence in Publication. 126. Refugees as a symptom of an international disorder and isolationism; 1942. 127. Our alien friends, 1940. 128. The origins of matter and life: speculations are not evidence,1972. 129. "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark". 130, "This Titan", 131. Autobiographical Sketch revised from first version published 132. Introductions and prefaces from eight books..

1. LORD KNUTSFORD (1855-1951)

My chief connexion with Sydney Holland, Lord Knutsford, the famous Chairman of the London Hospital, was through the Research Defence Society; and he was pleased to call me, following my initials, Anti-Vivi-section Hill. This tribute to him was in The Times, 3 Aug. 1931. Among all the tributes to Lord Knutsford none has yet referred to his championship of workers in medical and scientific research. A devoted lover of animals himself - I have heard him speak whimsically of 'a great friend of mine', referring, as one discovered, to a dog - he hated to see opposition to research on the diseases of animals and man alike; and only a few days before his operation he attended the annual meeting of the R.S.P.C.A., ready to defend that great society from falling into the hands of those who seek to cripple research. Physiologists, veterinary scientists, medical men, not only the sick poor, owe much to the gallant and generous way in which, in public and in private, in the and elsewhere, he insisted that they should be allowed to carry an their work in peace. His enthusiasm even led him some years ago to Hyde Park on three successive Sundays to challenge publicly the opponents of medical research. Last June, at a lecture by Dr H.H. Dale, he said: "One feels almost ashamed that men such as the lecturer, who are devoting all their lives to such great work, should be accused of being cruel monsters and as people carrying on the work for their own profit." And yet, vigorous as his opinions and his language were, hating all unkindness, despising all meanness, looking only for generous motives, he refused to attribute such accusations to anything but honest mistake. His ready wit, his sagacity in debate, his transparent honesty and friendliness, were given ungrudgingly, to the cause of medical progress by research. In the House of Lords he proposed once that "Your Lordships should have gramophone records made of this annual debate" (on the Dogs Bill); at an Annual Meeting of the Research Defence Society he actually induced one of the leading anti-vivisectionists to propose a vote of thanks to the lecturer by getting her, first of all, to admit that she 11 had enjoyed the lecture! At the last meeting, in June, he finished gaily: - "The only other item is a vote of thanks. I propose a vote of thanks to myself for the able way in which I have carried out the duties of the chair.”

2. P.S. KUPALOV. In The Times of 19 March 1964 was a short notice of the death in Leningrad on 17 March, of P.S. Kupalov, a well-known physiologist, the author of many books and a pupil and colleague of Pavlov. He had worked at University College, London, from 1928 to 1930 and had so many friends in that I wrote the following short appreciation of him which was published in The Times on 25 March. Kupalov had originally intended to be a priest. But the Russian Church, being very broadminded, had encouraged him to go to Pavlov’s lectures. (Pavlov himself was the son of a priest and the grandson of a verger of a church and his wife was the daughter of a priest). The lectures interested him so deeply that he abandoned his original plan and remained with Pavlov. But he retained his early philosophical bias and must, I am sure, have been acquainted with the English Bible. Otherwise where could he have got the words for his translation of Pavlov’s Bequest? (see below). “P.S. Kupalov, whose death was reported in The Times on March 19, had been a member of the Physiological Society since 1936. When in 1935 he accepted my offer to propose him he wrote "mentally and with all my feelings I am under strong influence of English physiology"; he remained deeply attached to the friends he had made here in 1928-30. He had come, at Pavlov's suggestion, with a Fellowship of the Rockefeller Foundation, "to study new physical and physio- chemical methods"; and although most of his time later was devoted to problems of the nervous system derived from Pavlov's work, he remained keenly interested in the things he had started to work at here. In his later years he was president of the All-Union, and of the Leningrad Physiological Societies.

“Kupalov was a gently lovable person of quite unusual humility: "I did not write to you"(for more than a year)"since I decided that is a crime to spend your time answering my idle letters." He had a characteristic philosophical approach to scientific problems: "Some people have poor imagination, they cannot bring the facts together into an integral picture - therefore they use words and when it is necessary to change some words they think that all is changed." In 1936, after Pavlov's death ( a "very shaking and terrible event"; Kupalov sent me his own beautiful translation of Pavlov's Bequest to the Scientific Youth of his Country, an unusual and moving document, today fairly widely known. When he was told how warmly tis was appreciated he replied "the translation is just verbal"; but then confessed, having read it again, "now it is the miracle for me". It may have been verbal, but Kupalov had the gift of choosing the right words; which seemed somehow to drop out of the Authorized Version of the Bible - by a miracle.” Pavlov’s Bequest 12

When I received Kupalov’s translation in 1936 I sent a copy of it to Dr J. McKeen Cattell, then Editor of Science, who printed it there at once. It was seen by Dr Langley Porter in San Francisco; he had a large number of copies printed to give to his friends. While I was there, in the autumn of 1936, Langley Porter, without knowing I had anything to do with it, proudly gave me a copy. When I told him of my part in it he gave me fifty copies; but these were soon exhausted as I wandered about in America, and he had to send me fifty more. Following is the text of it

BEQUEST OF PAVLOV TO THE ACADEMIC YOUTH OF HIS COUNTRY. * What can I wish to the youth of my country who devote themselves to Science? Firstly, gradualness. About this most important condition of fruitful scientific work I can never speak without emotion. Gradualness, gradualness and gradualness. From the very beginning of your work school yourselves to severe gradualness in the accumulation of knowledge. Learn the ABC of science before you try to ascend to its summit. Never begin the subsequent without mastering the preceding. Never attempt to screen an insufficiency of knowledge even by the most audacious surmise and hypothesis. Howsoever this soap-bubble will rejoice your eyes by its play it inevitably will burst and you will have nothing except shame. School yourselves to demureness and patience. Learn to inure yourselves to drudgery in science. Learn, compare, collect the facts. Perfect as is the wing of a bird, it never could raise the bird up without resting on air. Facts are the air of a scientist. Without them you can never fly. Without then your "theories" are vain efforts. By learning, experimenting, observing, try not to stay on the surface of the facts. Do not become the archivists of facts. Try to penetrate to the secret of their occurrence, persistently searching for the laws which govern them. Secondly, modesty. Never think that you already know all. However highly you are appraised, always have the courage to say of yourself - I am ignorant. Do not allow haughtiness to take you in possession. Due to that you will be obstinate where it is necessary to agree, you will refuse useful advice and friendly help, you will lose the standard of objectiveness. Thirdly, passion. Remember that science demands from a man all his life. If you had two lives that would not be enough for you. Be passionate in your work and your searchings. (Written just before his death, at the age of 87 on February 27, 1936. Translated from the Russian by Professor P. Kupalov, chief assistant in the Pavlov Institute at Leningrad.) 13

3. KARL PEARSON. Karl Pearson (1857-1536) was one of the remarkable people I have known. But the many facets of his would require, not a note but a volume. If anyone is led by this note to explore further, let him read the Biographical Memoir by , in Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society, No.5, 1936, pp.73-104, or J.B.S. Haldane's Centenary Lecture at University College, London, in May 1957 (which must be accessible there, or in the Library of the Royal Society). Apart from a few bits of characteristic silliness which one can discount, Haldane's tribute was magnificent. My connexion with Karl Pearson, a very unusual one, was due to the war of 1914-18. At the end of 1916 the Anti-Aircraft Experimental Section of the Munitions Inventions Department was in need of increased staff with knowledge of mathematics and physics. Pearson's old friend W.H. Macaulay of King's College, Cambridge, wrote to him on my behalf to enquire whether his son was available. He was not, but Pearson immediately and characteristically offered his own help, with that of his eight assistants, in our calculating work. His offer was at once accepted and until April, 1918, his devoted labours, with those of a continually increasing staff of computers, were available for the calculation of gun trajectories and range tables of all kinds. From that date his staff was taken over by the Inventions Department and the supervision of the work by A.T. Doodson. Pearson was not easy to instruct (although his chief Instructor was E.A. Milne (1896-1950)) in what he regarded as rough and ready methods: and he often upbraided me for the imperfections of the data we supplied. It was not easy to convince him that these, obtained by expensive firing trials and prolonged calculations, were all that we had or could have. "I pointed out that the Laboratory would lose its reputation in applying such methods." In spite, however, of the frequent revolts, he laboured incessantly at what must have been a very uncongenial job. An early letter is characteristic:- "Please do not place my initials on the charts and Tables. It would have the appearance of arrogating to myself work due to a number of people of whom I am only one. If a mark of this kind is needful, will you please place G.L upon them, which will be quite as distinctive and cover the whole staff of the Galton Laboratory." As G.L. the Tables, and the charts printed by the Ordnance Survey, were marked, except for the first one which produced a letter demanding reparations in no uncertain terms. On April 23, 1918, he handed over the one hundredth G.L. Table. "My ultimate end, if I have one, is to get the War over and to return to my own work." After each air raid, with the 18 pdrs as he called them (really blind 3 inch shells), falling around his house, he expressed his vivid dissatisfaction: "The Bosch really is a person worth thrashing if our people will only stick it out, but I don't think they are going to." At other times he showed a warm and generous appreciation of other people's difficulties. I have about a hundred long and closely written letters of that time, nearly all in his own hand. They show, at an hour of trial, his dominating 14 and pugnacious spirit, controlled by a passion of loyalty and desire to help, in what must have been, for him, the very distasteful role of accepting advice and instruction from people much younger and less experienced than himself. That he did so for those years, and that - as I know - he spoke in later times with affection of his task- masters; that - except for a severe strain caused once by an error in one of his own calculations - we remained friends, not only in 1917-18 but thereafter; all this is a sign of the essential generosity of a human nature which must have given greater trouble to its owner than to his neighbours: they could laugh about it and he could not.

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(4) DIPHTHERIA AND PREJUDICE, THE USEFUL GUINEA PIG, WILSON JAMESON 1941 and 1943 Two letters of mine were published under the first and second titles in The Spectator on 25 April 1941 and in The Times on 23 July.1943. At both times the Minister of Health was Ernest Brown (1881-1962), the Chief Medical Officer of the Ministry was Wilson Jameson (1885-1962). Thousands of children owe their lives to these two men. The third title is a tribute to Wilson Jameson. I knew that a strong move to introduce protective immunisation against diphtheria was being prepared in 1941, and my first letter was to help to forestall the misrepresentation that would certainly follow; it was fear of this that had deterred their timid predecessors from any effective action. By July 1943 the battle had practically been won (In the figure below the precipitous fall of incidence of diphtheria is shown to have started in 1942.) and my second letter was really to say thank you .I said it to Cavia cobaya; but.it was really meant for Ernest Brown and Wilson Jameson. A tribute to Jameson, written in 1962, then follows.

(A) DIPHTHERIA AND PREJUDICE (April 1941) The possibility of protective immunisation against diphtheria has been known since 1923, and its effectiveness has been realised in widespread application in Canada and the United States. The treatment is harmless, simple and inexpensive, 16 and can render a population almost entirely free of the disease - provided that immunisation of children can be secured and maintained on a sufficiently wide scale. In England and Wales we permit 60,000 cases of diphtheria to occur annually, with about 3,000 deaths and a large number of prolonged or permanent disabilities. Five thousand hospital beds, on the average, are occupied continuously by diphtheria cases, at a total yearly cost of much more than £1,000,000. 'Ninety per cent of the cases are children under 15 (Hansard, November 21, 1940, ccA.11). An attempt is being made by the Ministry of Health to induce parents to have their children immunised at the public expense, but diphtheria will not be eliminated until a high proportion are so treated. Many parents are voluntarily accepting the advice given, but there is little prospect, by present methods, of a sufficient proportion to eliminate the disease. The suggestion of "compulsion" acts like a red rag to a bull (unless it be applied to school-attendance!), and there are wealthy agencies, supported by sentimental titled ladies and unsophisticated members of Parliament, which exploit this feeling for their own ends. Ministers, faced with questions in the House, say piously that of course compulsion cannot be contemplated; and argue no doubt in private that more children die and are injured by German bombs than by diphtheria, and that the cost of maintaining the disease is only 1/4,000th part of our national expenditure. The subject is "controversial" and national unity must be maintained, so we tinker with the problem while children, who will be badly wanted later, are killed or injured, and hospital beds which are badly needed now are filled. These children, poor things, are made to die and suffer in the cause of "freedom" - freedom for their careless parents, for a few queer cranks, for some wealthy obscurantist societies - a sacrifice to our national inability to appreciate a great scientific discovery.

(B) THE USEFUL GUINEA PIG (July 1943) I wish to call attention to the public services of cavia cobaya, the common cavy or guinea-pig. In the decade ending 1936 there were, in England and Wales, about 600,000 cases of diphtheria and about 30,000 deaths. That was before the Ministry of Health got to work with immunisation. During those 10 years about 6,000,000 children passed through their susceptible age. One in 10 caught the disease, one in 200 died of it. A high degree of immunity can be produced by two injections of a reagent prepared from diphtheria toxin by treatment with formalin and alum. This "alum- precipitated toxoid", or A.P.T. has lost its toxicity but kept its power of inducing immunity. It is prepared in batches each sufficient to treat 100,000 children. Objections are raised (a) that harm may be done by the injections; (b) that the immunity produced may not be effective; and (c) that experiments on animals are 17 involved. As regards (a), there is no evidence at all that A.P.T. itself can do any harm, provided all proper precautions are taken in injecting it. As regards (b), the chance of contracting diphtheria is reduced at least 10 times, and the chance of death to almost nil, while if every child aced 1 to 13 were treated the disease would be virtually wiped out. As regards (c), guinea pigs are the only animals employed, and the greatest number used for ensuring that a batch of A.P.T. is safe and effective is 20. Each guinea-pig receives two injections at a month's interval - just like a child. It suffers no inconvenience or pain. Ten days after the second injection it is bled - just like a human blood-donor - and its anti-toxin is determined. Thus, 20 guinea-pigs allow 100,000 children to be immunised; 5000 children to each guinea-pig. Of these 5,000 children, according to the of the pre-immunization years, 500 would have contracted diphtheria, 25 would have died from it. Not bad work for one guinea-pig, saving the lives of 25 children! Surely, a public expression of gratitude to Cavia cobaya is more sensible and patriotic than trying to stop children from being immunized against diphtheria.

(C) WILSON JAMESON (1885-1962)

Obituary notice in the Research Defence Society’s Journal Conquest. It was while he was Medical Officer of Health of the Borough of Hornsey, during the 1920's, that I first got to know Wilson Jameson. To everyone's regret, not least to my wife's (she was engaged in various public activities there) he left that post in 1929 to become professor of public health (and later dean) in the recently founded London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. That was probably the job, of all his jobs, in which he was happiest. In 1940 (to quote the B.M,J.) "he relinquished his academic posts, left his beloved School, and became Chief Medical Officer to the Ministry of Health and Ministry of Education". It was the extreme urgency of those days, and Jameson's sense of duty, that persuaded him to make the change. His achievement at the Ministry of Health was in very many fields, but one particularly should be recorded in Conquest. By great good fortune he had both the knowledge and the guts to insist on organizing a public campaign against the wanton loss of thousands of child lives annually To diphtheria; lives that could perfectly well be saved if politicians were not afraid of losing the votes of antivivisectionists. His efforts were successful and tens of thousands of children, now mostly grown up, owe their lives to him. The same courage led him to organize and take part in a public crusade against venereal disease. He knew how wicked it was to sacrifice health to an absurd taboo. These activities, however, important as they were, can have occupied rather little of his time. Plans were laid for a future National Health Service, which, when it 18 matured under the Labour administration of 1945, owed much to the mutual trust and respect established between Jameson and Aneurin Bevan (Minister of Health). The Goodenough Committee on Medical Schools, of which he was an active member, was set up in April 1942; he was a valued member of the Medical Research Council; he was concerned, in consultation with Jack Drummond, with problems of food; indeed for ten years, till 1950, Jameson's mind and hand and were behind every sort of activity connected with public health. Appropriately in 1942 the Royal Society awarded him the "for distinguished services to Hygienic Science or practice", putting him in the same rare class as Gorgas, Madsen, David Bruce and Almroth Wright.

From 1950 to 1960 Jameson spent ten happy years as a “part-time" medical adviser to King Edward's Hospital Fund; not much "part-time" for him! In 1951, having been Chairman of the Research Defence Society far too long, I was proud and happy to be able to persuade him to succeed me. He served till 1955. All who remember him in the Chair in Chandos Street, like all who remember him anywhere, will do so with gratitude and affection.

19

(5) JEWELS IN MY ACQUAINTANCE WITH C.S. SHERRINGTON (1857-1952)

Much has been written and more still will be written, about Charles Sherrington, one of the most loveable of men and the greatest English physiologist since Harvey. In 1921, being then President of the Royal Society, Sherrington came to Manchester to receive an honorary degree. My wife invited him to come and stay with us and to meet him at dinner we asked Samuel Alexander (1859-1938), the philosopher - also a very great man. It was a lovely summer evening and the two of them walked up and down on the lawn, deep in consultation and argument, while she prepared the dinner. When all was ready she came out and invited them in. They were both of them the kindest and most considerate of men; but could we get them to come in? Sherrington's physiology merged into philosophy (see Man on His Nature) while Alexander's philosophy merged into the natural world. In the end I had to go out and compel them to come in (cf. Luke 14, 23). They did not notice anything, but just came. In 1925 Sherrington published a book of verse called The Assaying of Brabantius. The long poem which provides the title to the book is too mysterious for me to understand, but I am deeply moved by some of the short ones, particularly those that refer to his young friends killed in World War I. Many of these verses were, I believe, written while he was President of the Royal Society between 1920 and 1925, largely, I expect, in the train between and London. But the title page, characteristically, gives no indication of honours and position. The author is given simply as C.S. Sherrington. This simplicity misled a writer who had to review three books of verse for The Nation. He did 'not like any of them very much but of Brabantius he wrote sympathetically "Mr Sherrington is obviously an intelligent young man with a poetic sense". How true: for throughout his 95 years he remained sympathetic to young people; in spite of growing infirmity his mind remained young and nobody who knew him or his writings would deny his poetic sense. In July 1939 Patrick Blackett end I, on the way to Bawdsey, concerning what is now called radar, called in at Valley Road, Ipswich, to see C.S.S. I told him of the review, which I had recently seen; it greatly pleased him. Next day I received from him a copy of the book with this letter: 20 July 1939. My dear A.V.,

Your mention when here of verse by some intelligent youngster has brought before me that I never inflicted a copy on yourself. I would not have you escape, so will you please accept the accompanying. I have implemented your threat of inflicting a copy on Blackett. Do not trouble to reply. 20

Yours ever C.S.S. In 1940 he "inflicted" a third copy on my wife with the words "a whiff of distraction C.S.S." He was then 83 and had been forced to leave his home at Ipswich because of threat of enemy action there. He went to live with his brother at Finchley in North London; and, calling on him in 1941, I found him dutifully spending his nights in a damp air-raid shelter which was much more likely to kill him than any German bombs. So, going on to Cambridge, I arranged with George Trevelyan, then Master of Trinity, that C.S.S. should, for the time being, be the guest of Trinity. Soon after I called for him at Finchley and ordered him to pack up his things and come with me in my car to Cambridge. This he did, without demur, and after a short time he was provided for in his own original home, Gonville and Caius College. It was there that he completed in 1948, his charming historical study of Jean Fernel (C.U.P.); and in 1949 he wrote an appreciation of Goethe for the British Medical Journal. He remained a decoration to Cambridge, and a joy to all who knew him, until he was forced by increasing disability to enter a nursing home at Eastbourne. My wife and I went to see him there a year or so before he died in 1952. He showed us all his treasures, trying to keep us there as long as possible. In the end we had to leave, and I shall always remember him looking wistfully after us as we finally went down the stair. It is sad, and seems almost wicked, that so very great and good a man should have been so lonely in his last years; few people could go and visit, him at Eastbourne and facilities there were poor. It is not generally known that C.S.S. was the first man to save a child's life with diphtheria-antitoxin. That was in 1893 or 1894, long before protective immunization against diphtheria became possible in 1923 - in America; in Great Britain the timidity and stupidity of politicians, vis a vis antivivisectionists, continued to kill and maim thousands of children as described before. But by 1969 diphtheria had practically vanished though now (in 1971) in Great Britain it is beginning to rear its ugly head again, through the neglect or stupidity of parents and the wickedness of anti- vivisectionists. The dramatic story of how Sherrington, and a horse called "Tommy”, saved the life of the little boy, was told in Nature (1948) vol 161, p266 {more than fifty years after the event.) Between 1932 and 1936 I had working with me at University College a Chinese physiologist called T.P. Feng. At some time during that interval he gave me a number of Chinese eggs. For the information of the uninitiated, these eggs are buried in the earth for a considerable time to mature; then they are eaten, raw.

A delicate smell of sulphuretted hydrogen (H2S) is evident and may deter the ignorant and conservative. But the total effect is magnificent, rather like a very fine 21 cheese; my family remembers them vividly. During Feng's stay we had some physiologists at our house to an informal evening meal at which some of these eggs were offered and consumed. Many years later, for no obvious cause, my wife received from C.S.S. the following characteristic letter. His thoughts had strayed back for fifteen years or so and with charming courtesy the occasion was recalled and recorded. 12 Grassington Road, Eastbourne.

22nd August — 1946. Dear Mrs. 'A,V.'

-forgive my so addressing you — but I am impelled to write by remembering so vividly a splendid supper which you gave to quite a number of us at your home a number of years ago - an impromptu 'dinner-supper'. A feature was 'Chinese-eggs' - which I myself was a trifle afraid of, but, on the example being set by our host himself, I greatly daring greatly enjoyed. And we left your table, to catch our various 'last' trains (Adrian for Cambridge) more than replete. You may well not remember the occasion, but a frivolous mortal like this present correspondent of yours, has it still freshly before him, and your charming patience with us all. I have thought it might amuse you to be reminded because the tiresome features seem to fade, and the amusing seem to stick longer. I forgot to ask about the world-famous micro-thermopiles at U.C. and to enquire whether they are still growing 'lighter', and whether A.V. still has his reliable assistant, Downing. But when I do see him shall find out. Are you either or both of you likely to look in at the Brit.Ass. when it visits Brighton? Probably not - you have too much of that kind of thing. Well, my best wishes and thanks to you both. Sincerely yours, C.S. Sherrington. No answer. Good wishes to your 'old ladies' at Highgate. (In 1972, some time after the above story was written, three officers of the Royal Society were going, to China on a good-will visit. They asked me if I would give them a letter of greeting to T.P. Feng in Shanghai. This I did, and enclosed a copy of C.S.S's letter to my wife – which gave Feng enormous satisfaction, reviving memories from 40 years before.)

22

(6) VINOGRADOV, MAISKY AND HENRY DALE

The propagandists of the Soviet Union had been very assiduous in "putting things across". In reading their stories one found oneself informed that everything, in the world is derived from economic causes, and that the only justification of any process, movement or pursuit is that it will improve the economy and stability of the state, or the welfare of the proletariat. But the bark was worse than the bite. In 1942 the Royal Society elected to Foreign Membership a very distinguished mathematician, Prof I.L. Vinogradov, a Soviet citizen whose mathematics was so supremely pure that only two people in Great Britain really knew what it was all about. They happened however to be very good judges and they put Vinogradov in a class by himself, somewhat like that of the Indian mathematician, Remanujan; so the Royal Society elected him to Foreign Membership, which was a considerable compliment as there are only fifty Foreign Members in the World. Vinogradov had been treated with great honour in his own country too, and indeed had been awarded a Stalin Prize for his discoveries in pure mathematics. Sir Henry Dale, then President of the Royal Society, happening one day to sit next to Mr Maisky, the Soviet Ambassador in London, at a luncheon party, referred to the election of Vinogradov as a Foreign Member and asked Maisky laughingly how the Soviet Union, which professed to allow no science to be practised which was not likely to lead to practical results of benefit to the proletariat, came to award the Stalin Prize to the purest of pure mathematicians. Maisky's reply was characteristic and diplomatic; the Soviet Union took the long view, he said, in all such matters, and recognised that no scientific knowledge, however abstract or abstruse, could fail in the end to make its own contribution to public welfare. To this Dale replied that of course he thought such sentiments admirable, that indeed the Royal Society and British scientific people in general had acted for hundreds of years on the same principles— but why then all this song and dance about applied science in the U.S.S.R.? In 1946 Vinogradov came.to London, signed the Charter Book and was admitted to the Royal Society. I was then Foreign Secretary of the Society and some very understanding person at The British Embassy in Moscow had written to to tell me that Vinogradov could not speak a word of English, was a man of enormous physical strength of which he was much more proud than of all his mathematical achievements. So, when we met, after shaking his hand I took the liberty of feeling the muscles of his arm, with which he was greatly pleased; his fame, he realized, had reached this country. I wish I could somehow have communicated to him what I had heard about him carrying a grand piano out of a burning building on his back; but perhaps he realized that, from the cordiality with which I had felt his arm muscles; he may even have been told that I was famous for my work on muscle. Anyhow I was convinced that he was a very nice man and (1973) I expect he still is.

23

(7) : VENTURING PEYOND THE VISIBLE HORIZON

In June 1964 a number of his friends, colleagues and admirers celebrated the hundredth anniversary of Hardy's birth, in a meeting of two days at Cambridge. The talks we gave then are contained in a monograph of the Cambridge Low Temperature Research Station, but this is not easily accessible. My own contribution, under the preceding title, was as follows.

Fifty years ago, in the Preface of his book The Respiratory Function of the Blood, wrote: At one time...most of my leisure was spent in boats. In them I learned what little I know, not of technique or physiology, but of the qualities essential to those who would venture beyond the visible horizon. Barcroft was eight years younger than Hardy and his near neighbour in Grange Road. He would have been glad to hear his words used about a fellow mariner, one for whom he had so great a regard. For of all the people that J.B. and I knew there was none who ventured more often, more resolutely, more eagerly and more profitably beyond the horizon. By some magic, as it seemed, of human intuition Hardy knew what would be found there; but the intuition was guided not really by magic but by pondering over the implication of things he had already diligently observed. Why did Hardy venture so often beyond the horizon? Chiefly, of course, because that was his nature, whether in science, or seamanship, or practical affairs. Fortunately the hazards of inheritance go on turning out rare people like that. Whether in the laboratory, or in life, or in inspired guesses about the nature of things, or in the tactics and strategy of planning for Food or Fisheries, Hardy was always ready to take chances; and the chances came off far more often than they might have done in other people's hands. But that was not luck; when he was convinced that something was there - and all through his life something was apt to be there - after careful preparation he would follow his conviction, and often find it. For although he ventured out gaily, he had always good reason for going, whether in the laboratory or the world of affairs. In the sequence of his research, from 1888 onwards, he often journeyed very far from his original premises: from cytology and histology to colloid , and from there to physics and chemistry of surfaces, from there to friction and lubrication. But however far he went his fancies were always flying back to his first love, the living things he started from. Out of the blue, early in 1927 while his thoughts were revolving on films and solid surfaces, I got a letter from him: “I think something for biologists is coming out at last.” This 'something' referred to the influence of an interfacial field at a distance which, in molecular terms, was very great. What came of that for biologists, if anything, I never heard; but the sentence illustrates the homing bent of his speculations. My earliest memories of Hardy go back to 1909 when I attended his lectures 24 and practicals for the small Part II Class in the old Physiological Laboratory at Cambridge. He always seemed to be dashing from one job to another; turning up at a lecture with a great bundle of papers he could not really use, at a practical class with no very clear idea of how the apparatus worked and leaving us to find out; but always unperturbed and overflowing with endearing human qualities. I remember very well an affair with a universal shunt which we were to use with an ancient Thompson galvanometer to demonstrate the injury current of nerve. He had forgotten how it functioned, and why it was called “universal”; none of us knew, and in later years I found it rather puzzling myself. So in the end we contented ourselves, and him, by singing: “John Brown's baby has a universal shunt” and left it at that. From then on, for twenty-four years, he seemed to remain exactly the same, continuing to dash from one job to another. After 1909, in the next five years before the war broke, I keep a vivid picture of him in the laboratory stirring an opaque liquid in large glass jars: this was probably globulin mixed with magnesium sulphate. In 1912 he published his famous paper on The General Theory of Colloidal Solutions, of which I treasure a reprint on which he had written ‘A.V. Hill with many thanks’; what on earth I had done to be thanked for I cannot imagine - but that was Hardy's nature. In 1913 there was a paper on the tension of composite fluid surfaces, and another on the influence of chemical constitution upon interfacial tension. In the latter he gave the first definite evidence that polar molecules are oriented in surfaces; several years later this was developed, without essential change, by Harkins in Chicago. What he told me about this at the time has always stuck in my memory. After the first war - it is odd what sort of things one remembers - I have a mental picture of Hardy riding a tiny motor bicycle about Cambridge. It looked absurdly small under that great frame. Some years later Hardy blew in to see me at University College - about what I do not remember, but the result was the photograph which, since 1936, has had the honour of representing him in his volume of Collected Papers. He looked so wonderful on the arm of my easy chair that I told him to stay put while I reached for my camera. My last recollections of him are during a National Conference on The Place of Biology in Education, in December 1932, thirteen months before he died. During a break in that meeting he talked to me of the wonders and beauty of nature - almost like a child seeing something pretty for the first time. 'If it be the business of a wise man to be happy' - as Johnson wrote to Boswell - Hardy was a supreme example. His own nature seemed to have much of the strength, beauty and consistency which he found in the natural world. At that conference Hardy gave an address on The Idea of Progress. It is not in his collected papers, but there must be many who would like to read it. He recalled how Leonardo da Vinci 'himself above all an experimenter' wrote of 'the absurdity of man. They turn up their noses at the man who prefers to learn from nature rather than from writers who are at best her clerks'. 25

He went on: ‘There is no general emotional significance in the fact that water is the product of the union of two gases, hydrogen and oxygen. Biology, however, has an ethical content in sex, in heredity, in pain and pleasure. It alone can bring out the ethical side of natural science and that, to me, is the main reason why biological knowledge should be broadcast... The hope for the future lies in the immense strides that biology is making; in spite of the enormously greater complexity of its subject matter, compared with that of physics and chemistry, a foundation is being built for a superstructure of politics and economics.’ That forecast, and the glow of wonder that poured out in one short talk, are my last personal memories of him. Hardy became a member of the Physiological Society in 1892, he had started as a pure biologist and remained to the end a biologist in outlook and interest. The last of his collected papers, under the title "To remind. A Biological Essay", was largely devoted to molecular asymmetry, and its bearing on the philosophy of living things. There he spoke of his "brother- biologists"; though some of them may have been alarmed by his confession "that the physical and chemical improbabilities of living matter are so great as to make a hypothesis of special creations more restful and almost as valid as that of continuous evolution". They must have been glad of the qualification ‘almost’. At intervals his mind would revert to physiology; in 1930, out of the blue, he suddenly wrote to ask whether the dissociation of electrical and mechanical response in muscle, described by Mines many years earlier, was still accepted. And in 1921, at a time when he was busy with Food, Marine Research, the Secretary of the Royal Society and Lubrication, his mind flew back to some experiments he had published in the Journal of Physiology in 1898 and he wrote me, again out of the blue (with the comment 'no reply needed!): “I came across some notes of mine on the characteristic movements of leucocytes lately. When left to themselves movements are not referable to any particular axis; but when the cell is strained along one axis as for instance, when it is stretched out between two bacilli, or parts of the same chain of bacilli, the strain produces a molecular structure which constrains the so that they bear a ridiculously close resemblance to those of a single muscle cell. The inference would be that in a muscle cell the molecular pattern is permanently maintained in the linear strained pattern (as indeed the double refraction proves).” At the Physiological Society, in the earlier days that I recall, Hardy would blow in quietly to meetings, though he never took an active part in the Society’s affairs: and then, just as quietly, (for he wore soft rubber heels) he would blow out again, having always a lot of other things to do. But he taught physiology at Cambridge for many years; his name was on the cover of the Journal of Physiology from 1906 to 1933; and although no single label could fully describe him, ‘physiologist’ is the only one that would stick. 26

Hardy was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1902, and there he played many parts, particularly in being biological secretary from 1915 to 1925. It was his secretaryship during those dangerous and critical years, that introduced him to two great national problems, first of food, then of the restoration of research for the fisheries. These provided a splendid opportunity for his unique qualities of mind, character and energy. Apart from such activities, Hardy was unique as a biologist in giving a Bakerian lecture, and receiving a , both on the physical side; the former on boundary lubrication, the latter for his work on colloid chemistry and surface forces. The work of the Royal Society, for the War-time food problem, started from a request by the President of the Board of Trade to Hardy that the Society should set up a Sub-Committee, of the Physiology (War) Committee to inquire into the food supply of the . From this grew the famous Food (War) Committee appointed in 1916, of which Hardy was a member throughout. At the Royal Society are two enormous volumes of Minutes, which should be of interest to anyone connected with Food: Hardy’s hand is evident throughout. Ernest Starling later was extremely active in that Committee. Its last meeting was in January 1919. Hardy's experience with all this interested him deeply and led him to the great work which he did later in connexion with the Food Investigation Board. In 1917 the Lord President invited Hardy to become the Board's first Chairman and also Director of Food Investigation. Typical of Hardy were his strong feelings about the failure of the Ministry of Food; ‘of incalculable use to the German Government' he described it in a letter to Professor W.G.S. Adams (1874-1966) then private secretary to the Prime Minister, Lloyd George. In that letter Hardy wrote: When the history comes to be written...the administration of the Ministry of Food will furnish a example of the neglect of ordered knowledge, that is to say of what is commonly called Science. The story of food during the Second War was very different. The Establishment had learnt a lesson which was not forgotten. The third of Hardy's great interests, outside his personal scientific work, was in Fisheries Research. Curiously enough Hardy was never a member of the Marine Biological Association, but by his work and influence he was one of its greatest benefactors - as indeed of all the other organizations in the United Kingdom connected with Fisheries Research. The Association was founded at a meeting in the rooms of the Royal Society in 1884 with Huxley in the Chair. The laboratory on the Hoe at Plymouth was opened in 1883 and the report of the Council for that year shows that Hardy worked at the laboratory during the summer of 1838 on sponges. He was then 24. The work he did there is described in the first paper of his collected works. He was at Plymouth again, for another fortnight, in 1889. For many years he had apparently no further contact with the Plymouth Laboratory, though he continued always his contacts with and love of the sea. But in 1919 when the whole future of the Association and indeed of Fisheries Research in general was at stake, Hardy was brought to the rescue. As he wrote: A fishery experiment on an unprecedented side has been carried out by 27

the enforced closure of many of the fishing grounds. Results of great practical interest will accrue if intensive investigation of the grounds is undertaken in time. He was still Secretary of the Royal Society and had shown already in his work for the Food (War) Committee the administrative competence and energy, and the scientific intuition, which led him so often to important practical results. He had an intimate knowledge of the sea, and a love for sailors and fishermen; he was a biologist and was closely acquainted with biologists; he was a supremely good judge of men; so what more natural, when an Advisory Committee on Fisheries Research was set up by the Development Commission in April 1919, than to appoint him Chairman. Of that Committee only one now survives (1970), E.H.E. Havelock, who from 1919 to 1934 was Assistant Secretary of the Development Commission and Secretary from 1934 to 1955. Havelock told me of the preeminent part which Hardy played in the work of the Committee, and of how Hardy himself wrote the whole of the famous report which has been the Magna Carta of Fisheries Research ever since. Anyone who has read that report, and knew Hardy well, would not easily believe that anyone else could have written it; it has so many of the vivid phrases which we naturally associate with him. It was published just one year later, in March 1920. Hardy was fortunate then in having Havelock to help him, as he was for many years - indeed till he died - as Chairman of the Advisory Committee on Fisheries, which arose from the report. There were difficulties of course, as Hardy wrote: the chief difficulty was the lack of ‘clear and convincing evidence’ as to the utility to the Fisheries of scientific research’. There were plenty of people who did not want to believe that. This 'clear and convincing evidence' he was able to produce, and concluded: Nothing less than complete knowledge of the sea and the life in it, and especially of the interdependence between fish problems and all the conditions of fish life, will suffice to form a rational basis for fishery development. And again, No great good can be anticipated unless the Departments are provided with a scientific staff sufficiently strong to be independent of passing waves of prejudice as regards aims, methods and resources...Science should be installed not merely as the handmaid of administration, but as a responsible partner in the shaping of policy. How often since then have others, and I think particularly of Henry Tizard, had desperately to urge the same thing. The Committee, Hardy wrote, have avoided the terms 'pure’ and 'applied' research, because those have come to imply that pure research does not lead to practical results. So, to avoid that misunderstanding, he adopted the terms 'free' and 'economic' research. The real problem is not to distinguish whether this or that class of research, free or economic, pure or applied, is most likely to lead to immediate practical results; but (rather) to detect and secure that 28

organization which shall best promote the development of the fisheries by the increase of the knowledge of all marine life. He advised that grants to the Departments and to independent Institutions, should be given on the advice of a special Committee, and that this Committee should not control or interfere in the working of the independent Institutions; but should adopt a single criterion, the maintenance of a high standard of scientific efficiency. It is important that grants should be made to the independent Institutions directly and not either through Government Departments or as depending upon reports received from the Government Departments. Having myself, for 50 years, followed the activities of the Marine Biological Association and its Plymouth Laboratory, I have seen how great have been its contributions to knowledge of life in the sea; as the result largely of Hardy's prophetic and confident wisdom, and of the wisdom of those, particularly the Development Commission, who administered so faithfully the trust of Hardy's convictions. And all the other Institutions connected with fishery research are equally indebted to the thinking and foresight of Hardy in 1919-20 and later. To- day their work is far beyond Hardy's vision, if not his hopes, in 1919; but his intuitive understanding and resolute guidance are the chief reasons why they have got where they are. These tributes to Hardy are to be printed, so they will be read by others, who, unlike many of us here today, never had the good fortune to know Bill Hardy himself. These might imagine that what I have been saying has been mellowed by admiring and affectionate memories, so I will recall what a few others wrote of him:

C.S. Sherrington. "Not the least among his services has been the catholicity and level width of interest and sympathy he has given to biology throughout the whole range, and even beyond it, and to the field naturalists' side and to the laboratory side alike he has done equal service."

Ernest Rutherford "For the first time in the history of science the dependence of friction and lubrication on the structure and molecular orientation of surface films and the force fields of molecules in relation to their structure and polarity have been elucidated in a series of beautiful and highly important researches...In all these fields [his] researches...have been characterized by an originality of outlook and an imaginative insight which bears the impress of genius."

F. Gowland Hopkins. "The fertility of his mind and the generosity of his ever ready help, stimulated the thoughts and activities of so many that he will be missed as few men can have been missed by their contemporaries.... The Royal Society Food (War) Committee, formed through his initiative, exercised an important influence in national policy... His success was outstanding, gaining for him the confidence of administrators and industrialists in equal measure." 29

John Graham Kerr (zoologist, explorer and Hardy's companion in various adventures at sea). "One most excellent thing due to him was the start of the Joint Challenger Society Meetings, which still continue". And about the sailing he added, "Hardy was in my opinion one of the finest yachtsmen of his day. With perfect grasp of seamanship he combined the power of making instant decisions in moments of emergency. He was the most perfect skipper."

But perhaps the tribute Hardy would have liked best of all is that of Captain Lord of the Salma (see the end of 17)

30

(8) ON DOING THINGS POORLY.

Occasionally I have taken visitors to Cambridge to the American Military Cemetery on Madingley Hill. My thoughts may turn back then to three youngsters whom I met in 1943. Whether they, or their names (which I cannot recall apart from Al, Jerry and Lem), are recorded there I do not know, but it seems rather likely. They had dined as guests in Hall at Trinity College on 11 September, invited by George Trevelyan, the Master. They were pilots of Liberators and had recently been in bombing raids to Rome, Ploesti and elsewhere. They pressed me to visit them at their station and promised me a good time, including a ride in the nose of a Liberator. I said I would gladly go if they would promise not to take me to Ploesti, which - I had gathered- was an unpleasant spot. Later events (going to India) prevented me from accepting their invitation and I wrote them a joint letter: with this I sent a copy of a Commencement Address which I was to have given at the California Institute of Technology three years earlier, in June 1940, on (at William’s suggestion) The World of Tomorrow. I never gave it in person, because events in Europe made it necessary to return, but it was read for me at the gathering. Some of the things in it might have been written for these lads. After saying to the new graduates at Cal. Tech. that they were, at that time, in a very special sense, the trustees of civilization, I went on: Such trusteeship will require not only that you yourselves are civilized but that you show very old-fashioned qualities of wisdom, constancy and courage. Civilization will not perpetuate itself. As trustees of civilization you must be ready to promote and defend it by accepting hazard and discomfort, recalling that virtue originally meant manliness and valour. My letter drew the following reply from one of them (The Censor seems to have been busy on it!) October14th 1943 Dear Prof Hill: It was indeed mighty nice to hear from and I cannot express in the fullest, sincerest appreciation for the copy of your excellent address which and I can assure you, quite unfortunately you never actually delivered. All three of us have read at over, not once but several times. Ac you may know if not by conviction - certainly by tradition I am a staunch Republican and my wish is that some of our formidable, hair-brained, num-skulled, long-legged, lantern-jawed, politicians might have read that address back in '38 or ‘39. Since our meeting, distance and any number of harrowing experience have been ours. We returned from the desert only a week ago. Our work down there proved plenty on the rough side, neither was our trip back without event. Didn't have time to unpack and found ourselves blanketed in flak and surrounded by swarms of fighter opposition right over the heart of the Rhineland. It was on this occasion that we caught all very merry Hell and, by the 31 same token, the reason why this goes forth from what, in airman circles is commonly called a Flak House. Jerry, Lem, Smitty our 1st pilot and yours truly are here in a rest home. None of the 20 officers here at the moment are what one would actually term Flak Happy but everyone is quite deserving of the comforts, relaxation and rec. facilities the place avails. It is perfectly grand located in and surrounded by country probably holding forth a sizeable hunk of the intrinsic scenic value to be found in your beautiful and very quaint fatherland. We are having this week a merrie time in Merrie Ole England, I promise you. Yesterday was my first taste of Fox-Hunting - truly a colorful sport. After the hounds made their first kill I had to abort, returning as you might surmise with an annoying plaster on my posterior. Shall try to limber up this aft. by pheasant hunting and have another fling at even a longer hunt on Sat. Foods and everything else about this place is precisely what the doctor ordered. We are here for seven days. I regret extremely the fact that we shall be unable to call upon you in London. There is nothing that would please me more than to accept your very kind invite. Circumstances will not permit however. I would certainly consider it an honor should you find time to scratch off a few lines to me every now and then. Be very sure that you will be able to bank on a prompt acknowledgement. Our every good wish for a most successful ensuing mission. Jerry and Lt. --- join me in that wish. One day we may quite possibly meet again and I sure hope so. You will forgive the typing another of the several things I do very poorly. Kindest personal Regards Lt. Al – Sqdrn - Bomb Gr. APO - U.S.Arny Air Corps. home: 325 - Ave. - U.S.A. P.S. Sure wish we could fly you to India. One day yet - we'll get to give you a ride !! [It took me 10 days in November to get to India, in a flying boat; a Liberator would have done it in 2.]

32

(9) A PATHAN GRANDSON

In the spring of 1952 I went with Henry Tizard to Peshawar (N.W.F.P.) to attend a meeting of the Pakistan Association for the Advancement of Science. There is a university with a medical school there; at that time it was patrolled at night by an armed guard, to protect it from marauding tribesmen (not, as here in 1970, from students demanding to see confidential reports). While we were at tea one day with the Vice Chancellor, he inspected the guard before it moved off; it consisted of ex- other-ranks of the old Indian Army equipped with ancient firearms probably made in frontier villages. After tea the Vice Chancellor invited his guests to take part in a shooting match on his lawn, using an ancient fowling-piece and a tin can as target. The proceedings were watched by a camel on a ride about a hundred yards away. I did fairly well, having been at the School of Musketry forty-four years earlier. Tizard did not do so well, though the tin can did fall over after one of his shots; he thought this was due to the blast. The most remarkable success, however, was achieved (at his first and only shot) by the Defence Scientist of the Pakistan armed forces. He missed the can indeed by several yards, but the camel who was watching hurried off at high speed. His name, appropriately, when translated into English, was Praise be to God; I mean the Defence Scientist's, not the camel's. We also went up the Khyber Pass to the Afghan frontier. The authorities had taken the precaution of posting sentries on the hills, to ensure that the tribesmen did not take pot-shots at the scientists. One day I attended a lecture on a rarefied subject in theoretical physics by a young Pakistani. It was double-dutch to me, but I had heard that kind of thing before. I met him after the lecture and said "from the sort rubbish you've been talking you must have been at Cambridge". This pleased him enormously and we have been good friends ever since. Actually he had been a fellow of St. John's. He is now a very eminent theoretical . All this is to introduce my “grandson". A lot of students were helping with the arrangements for the meeting- and students in India and Pakistan carry autograph books, which they push at visitors. Indeed once, in India, when a hundred or so were demanding my autograph, I noticed that "A.V." was going in one book and "Hill" in the next. In Peshawar I became aware of something different, that the same young man came again and again and presented his book. In the end I asked him why he was doing it. He said that he wanted to adopt me as his grandfather and would explain in a letter later. Next day he came and gave me a beautiful walking-stick, which must have been carved in a tribal village. He also wanted to know the size of my feet so he could get some "Chaplis" made for me. I refused to tell him. This is how he explained himself when he wrote: “I think it would be a little funny but interesting for you how I got such attachment with you during your stay here. I had a kind grandfather who loved me very much. A few years ago he left us and deprived us of his company in the world. As a matter of coincidence you are exactly like him, in outlook, stature and the way 33 of speaking. So when I saw you speaking at the inauguration of the Pak, Sci. Conference, I thought as if my grandfather was speaking. In the beginning I tried hard to contact you. In the fondness of going near you I took your autograph several times. My happiness was really when on the last evening I got a few words from the person to whom attachment was great.”

He was a medical student at the University of Peshawar and wanted to go on to the King Edward Medical College in Lahore. But he saw little chance of doing well enough in in his exams to get admittance there. Within the next six months he failed so completely that he decided to go into the Royal Pakistan Air Force (it was still Royal then). I had three more letters from him, the last in November 1953. After that I heard no more, although I was in Peshawar in 1959. He was a charming fellow and his patients would have loved him; though I doubt if he would have had the persistence to complete the course, even if he had got over the first hurdle.

34

(10) AN UNUSUAL MISSILE

In June 1931 J.P. Hill (Professor of at University College) came in to show me, with some indignation as I recall, a large stone which had come down from the sky through his bathroom window, while he was taking a bath. The missile had fresh mud on it, so must have had a terrestrial origin. I suspected that it had got entangled in the wire spokes of the landing wheel of a small aeroplane and had come loose in flight; his house was not very far from Hendon Aerodrome and I advised him to get in touch with the R.A.F. there. He did not appear to be very satisfied with my hypothesis, and obviously felt there might be something more sinister about the incident. So I took the missile and said I would send it, with a letter, to the Director of Artillery at the War Office — which I did. The D. of A. was a good friend of mine, Brigadier R.K. Hezlet, an Irishman. The ensuring correspondence is attached. I think J.P. was finally appeased.

To The Director of Artillery, War Office S.W.1 16 June, 1932

Dear Sir, AERIAL PROJECTILES On Tuesday, June 9 last, a colleague of mine, living in Finchley, was disturbed by a projectile which I forward herewith - which fell into his bathroom with considerable velocity. It's line of descent was about 30o from the vertical, as shown by a scratch which it made on the paint. The projectile was undoubtedly an aerial one; no person on the ground could have thrown it with the speed, or at the angle at which it descended. Its mundane origin, however, is shown by the mud upon it. Apart from the possibility of its presence in the air being due to the earthquake two days earlier (an effect no more strange than that recorded at Trinity College Cambridge, where the earthquake is stated to have prevented the appearance of the College Magazine) the following theories of its appearance may be conjectured:- (A) It had been employed in combat between aeroplanes practising for the Aerial Pageant: (B) It was being used in the anti-aircraft defence of .Hendon Aerodrome: or (C) It had been released in bomb-dropping practice, and its unusual ballistic coefficient had disturbed the expected accuracy of aim.

35

In November, l918, the Ordnance Committee printed a picture entitled "Anti- Aircraft Gunnery in the Middle Ages", in which the chief object (apart from the enemy aircraft) was a piece of ordnance firing just such a projectile as the one I send. Judging from the picture (attached) these projectiles were somewhat larger than the present one, but the general similarity in form is undoubted. It may be, therefore, that the Ordinance Committee will be interested to see the projectile in question, and my colleague and I would be grateful if we could be informed of the Committee's opinion of its nature. He wished me to add that if it had caught him in the head he would probably have been forced to retire from the Chair of Embryology which he holds at present. I beg to remain, Sir, Your obedient Servant, A.V. Hill Professor. Late Associate Member of the Ordnance Committee.

WAR OFFICE 25th June, 1931 Dear Sir, AERIAL PROJECTILES

I am in receipt of your letter of 16th June, 1931, forwarding an aerial projectile recovered from the bathroom of a colleague of yours. I hope to have the opportunity of returning it personally at a suitable velocity on some future occasion. Reference has been made to the text-books available and, it seems Conjecture C. (bombing practice without sights) is the most probable explanation (see Nahum 1.6). Telephonic reference was made to the Superintendent of External Ballistics of the Ordinance Committee; atmospherics prevented the reply being clearly heard, but the general import seemed to be that you have no cause for worry, as if there is anything in the laws of probability, they cannot go on missing your colleague all the time. I remain, Yours faithfully, R, K. Hezlet, Director of Artillery.

36

(11) FREDERICK KENY0N (1863-1952)

Kenyon was a very great scholar, a kind friend and a very tough fellow. He was Director and Principal Librarian of the British Museum from 1909 to 1930. But he was also a Lt. in the Territorial Army and went to France with the original Expeditionary Force in August-September 1914. Then he served with his regiment till 1919. In 1940 when the Home Guard was formed, being then nearly 76, he made a mistake in his arithmetic, the sergeant winked the other eye, and he served in the Home Guard till 1943 - when he was a nominal 70. Then he had to retire on the age limit; he complained about this, he could march, he could shoot, he could command a squad; if only he had shown more foresight with his arithmetic! He was President of the British Academy from 1917 to 1921, then nine years later (reversing the normal order) secretary for twenty years. He never seemed to have enough to do (see Who's Who and note how he filled up his time) From 1938 to 1944 he was President of the Society for the Protection of Science and Learning of which (to help the victims of Nazi brutality and oppression) he had been one of the founders in 1933. In 1911 Kenyon was elected a member of The Club, a dining club founded in 1764 by Samuel Johnson and Joshua Reynolds. It has only one officer, the Treasurer, and Kenyon became a Member in 1911 and Treasurer in 1914. He was a diligent attender at its meetings (except I suppose when he was on active service) and I remember him during some appalling winters of the late1940's struggling in from Godstone (Surrey), where he lived, to do his duty by the club. He was a member of the University Grants Committee from its start in 1919 to 1947 - which was much too long, though there were several others like that. I raised the average age of the Committee myself by several years when I resigned at 58.

37

(12) JACK EGERTON (1886-1959) AS SECRETARY OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY (1938-48)

This account of the activities of A.C. Egerton ("Jack"), as Physical Secretary of the Royal Society (1938-48), was written about 1960, at the suggestion of his wife Ruth, for possible inclusion in a memoir of him which she was preparing. It proved impossible in the end to include it in the memoir, which was printed for private circulation but never published. There is much in it which is not generally known and it describes the various moves which, in Britain, brought scientific people into far closer relation with public policy than ever before. The Royal Society has a President; two secretaries (a) Physical, (b) Biological; a Foreign Secretary, a Treasurer and a full time Executive Secretary. By Statute 49 the two Secretaries are responsible to the Council for the general conduct of the Society's correspondence, publications, and all other business, excepting that which relates to finance. I was Biological Secretary, 1935-45, and Foreign Secretary,1945-46. References to A.C.E. can be found; (1) In Biog Mem Roy. Soc. (1960) 6, 39-64. (2) In E.D. 1960, pp. 199,274. (3) In Who's Who 1959; Who was Who 1951-60.

The following account of A.C.E. is exactly as I originally wrote it about 1960. Many things have happened since then to the Royal Society, and to the National set-up in science. Unlike Jack I have never - since I was twenty - kept a daily record of events; so, much of what I can write about our long and happy association at the Royal Society must be retrieved from a very imperfect memory. This short story of our comradeship from 1938 to 1947 refers almost entirely to abnormal times and abnormal activities of the Society. Had war been avoided in 1939 the story would have been very different. Undoubtedly Jack would still have made a great contribution to the Society; but abnormal circumstances can show up the best there is in a man, and if there had to be a war there is nobody whose companionship I would rather have had in those strange and heroic times. We had served together as ordinary members of the Council in 1933, and I was appointed Biological Secretary at the end of 1935. Three years later he became Physical Secretary, at a time, shortly after “” when it was already quite evident to people who were not blind, that war was coming. We served together as joint secretaries of the Society till 1945, when my term ended; but after that I was Foreign Secretary for a year and then – so I thought - retired finally from Council. Jack wrote to me at that time (12 Dec 1946), “Eight years of pulling together; and always complete understanding.” That thought was certainly mine too. But two weeks later came another letter from him in Switzerland which began "Many good wishes for 1947" and then continued 38

“I have come unstuck!...... on Christmas Eve, Ruth and I were out skiing on a lovely clear day and I had a fall and broke my leg.”

In fact the femur was badly fractured in three places high up and he was not back in England till July, after a long and complicated ordeal of operations and treatment cheerfully and humorously borne. So I was suddenly hauled back on to the Council to take his place as Physical Secretary, a most inadequate substitute; though I knew the ropes, and a newcomer in a job like that cannot be much use in the first few months. During the time I acted for him we had much correspondence about the Society and things in general; from him, in spite of hope long deferred, there was never a complaint. Eighteen months later he retired from the secretaryship. I wrote him then to tell him of my admiration for the job he had done, many of the results of which, with no name attached to them and as few people know, have left a permanent mark on scientific institutions and relations. He replied; “I feel very contented that the Society is in such good fettle and one of the mainstays of freedom.” Whether he would have been quite so contented with the evident trend today, to concentrate power and influence in science in organs of Government, is another matter; but that perhaps is the inevitable consequence of success in the things for which he worked. When Jack joined me as secretary in 1938, and indeed some time earlier in anticipation, one of our first activities was, with the warm approval of Sir William Bragg, then President of the Society, to do everything we could to make sure that scientific and technical manpower was properly employed in the war that loomed ahead. In the 1914-1918 war, human scientific and technological resources, instead of being husbanded and properly employed, had at first been squandered and neglected. Jack had more experience than I had of dealing with civil departments of Government, and more personal acquaintance with the people concerned with their activities- which was very useful. We proceeded to urge the Ministry of Labour to take this matter seriously. It often happens, when someone agitates about a task needing to be done, that he is made chairman of a committee to look into it - that generally keeps him quiet. In this case the action of the Ministry of Labour was more intelligent, namely to ask the Royal Society in consultation with other scientific societies and institutions, to prepare a register of scientific and technical personnel available in case of war (referred to of course as "an emergency"). Council minute 12 of 12 January 1939, under the heading "Scientific Service in a National Emergency", is worth quoting: - The Secretaries reported that they had discussed with representatives of the Ministry of Labour details of proposed arrangements by which the Royal Society would approach the other scientific societies with a view (a) To completing the register of scientific persons available in the event of a national emergency, (b) to ensuring the more effective utilization of scientific personnel and of existing scientific organizations. 39

Further proposals from the Ministry of Labour were expected shortly. The opinion was expressed that the register should include those younger members of the universities or other scientific institutions who, although of first-class scientific calibre, were not yet members either of scientific societies or of the staffs of their institutions; and that the best way to secure their inclusion would be a direct approach to the heads of scientific departments. Council recognized that although the early completion of the register was an essential step, its use would be comparatively limited without far more critical and expert supervision than was possible by any non-scientific organization. The Royal Society could provide the machinery on the one hand and could obtain the expert advice on the other which, in consultation with various Government Departments, were essential if proper use was to be made by the nation of its scientific personnel and organization; and it could undertake the task forthwith. The Secretaries would have the full support of the Council in bringing these considerations to the notice of the Ministry of Labour and of the Advisory Committee. By March 1939 the Ministry of Labour had agreed to all our proposals and the construction of the Scientific Register was beginning. For some time work was done in the quarters of the Royal Society in London and after war had begun in Cambridge, and by the staff of the Society; but finally it was removed to the Ministry of Labour (on condition that they took care of it!) and two members of the Society's staff were lent "to assist in its operation" and see that it was used properly. The construction of the Scientific Register proved to be a very heavy task, but it was enormously important and throughout the operation Jack’s wider knowledge and obstinate persistence helped it to success. (see also 61) (sentence in italics inserted by hand) Early after Jack's coming to the Royal Society we began to discuss the importance of having expert and disinterested scientific advice available to the Government at a very high level of policy. For a long time our continuing efforts, separately and together and strongly supported by the President, appeared to be fruitless; to a politician without any knowledge of science, science like plumbing was no doubt quite important, but what could it have to do with policy? In the end, however, our efforts (like those of the importunate widow, and perhaps for the same reason) were successful and Council minute 5 of 24 October 1940 recorded,

It was reported that in order to ensure the fullest co-operation of scientific workers with the Government in the national war effort, the Lord President of the Council, after discussion with the Officers of the Royal Society, had, with the approval of the Prime Minister, appointed a Scientific Advisory Committee to the War Cabinet, the members of which were Lord Hankey (chairman), Sir Williams Bragg as President of the Royal Society, Dr. E:V. Appleton, Sir Edward Yellanby and Sir Edwin Butler as Secretaries of the Research Councils and Professor A.V. Hill and Professor A.C.G. Egerton as Secretaries of the Royal Society. The joint secretaries are Group Captain (later Air Chief Marshal) W. Elliot and Professor W.W.C. Topley. The terms of reference of the 40

committee are: (a) To advise the Lord President on any scientific problem referred to them; (b) To advise Government Departments, when so requested, on the selection of individuals for particular lines of scientific inquiry, or for membership of committees on which scientists are required; and * (c) To bring to the notice of the Lord President promising new scientific or technical developments which may be of importance to the war efforts.

The War Cabinet Scientific Advisory Committee, under the Chairmanship initially of Lord Hankey and later of Mr. R.A. Butler and then of Sir Henry Dale, continued till 1945. It was succeeded under the Labour Government of 1945-50 by the Advisory Council on Scientific Policy of which (1946-52) Henry Tizard was chairman. It has continued since in various forms. The War Cabinet Scientific Advisory Committee undertook in fact a number of important tasks; though it could have been much more useful if a scientific courtier had not monopolized the grace and favour of the Prime Minister. Among the first problems which it considered, in the autumn of 1940, was that of the warlike development of atomic fission, a possibility just beginning to be realized. Its strong advice, after very close consideration, was that this should be handed over to Canada and the United States. Our scientific and technical resources in Britain were being so fully stretched by then, and the difficulties and dangers due to enemy bombing were potentially so great, that the task could not properly have been undertaken here. In fact this advice was taken and the to the U.S.A. in the autumn of 1940 passed over the information we had here to the other side. This was only one of the many tasks undertaken by the Committee; but a historian interested in origins might find in the records of the Committee the source of various things which are now accepted. I remember well the emphatic opinion which Jack always held of the importance of the work and purpose of the Committee, and he took tremendous pains about his part in it. Another matter which Jack and I discussed continually in 1939, before and after the war had begun, was the critical importance of keeping the British Dominions properly informed about scientific and technical developments here, and about our operational experience with scientific equipment and devices. We suspected that this task of scientific liaison had been grossly neglected, it seemed to be nobody's business; that was the sort of neglect that could have been impressed on the Cabinet by a Scientific Committee, had one then existed. Later, in the spring of 1940, when I went to Canada (see 105), I found how damaging had been our failure to keep Canadian scientists in touch. By the late summer of 1940 that had begun to be put right, but precious years had been wasted. The trouble was that few responsible ministers had any personal acquaintance even with the most elementary scientific matters, nor any notion of the scientific and technological development and resources of the Commonwealth, particularly of Canada and . In the end a variety of activities were started by the Royal Society, which have matured in the appointment of scientific liaison officers, and such 41 organizations as the British Commonwealth Scientific Office (B.C.S.0.) in London. Analogous to this problem was another, obvious to Jack and me and even more vividly in Tizard's mind, of how to take advantage of the scientific and technological help potentially available to us in the United States. In February 1940, therefore, Tizard contrived (with Jack's warm support) that I should go to the British Embassy in Washington, disguised (very imperfectly) as a supernumerary air attaché, with the purpose (as he put it) of discreetly "getting American scientists into the war before their country". By May (when many Americans were beginning to fear that the Royal Navy might surrender and leave their eastern seaboard naked (!) it became evident to me that the President would react favourably to a suggestion from here that their scientists and engineers should share information with ours and cooperate in war research. But it took months here to get it settled. Finally, however, Tizard went with his mission to America and in the spring of 1941, nine months before Pearl Harbor (!), J.B. Conant came to establish a scientific liaison office in London. A British Central Scientific Office was set up in Washington, to which a year later Jack himself went for five months to reorganize its work and to try to improve scientific communication between Washington and London. In October 1941 the Royal Society set up a British Commonwealth Science Committee "consisting of United Kingdom and Empire representatives, to consider means of promoting cooperation between the several parts of the Empire (a) in scientific research and (b) in the application of science to technical, biological, medical and economic problems". The report of this Committee, after many meetings, is annexed to Council minutes of 15 April 1943. The recommendations in this report had far-reaching results, e.g. (a) the calling of an Empire Scientific Conference which met in June 1946 (and was followed by the international tercentenary celebrations of Newton's birth, deferred from 1942), (b) the calling of a Conference on Scientific Information in June 1948 and (c) the establishment of the British Commonwealth Scientific Office (B.C.S.0.) in London. In all these Jack took a very active part, indeed the Information Conference was always recognized as his "baby". It is interesting now to recall how all this started. During the summer of 1941 a young New Zealand scientist, Neville Wright, came on his own initiative to Burlington House to talk to us. His suggestions led us to call a conference on 7 October 1941 at the Royal Society's rooms to discuss them; as a result the British Commonwealth Science Committee was set up. I doubt if one young man's suggestions could have had so considerable an effect had they been made to a Government Department! But Jack was always ready to consider a bright idea; it gave him no glow of satisfaction to turn anything down, and he was ready to take infinite trouble to give a good idea chance. In 1943 and early 1944 various Fellows of the Society approached the secretaries with proposals that the Society should set up organized inquiries about the needs of research in various branches of science after the war. As a consequence committees were appointed to look into the problems involved. I was in India from November 1943 to April 1944, and the brunt of all this work (and of much else) fell on Jack; and he wrote himself an 42 admirable synopsis of the six reports received. Later his synopsis was adopted as a Report of Council and was widely circulated. My visit to India in 1943-44 led to a reciprocal visit to the United Kingdom, in October 1944, of a group of Indian scientists. In both of these activities Jack was extremely interested, and - as usual - helpful; and the visit here of the Indian Scientists provided contacts which led him in 1948 to visit India as chairman of a committee to review the working and development of the Indian Institute of Science at Bangalore. He went there again, with Ruth this time, in 1954 to report on the work of sixteen national institutions and laboratories established since 1948. These visits gave him the keenest interest in India and its problems, people and institutions; he is remembered there with deep affection. So things happen. The Council minutes of 1944 to 1946 bear a very obvious imprint of Jack's many activities at the Royal Society; the eligibility of women for the Fellowship, discussions about accommodation for scientific societies; his appointment by the Royal Society as a Fellow (i.e. to the Board of Governors) of Winchester College, which gave him and the other Fellows much pleasure; a scheme for the organization of the National Physical Laboratory; the increase of the number of annual elections to the Royal Society from 20 to 25; discussions and meetings with representatives of the Admiralty and Air Ministry about facilities they might provide for research; a visit to Czechoslovakia as representative of the Society, and his report; a similar visit to Washington and Philadelphia. Always with fun and good humour, hurrying from one place to another so as not to be too late; always with wise, generous and balanced judgment; always with kindness and tolerance; always with devotion to his job and the Royal Society; always with affection for his friends. When he died in 1959 I gave, at Ruth's request, a Memorial Address at Holy Trinity Church, Brompton, London. This is in E.D., 199-201.

43

(13) HENRY TIZARD

The first of these articles (1) is a review by myself in the Daily Telegraph of 8 April 1965 of a book; 'TIZARD", by Ronald Clark (Methuen& Co. Ltd., London 1965). The second article (II) is a speech by Tizard at the Annual Luncheon of the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee on 3 February 1942. It is remarkable that in an address to such an audience on the "Applications of Science to Government and War", the last quarter was devoted to Science and Christianity, which he claimed are the two driving forces of modern civilization.

SECTION 1 by A.V.H. April 1965. REVIEW OF BOOK In the final chapter of this remarkable book Ronald Clark discusses whether Tizard was a "great man" and provides what he suggests would have been Tizard’s own answer: “No - thank Heavens” His friends can almost hear him snapping it out; though history may decide otherwise. But he was certainly a good man, 'gentle plain, just and resolute' as Walt Whitman wrote of Lincoln; 'under whose cautious hand,' against all kinds of obstacles of stupidity or intrigue, radar was brought into full operational use in 1940, to save Britain and the world from Hitler; while his mission to America in the same year brought the scientists and engineers in the United States into frank and friendly cooperation with ours a year before Pearl Harbor. These were his outstanding services; but there were countless others, and also some sad disappointments; but come success or failure, he continued to treat those two impostors just the same. The book has been based chiefly on Tizard's own papers, but also on Cherwell's archives; and the information has been supplemented by conversation or correspondence with many of Tizard's friends. It provides not only the material for assessing Tizard's place in history, but also a good deal of history itself otherwise not generally accessible; and it throws a vivid light on the role of Science in Government, and the opportunities, hazards and frustrations of the scientists themselves. It puts in proper historical perspective the unpleasant public controversy about the antagonism of Tizard and Lindemann in relation to air defence, started in 1961 by Charles Snow's book Science in Government and continued in the Press. In fact it shows also how they returned to rather easier relations in their later years. It discusses too Tizard's relations with Churchill. Like Alanbrooke, though in another field, he had his troubles and in 1959 he replied to the editor of , who had asked for his views: 'When I was intimately connected with his doings in this respect [his concern with applied science], before and during the first two years of the war he was always pressing for the wrong developments against the advice of most of the scientists concerned. But [Tizard added] he is such a very great man that it is a pity to exaggerate his doings in every direction. Personally I think the great motto in referring to him is, "Be to his virtues ever kind, but to his faults a little blind"'. 44

That could have been Alanbrooke's opinion too. Tizard's intellectual and personal integrity, rightly, is continually emphasized in the book; but it provided him with endless troubles in his dealings with others who wanted quick decisions without sufficient evidence; or delay when the evidence was sufficient but inconvenient to their pet projects. But these qualities of resolute integrity, together with his quick sense of fun and a deep humanity, brought him the admiration and affection of all (and they were multitude) who honestly sought his help. A man with less endearing human qualities, with more personal ambition and less humility, could never have secured the close and informal cooperation which alone, so often, made things work. 'Blueprints' can easily be made of the relations of science to Government. But it is the native qualities of the good human beings, who are also good scientists, administrators or politicians that make them work. Tizard was the son of a naval officer, who had been navigator in H.M.S. Challenger during her famous four-year voyage and was elected F.R.S. in 1891. H.T. had in fact been intended for the Navy, until an accident had affected the sight of one eye. But he had no training or preparation for war until he was 29 except at school in reading Admiral Mahan's writings (on the influence of sea-power on history). Then in 1914 he joined the Gunners, and in 1915 was transferred as a scientific officer to the R.F.C. From then on, till 1952, he was actively concerned, amid countless other jobs, with the application of science and scientists to war - largely, but not exclusively to war in the air. To mention some of the more important: in his early days, with testing (and flying) aircraft and equipment; later with aeronautical research, with interception and radar, with nuclear weapons, with the exploit of the Mohne Dam, with jet engines, with the Woomera rocket range, with scientific intelligence. His influence in most of these was great and permanent. It is hard to understand how one man can have done so much. But although the applications of science (and engineering) to war were for 37 years among the most pressing of Tizard's activities, his mind was always revolving on the broader problems of the relation of science to human society and human affairs in general. 'Science and the Industrial Revolution' (1929), 'Science and the Industrial Depression’ (1934),'The Passing World’ (British Association, 1948), 'Science and Democracy' (M.I.T.,1951), ’A Scientist in and out of the Civil Service' (1955); all these readable and thought provoking addresses put his ideas, his conclusions, his reservations and his general philosophy on record. It would be useful to publish them, with some of his letters and memoranda, together in accessible form, for their bearing on the problems of scientists and engineers in relation to Government. His provocative letter to Alan Barlow in 1945, on how to fit scientists into the Government machine, given in full in Clark's book, could be read with profit by anyone involved in that problem. 'The function of the scientist is to give scientific advice and to guide the strategy and tactics of scientific research and development. He cannot do this effectively unless he sits with the planners. The administrator and the scientist have complementary and equally important functions to 45

fulfil... One must not be the master and the other the servant, but they must work together as partners and equals’. Never was there any hair-brained proposal that the world could be run by scientists alone. Tizard loved young people and they loved him, but he could never have tolerated that crazy form of adolescence. He would, however, have insisted that the tasks of scientists in practical affairs would be easier, and their effectiveness greater, if their opposite numbers, their 'partners', had at least the elements of a scientific education. In fact, even today in this respect most politicians and administrators are illiterate. He realized that many scientific people, some even among the most eminent, are constitutionally unfitted to take part directly in practical affairs - except under the guidance of colleagues less naive. But he insisted also that others had gifts and experience of a more general kind which fitted them for decisions at a high level. He realized too that a man with a first-class mind, trained in science or engineering, may be able to make important contributions outside his immediate speciality. Some, for example, of the most effective 'operational research’ (just as useful in peace as in war) was done by people whose primary concern had been with biology, not physics. Perhaps the variability of their material had made them more able to cope with the unpredictable character of war - and of human nature - and with the problem of drawing conclusions, sufficiently quantitative for action, from data which lacked any mathematical or physical basis. Tizard had touched many sides of life outside the Services. He had been Secretary of the D.S.I.R., Rector of the Imperial College, President of Magdalen College, Oxford, a Trustee of the British Museum, Foreign Secretary of the Royal Society, President of the British Association, a Development Commissioner, Prime Warden of the Goldsmith's Company, and Chairman of the Advisory Council on Scientific Policy, his final official job (1946-52). In his last years he joined the Boards of several industrial companies, all with a scientific basis to their activities. 'His greatest value’, said one fellow director, ‘was that he was perpetually asking awkward questions'. This he had done all his life; in the Tizard Committee of 1935- 39 he continually inquired, when some new idea (bright, or not so bright) was put forward ‘how would the enemy counter that?’, 'what should we do if we were in his place?' And to young men working their way for an undue time from one research grant to another and applying for renewal (a common problem), 'have you ever thought of taking a job?'

SECTION II by H.T.T. February 1942. SPEECH TO THE PARLIAMENTARY AND SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE. I received at first the invitation of your Chairman to address you this afternoon with a reluctance which was the natural result of a sympathy with my audience, as well as with myself, in these hard-working times; but when I was finally committed to it I was glad, because it forced me to get away for a time from the troubles of the moment and to improve my perspective by considering the position 46 of science in this war as a whole. And it happened that another incident occurring at about the same time had much the same effect. In a group of friends I made some probably quite unnecessary critical remark; and one of them said "Oh you scientists, you get so absurdly exasperated at any inefficiency. You seem to think this war is like a game of golf between two scratch players, and it exasperates you to see the ball in the rough. No war was ever like a game of golf between two scratch players; it's much more like a game of golf between two 18 handicap players. The ball is usually in the rough, and every now and then one of the players gets a good niblick shot out on to the green, scuffles down the putt and that's one hole up". Well, it is true that the changing problems and the vast arena of this war make mistakes almost inevitable, and no one should get too worried about them, or fancy that the other side does not make them also. It is true, too, that a good niblick shot is a very satisfying sensation to the on-looking crowd as well as to the players. The crowd cheer. "Here", they say, "is a man of action! None of your theorists." Perhaps it needs a nicer knowledge of the game to realize the forethought, the skill, the good judgment, and the unruffled nerve necessary to keep the ball out of the rough on a stormy day. Looking at things as a whole, no one can deny that the influence of science is now greater than it has ever been, and that the present Government and Parliament attach a value to the help and guidance of scientists that no previous Parliaments have ever done. Lord Hankey has already told you something of the work of the Scientific Committees over which he presides. There are many more such Committees that I could mention. There is hardly a phase of the national life now with which scientists are not associated. In fact a fighting friend of mine said that he could hardly walk in any direction in this war without tumbling over a scientist who had got in the way. In the , where the concentration of scientists is perhaps greatest, they have a pet name for them. They call them "Boffins". Why, I do not know. I said to a young friend of mine in the Air Force "Why do you call scientists Boffins?" he said, "I don't know. What else would you call them?" And then, what previous Prime Minister of England ever had a scientific adviser continually at his elbow? He is not the only Minister who has a scientific adviser. Even Commanders-in- Chief have them, as General Pile, who is here, would blushingly admit. In fact, according to De Morgan, Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite ‘em And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum. I am sure that it has not escaped the notice of those members of your Committee who are not scientists that we scientists are a very critical lot. We see with the greatest clearness the shortcomings of other people! Indeed, we are brought up to be critical; it is part of our education to accept things only on evidence, and not merely on the unsupported authority of older men. There is no such thing in the scientific world as authority based merely on position and seniority. It is true that we are brought up to be constructive critics, but human 47 nature being what it is, I will not claim that we are always constructive, though we generally try to be. And let me let you into a secret. We scientists and scientific advisers do not always agree among ourselves. Your quick wit and ready perception will at once lead you to deduce that sometimes some scientists are wrong. This profound fact should always be borne in mind by your Committee. What is the general result of this widespread intrusion of scientists into the affairs of the war? Let me try to explain my views with the help of an analogy. There are not so many people who really understand the methods and processes of science, but we all like to think we know a good deal about war. Science, like war, has its strategy and its tactics. Tactics come in when the plan is settled, the task decided, and the problem set: and in science - as in war - success in tactics depends on good command, good organization, an adequate amount of up-to-date equipment, and an adequate number of highly trained men. Judged in this way, the tactical strength of science in this country is very great. There are many well run and well equipped research and experimental establishments up and down the country under direct or indirect Government control or under independent control. Above all, thanks to the progressive policy of education in the last twenty years, and also I like to think, to the innate qualities of our race, there is a large supply of able young men who are now rendering, by their scientific work, great service to the State. I fancy that the amount and quality of the scientific and technical ability in this country has surprised even some of the older generation of scientists. It has certainly surprised our foreign friends and foes. Perhaps it was because peace-time conditions in this country did not give these young men a real chance to show what they were worth. If so, we have a problem to deal with after the war. Or perhaps it is because, as a nation, we have a habit of keeping our best goods away from the shop windows. I remember a well-known aeronautical engineer, who came over to this country from the United States shortly before the war. He was very depressed at what he thought was the state of aeronautical science in this country. Our science was bad; our engineering was bad; and our design was bad. Being a real friend of this country he expressed his gloom to me. He thought we were a long way behind , let alone America. He went out of his way to give his views to people in more influential positions. About eighteen months ago I met him again, in the United States. I reminded him of our conversation, and he said, with that impulsive generosity which we find so attractive in Americans, "Oh, don't remind me about it, I take it all back." My considered opinion is that so far as the tactics of science are concerned we have nothing to fear in comparison with any other nation. So far as the strategy of science is concerned, I am not so confident. Much has been done to improve it, but much remains to be done. The strategy of science is again similar to that of war. The strategy of pure science is to attack at the weakest spot of the barrier of knowledge. The secret of science is to ask the right question, and it is the choice of the problem more than anything else that marks the man of genius in the scientific world. The strategy of science applied to war is to 48 attack at the point where the dividends are greatest in results in relation to the effort. Our tactical strength is great, but it is not unlimited. We cannot afford to dissipate our efforts over things that do not matter or do not matter much, and we must remember too, that any technical advance, to have a decisive effect in war, makes big demands on the productive capacity of the country. All this you may say is common sense; but it is not common sense that is very apparent. Few people have any idea of the flood of inventions that have to be considered and dealt with in the Service Departments. Most of them of course are worthless, and just waste of time. I have been told that only one in every thousand patents has any likelihood of being used and only one in every ten thousand is of any real value. The official in the patent Office is in a happy position. All he has to do is to satisfy himself that any suggestion, however stupid, has never been made before, and then charge the individual who made it a fee for the privilege of having it registered, and there the business ends. How the individuals in Government Departments who have to deal with inventions in war would rejoice if they were in the same happy position! But it is not the worthless inventions that are the real trouble. The real trouble and waste of time is caused by inventions and proposals that have something to be said for them, that are not technically impossible, and that might conceivably be of some use in some circumstances: such proposals are often pressed with great force by all sorts of influential people - scientists, Members of Parliament, and even Ministers. If we try to do all these things we dissipate our efforts and end by doing nothing well. Someone has to decide, having all the facts in mind, what is worth doing and what is not; and the decision is not an easy one to take and involves great responsibility. Strategical decisions in war are taken by the Cabinet on the advice of the Chiefs of Staff of the Service Departments. We may all have ideas about war strategy, but we know that the decision must be left to them. There was certainly something to be said for attacking on the Western Front some months ago, but all those who urged it must realize now what a mistake it would have been. Who, then, is to decide the strategy of scientific war, to settle what are the things that really matter, where we are to devote our scientific strength to get the greatest results in the shortest possible time? Certainly not scientists alone, working in the void, however eminent. Nor, in my opinion, can it be safely left to the staffs of the Fighting Services, even though each Service Department may contain officers of high scientific ability. Nor, I say, can it be left to a War Cabinet, however fertile in ideas. The safest way of reaching the right decision is to have scientists working side by side in the closest collaboration with those who have the administrative and executive responsibility. And the first thing that the scientist learns when he has the benefit and privilege of such collaboration is that he has a lot to learn. When the history of this war comes to be written, I hope that due credit will be given to those senior members of the staff of the Air Ministry, and to the then Minister, Lord Swinton, for adopting this policy. Since that time it has been greatly developed. The technical needs of the Royal Air Force, its staff plans, even its operations, have been submitted freely to the scrutiny and criticisms of scientists. 49

One may safely say that good dividends have resulted, so much so that the example has spread to other Departments. But not yet enough. Let me earnestly recommend to the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee that they can do no greater service than to ensure this kind of co-operation. Let the Committee concern itself rather with the general strategy of science than with its tactics. One last comparison before I conclude. What are the two great driving forces of our modern civilization? Science and Christianity. You may well think that is an odd, if not a preposterous, remark for a scientist to make. So I hasten to say that it is not original, and it was not first made by a scientist. When I was at school there was a youngish-looking Cannon of Westminster Abbey, whose sermons were listened to even by boys, and who often had a kindly word or a smile for the small boys he passed in Dean's Yard. (Tizard was at ) So when I picked up in a bookshop the other day a little volume entitled "Last Words in Westminster Abbey" by Hensley Henson, I thought that the least thing I could do was to add a trifle to his royalties. This is what I read.in one of the sermons: "Science and Christianity are the distinctive features of the civilization which has been cradled in Europe and from Europe extended over the world. The principle of both is liberty, the expression, in unshackled freedom, of the innate powers of the human spirit, the expression and vindication of individuality;" Is it not of interest, especially when we recall the supposed antagonism between science and Christianity some fifty years ago, that it should be left to a leader of the Church to express in so few and striking words, the fundamental strength of science? It set me thinking how few people see beyond the material benefits that science brings. The House of Commons seems at its best when the Whips are taken off and some subject is discussed that touches the religious life or convictions of the people they represent. In all the best social legislation Parliament is sustained and guided by the great principles of Christianity. In fact, one may say that there is hardly a member of either House of Parliament who does not understand and respect the motives and ideals of Christianity even if he does not believe in it; whereas how few there are who understand the motives and ideals of science, even though they all believe in it. I have heard it said that this war has been brought about by the progress of science, and that it would be better for humanity if scientific research were stopped. I answer that in the past the progress of Christianity was responsible for many bloody wars would you have stayed it for that reason? Make no mistake; this is a war of science. In these days we are witnessing how the scientific resources of Germany - and they are great indeed - are devoted to the object of destroying that intellectual freedom which is the very breath of science. So also in the Middle Ages did the Inquisition, on professedly religious grounds, strive to destroy, by the infliction of untold suffering, that liberty of conscience which is the real fount of true Christianity? The tyranny of the Inquisition has long since vanished into the past, beaten down by brave men to whom death was preferable to life without freedom; who were at first disorganized and ill-equipped for the fight, and discouraged by the policy of timid 50

Governments. So also will the present tyranny be beaten and die away, maybe sooner than we dare hope, maybe only after many years of suffering; but when it passes let us hope that scientific men, administrators and legislators, tempered in the furnace of war, will continue to work side by side, with respect for each other's knowledge, and tolerance for each other's ignorance, to restore a stricken world and to lead us to better things.

51

(14) ON PROSTITUTING ONE'S BRAINS

Late in 1915 I was asked, on the initiative of Horace Darwin, to undertake a major investigation (as it proved) of anti-aircraft gunnery. There were already a few anti-aircraft guns, but no proper scientific study had been made of their use, and as it turned out most of what was supposed to be known was wrong. The first thing to do was clearly to get hold of some people to help in the task. I naturally thought of mathematicians, having previously been one myself before taking up physiology; and mathematicians were not so likely to be in short supply then. So I went to ask G.H. Hardy's advice. He also was a Fellow of Trinity, ten years my senior, whose lectures on mathematics I had attended in my first year. When I opened the question with him he replied at once, with indignation, that he was not going to prostitute his brains on such a job. He was not a pacifist he protested, and was ready if called to serve in the army - but prostitute his brains- No! He deplored the fact that J.E. Littlewood, another mathematician and Fellow of Trinity, eight years younger, had joined the army and was working with the Ordnance Committee in calculating range tables for guns. Keeping my temper, I asked him if there were other younger men I might approach and he suggested the names of E.H. Fowler (also a mathematical Fellow, 1914) and E.A. Milne (a mathematical scholar then in his second year) These were among my earliest recruits, and magnificent people they were! They prostituted their brains so effectively that, starting from being pure mathematicians they became respectively, Fowler one of the most eminent applied mathematicians of his time, and Milne an equally eminent astronomer. In the end there were many others; some were older and already eminent, of the younger, D.R. Hartree proved to be of the same quality as Fowler and Milne. According to their own later accounts of what happened, their lives were not blasted by their seduction; indeed they seemed to think that their horizons had been widened. The best three died, alas, too young; but that cannot fairly be attributed to me.

52

(15) BERTRAND RUSSELL (1872-1970) AN ADVENTUROUS LIFE

In 1905 I went up to Trinity College, Cambridge, as a mathematical scholar, and in my first term attended lectures by A.N. Whitehead. In a diary I kept at that time is the comment "Mr Whitehead talked funnily about time and space". In a later term I went to lectures in which he appeared to deduce the principles of geometrical by drawing lines on a blackboard. These lectures meant nothing to me; I never was an "intellectual". But I became very friendly with the Whiteheads, they were extremely kind to me. I saw them last in Cambridge, Mass., in 1940; he was sitting in a deep arm-chair, with his hands clasped over his tummy looking like a bishop (his brother' Henry was a bishop), in earnest conversation with a group of young American disciples. It was probably through the Whiteheads that I got to know Bertrand Russell. But I saw a lot of him when we lived on same staircase in 1911-12 in Neville's Court (he invited me then to use his W.C. which saved a long walk and climb) I found him very kind and amusing but never really trusted him. He told me once that his convictions were in fact quite simple, but he never put them forward because that would not give him any scope for argument and wit. After that it was difficult to regard him as sincere. I liked him, but hated the sort of people one usually met in his rooms (Lytton Strachey & Co. they would also have hated me) and avoided going there with the crowd. Throughout the Kaiser's war he was carrying on a stunt for pacifism, and in 1916 was fined £100 at the Mansion House in London for his part in publishing a pamphlet for the No-Conscription Fellowship. He refused to pay the fine and his library at Trinity was seized for sale; it was bought by his friends there and returned to him. Early in 1918 he was agitating for the Union of Democratic Control and published in a paper called Tribunal an article which contained the offensive statement: The American garrison which will be occupying England and France, whether or not they will prove efficient against Germans, will no doubt be capable of intimidating strikers, an occupation to which the American Army is accustomed when at home. That can be seen in The Times of 11 February1918. As I remember the episode he also made speeches explaining that the American Army was coming in via Glasgow in order to intimidate the strikers there - who were indeed a recurrent nuisance in the war effort. He made such statements not because he believed them to be true (he was not such a fool as that) but in order to produce dissention between allies. He cannot really have supposed that the Glasgow strikers, whose brothers were in one of the most formidable fighting units of the , would be cowed by American troops. It was just too silly. He was charged at Bow Street on 9 February with making statements intended and likely to prejudice His Majesty's relations with the United States of America, contrary to the Defence of the Realm Regulations. 53

He was sentenced to prison for six months in the second division, but appealed; on 2 May mitigation was allowed, and the sentence was changed to six months in the first division. During those six months he wrote his Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy and the allies were allowed to defeat Germany in relative peace. The last time I spoke with him was in Stockholm at the Nobel Celebrations in 1950 when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. He made a speech which was quite charming, sincere, with none of the silly witticisms one expected from him. I told him so, and he said "so you like me better when I'm serious"; with which I agreed. Then he said "I find it very difficult sometimes to be serious" and. told me the following story. The year before, in 1949, he had been summoned to Buckingham Palace to receive the from King George VI. He had a very pleasant talk with the King who, he said, seemed to know a lot about him. Then the King remarked, with a faint smile, "Now Lord Russell you must have had a very adventurous life"; to which Russell desperately wanted to reply- "Yes Sir, just like your brother David." But with a supreme effort he managed to suppress it, and, as he said, felt stiff all over next day. That much will be found somewhere among his autobiographies. But not this. Sometime later I sat next to the King's private secretary at a dinner and told him the story. He expressed regret that for once, on the wrong occasion, Russell had suppressed a very apt reply: "what a pity; I had told the King all about him, he would have enjoyed that." When it was announced in 1949 that the Order of Merit was to be bestowed on Russell, a patriotic lady from Australia remarked that this was rather odd after the comfort he had earlier tried to give our enemies (in 1918). This produced the comment Perhaps there is more joy in Buckingham Palace aver one sinner that repenteth than over ninety-nine just persons that need no repentance. (see Luke, 15,7)

54

(16) CAMILLE SOULA (1888-1963) (Editor’s note: I have been unable to supply most of the accents in the French quotes.)

Camille Soula was born in 1883 at Foix (Ariege), 70 km. south of Toulouse, and studied Medicine at Toulouse. Mobilized as a medical officer in 1914 he served at Verdun end in Italy and was twice wounded; his wounds gave him time to study the works of Starling and Sherrington, which made so vivid an impression on him that in 1947 he dedicated his own great text book of physiology to Sherrington. Toulouse was always his spiritual home and long his actual one. From 1935 he occupied the chair of physiology there, although from the earliest moments of the occupation of France by the Germans in 1940 he was an active-member of the resistance movement. A strong radical in his political opinions he was nevertheless ruthlessly opposed to anything that compromised the honour and integrity of France. A devoted friend, or a bitter enemy: he had an extraordinary gift for praise, admiration or derisive invective. I met him first at the International Congress of Physiologists at Rome in 1932; he had written me earlier about his wish that his colleague (and nephew) Louis Bugnard should come and work with me in England; why I do not know. This was the first time I had heard of such an idea; no Frenchman had ever wanted to work with me before, there was nothing in England, even physiology, to compare with the wine they produced in France. When we met, at Ostia, I fortunately observed an officer of the Rockefeller Foundation (Dr Robert A. Lambert) across the room, and went to him at once saying that a miracle had happened; a young Frenchman wanted to come and work in England, would the Foundation give him a Fellowship? I had never met Bugnard, and only for a few moments his professor and uncle. But I felt that something extraordinary was happening; so apparently did the American; and it proved that we were both right. So Bugnard came to work with me and thus started one of the most fortunate connexions I have ever had - not only with him, but with Soula and his friends and the South West of France. My quick response to Soula’s suggestion had somehow made him a friend for life. So Bugnard came, on and off for several years, and made many lasting friends. He is a tall and heavy man with a cherubic face and sad sky-blue eyes. He was greatly pleased when he discovered that we had in England, among other curious things, a Society for the Prevention of Premature Burial. He wrote to its Secretary and found he could become a Life Member for £5. On getting this reply he wrote to the Rockefeller Foundation to say that when he had come to England he had not expected such a hazard, and could he charge his life membership to the Rockefeller funds? He always called himself a Member of the Society for Premature Burial, and his blue eyes would stream with tears whenever he thought about it. Many years later when some of my friends were having a party for me in London they invited him to come. He replied in a telegram, regretting inability, from a village in Brittany, signing himself "Bugnard member society for premature burial". Inquiring about his younger days I once asked what branch of the army he had served in, and he said the artillery. Tempted by his size I inquired "the heavy 55 artillery?" to which he replied "no, the horse artillery", then shaking his head, "pauvre cheval". In my laboratory he became very friendly with an American E.J. Baldes, who was ten centimetres taller but twenty kilograms lighter. This strange couple once went to the Derby together, and the sequel is best described in Bugnard’s words: "Baldes he put his money on a bookmaker, and the bookmaker he fly off". After this rebuff, in order to restore Baldes’ self-esteem they went to the coco-nut shies. Baldes was an accomplished base-ball player, and knocked off a coconut every shot - until the proprietor asked him to stop. So they came home quite happy. Soula came to London several times before the war, and greatly admired the work that Henry Dale was doing on neuromuscular transmission by acetylcholine. It was blasphemy in France at that time not to believe in Lapicque's theory that "isochronism" of muscle and nerve was the basis of transmission of the impulse across the end-plate. We knew pretty well in England by then, on other grounds, that this was not true, but Dale's work was decisive. Soula wrote an article in a French Journal describing Dale's conclusions, and added "Frenchmen should be aware of the truth even if it is discovered on the banks of the Thames." It took some time still for the truth to penetrate and I remember once Soula denouncing Lapicque for his resistance to evident facts. I said laughingly to him "You don't seem to like Lapicque" - to which after a long and thoughtful pause he said, "Well, I wouldn't kill him". The story of the part that Soula and Bugnard played in the Resistance in South-West France is referred to elsewhere. Before the war began Soula was filled with foreboding of what would happen under the governments that France then had. They were not, in fact, much worse than ours; though we were saved by the Channel and the R.A.F. In 1934 Doumergue formed a "ministry of national unity", of which Marshal Petain, the defender (1916) of Verdun was a member. He was already 78 and becoming senile (I write this at 84!). Soula, who was a close friend of Leon Blum and Vincent Auriol, realized already in the 1930's what manner of appeaser Petain was and derided him continually. His most effective derision, as I remember, was "even when the silly old man has to get out of bed in the night he does it pour sauver la France." In 1944, after D-day in June, the German armies were gradually driven out of France, though the war continued in the Low Countries and Germany till final surrender on V.E. day in May 1945. If readers of this story do not remember the 20th chapter of Matthew, they had better read it again before proceeding. At Christmas 1944 I sent a telegram to Soula (who had spent active, bitter and dangerous years with the Resistance in South-West France) with Christmas greetings and an invitation to come and visit me in London to discuss the future. I was still an M.P. and thought I might be able to help him. He replied (6 January 1945) that he would dearly love to come, but that since the Parisians had already begun to flock to London "il n’y a plus de place que pour eux". He was contemptuous of their meagre part in the Resistance, and did not, at that stage, wish to have anything to do with then. He added: 56

La parabole des ouvrièrs de la douzième heure est la plus cynique invention de la morale chretienne. In the gospel the last labourers to be called were those of the eleventh (onzième) hour, and they received the same wages as those who had borne the burden and heat of the day. I am sure that Soula's douzième was not a simple mistake but a deliberate choice of ultimate invective. In May 1947 I received from Soula a copy of the great text-book of physiology, dedicated to Sherrington, on which he had spent many years. I told him that I should value it particularly because of the "admiration, gratitude and affection" with which ( he had written in it) it was sent. I added I do not feel that I have done anything which deserves such terms of kindness, but I am none the less grateful. That provoked seven pages of reply which finished like this: Si la gratitude et l’admiration vous gènes, en effusouant votre simplicite, s’il vous displait que je vous rapelle des qualities que vous ne pouvez pas ne pas avoir, et dans lesquelles vous n vous senez aucun merite personnel, nous ne parlerons plus de rien, et restirons sur le plan de l’amitie.

We certainly remained on the plan de l’amitie for another sixteen years, reinforced by gifts of foie gras or Armagnac at Christmas. Writing two years later to tell me of a dear sister's death he apologized for not having written earlier and thanked me for the action of the R.A.F. in saving the world! I did not argue about that one, I knew it would be useless, but when he added Le monde l'oublie et beaucoup d'anglais aussi sans doute, I commented: Your remarks about the R.A.F. saving the world came ironically enough, on the day when the Israelis in Palestine had shot down four R.A.F. Spitfires over Egypt. You say the world quickly forgets; the Israelis certainly do. I added: The book which you say you might write describing your sentiments might do very well as an obituary notice when the time comes. The origin of the last letter I got from him, dated 29 January 1963 two months before he died, was the rejection earlier in January of Britain’s application to join the European Economic Community. Mon bien cher A.V. Il y a plusieurs jours que je veux vous ecrire. Je pense qu’il est inutile de vous dire ce que je pense des pourparlers de Bruxelles, vous le devinez, mais ce n’est pas une raison de ne pas vous l’ecrire. L’hostilite de notre gouvernement a l’egard de l’Angleterre me remplit le coeur de degout et de honte. C’est pure folie. Qu’un homme qui doit toute sa carriere a la generosite des Anglais ait une pareille attitude! C’est inconcevable. Tant que la guerre a dure j’ai cru en de Gaulle 57

a credit. Sitöt apres la liberation, je me suis apercu quo c’etait un militaire comme les autres un peu moins scrupuleux peut-etre que les autres, qui s’arrogeait tous les merites de la resistance. Quand il a repris le pouvoir par conjuration et qu’il a trahi l’Algerie je l’ai regrette pour la France... Mais quand il fait voir sa haine de l'Amerique et de l’Angleterre je tiens a vous dire que rien ne peut effacer dans ma memoire, comme dans celle de beaucoup de francais‚ le souvenir des nuits de la bataille d’Angleterre ou la voix de Pierre Bourdan ä la B.B.C. annoncant les avions allemands abattus jusqu’a l’extermination: le salut de la liberte du monde. votre Camille.

58

(17) I LOVED EVERY TIMBER IN THE OLD SHIP

Those who knew the Marine Biological Laboratory at Plymouth between the two wars will have affectionate memories of Captain Vivian Lord of the S. S. Salpa. My son Maurice had known him since 1928, when he was nine, and had learnt a lot about the sea from him — which proved very useful later. In December 1939 Maurice, then at the Anti-Submarine Establishment at Portland received a letter from Lord as follows, printed here exactly as it was written to his young friend. In a letter to me, at about the same time, he wrote of Maurice "I feel certain he will make good as he is a proper Old Salt" (at the age of 20.5!). The old ship Salpa is at last doing her duty, taken over about a week ago, and I am now beginning to miss every timber in the old Packet, after having her for my home for nearly 20 years; it was like parting from a dear old Friend, and I find it very difficult to believe we have parted so abruptly after all the Happy years of work I have done on her, perhaps I am too sensitive but I loved every timber in the old ship and I can say now that I nursed her like a child, and she would do everything I wanted her to do, and now it's like part of my life is gone. I never realised that should have felt the parting so much until she was gone, and now when I go down on the wharf to go in the motor boat, there seems to be something missing, but, I suppose I shall get used to it as time goes on. P139) Fifteen years later, in 1954, he wrote to tell me of his wife's death with the same unconscious skill in putting his thoughts into words: It is like the largest part of my Body has been wrenched from me.

He continued at first to live in the same house where they had been (except when he was at sea) for fifty years; it looked out over Brixham harbour. I still spend a lot of time in the top room, watching the shipping, seeing the Mail Boats come in to pick up their Pilots, and the Tankers to discharge their oil, besides the Fishing Boats and now during the Summer the Ferry Boats that Ply to Torquay.

But after three years he moved to another and smaller house, where he could get help. Though he could still write: I have a lovely view of the Sea and Harbour. It was by the Vicar of Brixham that the famous hymn was written: Abide with me, fast falls the even tide. He watched it rise and fall, and the boats come and go, for another few years, then he had to go to an Old People's Home. I saw him last there in 1963, still moving about smartly, looking like a retired captain ought to look, but with a cancer that killed him within the year. In an address at the W.B. Hardy centenary celebration in 1964, six months after Lord's death, I told the following story of them 59 both and of the Salpa. The last occasion when Hardy visited the laboratory at Plymouth was in March 1929, and during that visit he joined the Salpa for a short cruise, The vessel, a rather top-heavy drifter, was seaworthy but uncomfortable, the weather was foul, there was nothing to be seen; and Lord told me about it some years later after Hardy's death. But Hardy was perfectly content, for two long days. "Sir William", he said, "sat in the engine-room and smoked"; it must have been the warmest spot during that March journey; then thoughtfully, after a long pause, "a proper gentleman 'e were". A framed photo of the "proper gentleman" was always kept in the little deck-house aft; perhaps it should have been in the engine room.

60

(18) SIMON THE BIRD, AND THE ROCKEFELLER FOUNDATION.

Simon was a budgerigar, of stock raised in our garden; but from his earliest days living indoors and accustomed to human company he wanted no other. He adopted me as his friend and used to mock me. Also he accompanied me when I went to post a letter, sitting on my shoulder, or flying around free as a scout. During Hitler's war, Simon the Bird became very miserable because he could not get any millet. Alan Gregg, an Officer of the Rockefeller Foundation, visiting London, came to see us. He was very fond of birds, although he had once contracted psittacosis from being too familiar with one of them. (Wilder Penfield: The difficult art of giving: the epic of Alan Gregg. Little, Brown and Company (Canada). 1967. pp.311-2) When he heard of Simon's plight he recited the motto of the Foundation, "For the good of mankind throughout the world", and added that this applied to birds as well as men. When he got back to America he sent us a large can of millet. This, alas, had the effect described in the Birds' Epitaph, which (in order to show deeper feeling) I have translated into my mother's tongue, that is Devonshire. Simon was in distinguished, if company; one of the important things I learnt at school was that King Henry I died of a surfeit of lampreys. Yur lies the body of Simon the Burrd, Er daid vary zudden, not zaying a worrd, Er et taeoo much corn, Zet down and were gorn; But er daid vurry 'appy, to mourn were abzurd.

61

(10) LORD CHERWELL AND THE ARCHBISHOP

Lord Cherwell when the war began Was plain professor Lindemann; But now in more exalted spheres He sits among his comrade peers, And from this elevated perch Cries silence for Lord Christ of Church. The Church of Christ that patient ass, Seeing new marvels come to pass, Gazing on virtues just reward, Adores its newly risen Lord. [Lindemann was a student of Christ Church, Oxford.]

The author of this poem, which went round in 1941, is unknown. A year or so later, sitting next to Archbishop Lang at lunch, I recited it to him (I knew he did not like Lindemann, something to do with Churchill's efforts to prevent the abdication of King Edward VIII.) Then, laughing, I said I ought not to pass on such blasphemy to an Archbishop. He replied with emphasis, "It isn't blasphemy, its true". When I was in the United States in the autumn of 1936 the newspapers were filled with amusing accounts of goings-on in England of which very very few English people were aware. The self-imposed censorship of the English newspapers was complete. In the United States there was no reticence. The best example I saw there was in headlines referring to Archbishop Lang at a party, in letters two-inches high : COSMO CANTUAR CUTS KING'S CUTIE.

62

(20) JAMES THOMSON (A) and BORIS BABKIN (B)

A. JAMES THOMSON, A SPLENDID UNDESTATEMENT. In a public garden at Forres in Morayshire is a memorial to Assistant Surgeon James Thomson, who was born at Cromarty in 1823 and died in the Crimea in 1854. I saw it by chance during a drive through Forres to Sutherland, and it impressed me so much by its splendid understatement that I wrote it down for future use. It is pertinent to the story about Babkin that follows.

He served with the 44th Regiment at Malta in 1850 when the cholera broke out and shortly proved fatal to all the surgeons of the corps, himself alone excepted. Skill, fortitude and humanity were displayed by him in arresting the progress of the disease He was present with the same Regiment at the battle of the Alma in 1854 and a few days after when the British were leaving the field he volunteered to remain behind with seven hundred desperately wounded Russians. Isolated from his countrymen and endangered by the vicinity of large numbers of Cossacks, ill supplied with food and exposed to the risk of pestilence. He succeeded in restoring to health about four hundred of the enemy and embarked them for Odessa. Then he died from hardship and prIvation. His life was useful and his death glorious.

(B). BORIS BABKIN, “HOW I CAME TO DALHOUSIE”.

Boris Petrovitch Babkin was one of those people who never forget. Once, by good luck, I was able to do him a kindness which cost me nothing; but he never got over it and went on sending presents to my family for twenty-five years. What I did, and its sequel, is described in a story he wrote about 1930; originally that was only for his own eyes, but someone must have persuaded him to publish it, slightly modified, in the Journal of the Mount Sinai Hospital (New , 1942, 3,,p.168). His references to the relatives who fought in the Crimean War, and to his reception in Canada, show how he would have loved to read the story of the gallant young Scotsman (James Thomson) which is printed above; the reconciliation he referred to really began on the battlefield in 1854. He died in 1950 (shortly after his election to the Royal Society) and I did not see that "splendid understatement" till 1958. Babkin's story relates how, as an exile from Russia to Starling's laboratory in London in 1922, he went to Dalhousie University in Canada in 1924. After four years there he moved to McGill University, , where in several different posts he remained till 1950. He had been the pupil and might have been the successor of Pavlov in 1936; and his life’s work was devoted to the physiology of digestion. The influence of this gentle man, particularly in North America, was very great. There is an admirable notice of him by Daly, Komarov and E.G. Young in Obit. Not. Roy. Soc., 1952 8, p13. Anyone who likes the story which follows should 63

read that notice; and he will appreciate Babkin’s nature even more when he learns how, but for a long illness, Babkin might have spent his life in a famous balalaika orchestra instead of in laboratories of physiology.

It is seventeen years since I first stepped on Canadian soil. Those who have not lived through the dreadful storm of a revolution can hardly understand the great relief and the feeling of profound gratitude that were mine when my battered ship entered the quiet harbour of an “ordinary” life. It is somewhat more than pleasant recollections that I have of Dalhousie and Halifax. In this article I propose to tell the story of my coming to Dalhousie. One beautiful July morning in 1924 I was sitting on the deck of a big transatlantic liner. Three days before my wife and I had left England, where we had spent two years since my exile from Soviet Russia. Being unable to obtain any suitable appointment in England, I had accepted the modest post of instructor in at Washington University, St. Louis, kindly offered to me by Dr H.S. Gasser, who at that time was working at University College, London. Had I left Europe forever? What would our life be like in America, and what kind of people were the Americans? Was this instructorship to be the end, or a new start in my scientific career? None of these nor any other questions bothered me at the time. How could they bother me? For the first time in ten years we were enjoying a spell of luxurious life free from worries and troubles., For a while I could forget the incessant tension of the war, the horror, the misery and the humiliation of the revolution. The ocean was as calm as a river on a bright summer day. It was a delight to look on this huge round blue expanse surmounted by an immense, light blue dome. In the very middle of this space was our liner, seemingly motionless. I do not think there were many thoughts in my mind. Its analytical capacities were temporarily lost and it was in that divine state when surrounding nature is perceived as a whole. I wished only that our liner could remain under this dome in the middle of this magic blue circle as long as possible. Suddenly my siesta was interrupted by a steward. "There is a cable for you in the wireless department," he said. At once I came back to life. The only message which I could expect was from my son-in-law, an officer in the U.S. Army. He had not been sure whether he could meet us in New York and hoped that he was now cabling that he was able to do so. I was counting greatly on his help, because the problem of landing in New York worried me. Of course we had quite legitimate visas from the American Consulate in London, which had been obtained after long hours of tiresome standing in the street and in the corridors of this institution, and after short but unpleasant talks with its officials. But what value have all these sheets of paper with red paper seals or without them, when one is a Russian refugee with an old Czarist passport? An immigration officer will show greater courtesy to a travelling cat or dog! As a matter of fact the beginning of our voyage was marked by very unpleasant incident. An employee of the steamship company at Southampton who inspected the passengers' passports refused in a very rude manner, and 64 without any reason except that we were Russians, to allow us to embark on the boat. Only with the help of a less jaundiced and undoubtedly more intelligent American official was the matter settled quickly and satisfactorily. Great was my surprise and even consternation when I read the following telegram: "Professor Hill recommends you professorship physiology Dalhousie University. On landing could you come Halifax for consultation? If not when could I meet you. Mackenzie President Dalhousie University." I suddenly remembered what it all meant. Two days before our departure from London I went to say good-bye to Professor A.V. Hill, who at that time was in charge of the Department of Physiology in University College, London, where I worked for two years after leaving Russia. He expressed regret that no position could be arranged for me in England. Sad as it was for me, I could not reproach anybody for such a state of affairs, and especially not this man who always seemed to me to be so profoundly sympathetic towards others and so exceptionally honest in his relations with them. We parted in a most friendly manner. I was almost at the outside door when I heard Hill rushing down the stairs two or three steps at a time. "I just opened a letter," he said. "They want a physiologist at Dalhousie. Would you like me to recommend you?" 'Dalhousie?" "Yes. Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia." "Nova Scotia?' Where is that?" "In Canada. Not far at all from here. In four or five days you can always come back to England," said the Englishman. "Thank you. If you think that with my poor English I am fitted for this position, please recommend me." On reaching home I had told my wife about my conversation with Professor Hill. She paid very little attention to what I said. Her thoughts were directed towards North Carolina where our daughter was, whom we had not seen for two years. And very soon we had both completely forgotten about Dalhousie, Halifax and Nova Scotia. In the meantime presumably Professor Hill had communicated with President Mackenzie of Dalhousie University, and the President had cabled me on the liner. I put the telegram in my pocket, sat down in my chair again, and tried to return to my state of nirvana. Alas! the beautiful dream had disappeared; I found myself again on a crowded and noisy liner, continuously vibrating to the rotations of her propellers and moving forward with irritating slowness. A red-faced gentleman, whose chair was not far from mine, was speaking to his neighbour in a thin, tiresome voice, which he modulated in that unnatural manner sometimes referred to as the "Oxford" accent. However, I had to answer the President's telegram. The only possible way of learning something about Dalhousie University was to consult somebody in New York. It was very fortunate that one of my most distinguished former students from the University of Odessa, Dr G. Schwartzman, was at that time in New York, where he occupied a Chair of in one of the medical schools. I replied to President Mackenzie that I would inform him of 65 my decision from New York. It seemed that the Dalhousie cablegram marked the end of our carefree and pleasant life on the liner. Next day the ship’s journal reported a fresh north-west wind and a moderate sea. In ordinary language this meant that our boat rolled continuously and desperately slowly from one side to the other. It creaked and groaned, and in Maxime Labelle's words from Drummond's "Habitant," "Ant so we all come very sick, just like one little pup, "Ant ev’ry tam de ship's go down, de inside sha’s go up." The "moderate" sea had not yet at all moderated its unwelcome activity when a new trouble arose. The Assistant Purser, whose duty it was to attend to the second class passengers, lost my wife's and my immigration papers. I do not remember the exact name of these papers. They were of huge size and printed on both sides with questions which the U.S. Government required us to answer in the proper way. I had completed one set of papers (and of course another set for my wife!) and emphatically denied that I was either an anarchist or a communist. I assured them that I was not a polygamist and that I did not intend to overthrow the United States Government. I do not think there was a question as to whether I was a member of a racketeering gang, but I had to declare if I was mentally sane, which I did. The Assistant Purser was rather a romantic young man. He was far more interested in two girls, who according to rumour were English actresses, than in my immigration papers. Whenever the Assistant Purser entered the dining room or saloon, he stood for a while like a penguin, his nose in the air, slowly moving his head to right and left, trying to locate the girls. I sat down to fill these papers again. My wife, like so many women, did not realize the importance of this formality and preferred to stay on deck chatting with the new acquaintances whom she had met on the boat. . So I was left alone with a double job. I had not yet quite got over the effects of the north-west wind. Oh! how indignant I was at the romantic adventures of the Purser, whom I held responsible for my misfortune. I put down on the papers as before all the things which the United States Government wanted to know about us. Then I came to the query: "Complexion:" My complexion? Probably at that moment I was pale, but I was not sure what complexion I have in happier circumstances. After long deliberation, and being afraid of disappointing the immigration officer, I wrote down, "Complexion - all right." Thoughts about my complexion exhausted me completely. What kind of complexion had my wife? I wrote, "Complexion - pink," to which she objected very much afterwards. But I honestly thought that it would help her gain admittance to the United States. At last we arrived in New York. My son-in-law and Dr Schwartzman met us. I told Dr Schwartzman about Dalhousie. He considered the offer a very good one, but did not know enough about the University to advise me to accept the post. Accordingly he invited to the hotel where we were staying the late Dr Louis Gross, whom I had met a year before in London. Dr Gross arrived immediately. After a short consultation the two young men took me to see Dr E. Libman, a famous New York clinician. The sincere interest of this man in the fate of a complete stranger, 66 as I was to him then, touched me greatly. His vivid mind worked with extreme quickness. In a few minutes he outlined a plan which I was to follow, and which I actually did follow. Since a chair of physiology and not an instructorship in pharmacology was what I actually wanted in coming to America, I had to consider the Dalhousie offer with all seriousness. I must go to Halifax immediately and find out personally about the conditions of work there. If they were suitable, I was to accept the offer. But I must not forget that I was under certain obligations to Washington S. University. A few days later, after certain passport and other formalities had been settled, I warmly shook the hand of my friend Dr Schwartzman at the Grand Central Terminal and thanked him for his inexhaustible kindness. I had a strange feeling of amazement mixed with a sense of grave responsibility concerning all that was happening. Things were not so simple as they seemed, and although it might seem a lucky chance for me to exchange the instructorship at St. Louis for a full professorship at Dalhousie, I had been told by my friends in England, and believed myself, that the pharmacological laboratory at Washington University would be the first stop in my scientific career in the United States. I must confess that Canada had never entered into my considerations. I now fully realized that the acceptance of the Dalhousie offer would change altogether the course of my scientific and personal life and the future of my family. Had we not had enough of such changes in the last ten years? As I looked from the train window on this American land, one thing impressed me. A European is accustomed to think of America as a country of steel and concrete, but this is true of the big cities only. On the outskirts one already begins to see wooden buildings, and between the cities it is difficult to find a house that is not of wood. The long trip was rather uneventful, the salient feature being the terrific heat, especially between New York and Boston. Never in my life before had I suffered so much from thirst. I did not know then that there was iced water in the car! Great was my relief when the next morning after an uncomfortable night (my first night in a Pullman car!) I had breakfast, in a quiet, clean restaurant at McAdam Junction. This was Canada! The morning was cool. Spruce, pines and birches reminded me of my own country. A small lake reflected the white clouds which moved high up in the pale blue sky. How nice and friendly everybody was on this fresh summer morning! And what a contrast it was to the noise and heat of New York! Then followed an endless and tiresome journey to Halifax, where we did not arrive till-eleven at night. The old wooden station building was poorly lighted and humble. It was too dark to see the city. However, I noticed that there was some kind of celebration going on. (1921 marked the one hundred-and seventy-fifth anniversary of the founding of Halifax.) Crowds were walking in the streets and among them many officers in full military uniforms. Thin threads of light marked the contours of the battleships in the harbour. A taxi took me to the Halifax Hotel. It was the shortest and most expensive drive that I ever had. Hardly had I taken my seat in the old shaky Ford than we arrived at our destination, and the driver charged me one 67 dollar. With great difficulty I found a spare room in the hotel, so overcrowded was it. Next morning was not cheerful. Rain poured and heavy grey clouds hung over the city. A wooden building with narrow windows across the street was soaked with water and looked ugly. I was waiting for President Mackenzie in the lobby and easily recognized him in a tall, dignified man who approached the counter. We introduced ourselves to one another. He took me in his car to his office at Studley. Unhurriedly he explained to me the position of Nova Scotia in the Dominion and the place which Dalhousie University occupied in the Maritime Provinces. Then he spoke about the vacant Chair of Physiology, which he again offered to me. I recollect this conversation with great satisfaction because a feeling of understanding was reached between us so easily and quickly. President Mackenzie fully realized the importance of the Chair of Physiology in the University and consented to the appointment of a permanent assistant - an experienced man who would help me with the teaching. Besides this I was promised a laboratory boy and sufficient funds for additional equipment and maintenance. The favourable impression created on me by this conversation was further increased when President Mackenzie showed me my future laboratory in the Medical Science Building. Frankly I did not expect to see in a small university a perfect modern laboratory building. Five rooms were allotted to the Department of Physiology. The equipment was rather poor, but since money was promised this did not worry me. In the medical building I met Dr W.H. Hattie, Dean of the Medical Faculty, Dr E.G. Young, Professor of Biochemistry, Dr O.S. Gibbs the newly appointed Professor of Pharmacology, and in the recently completed Health Centre, where the President took me, Dr A.G. Nicholls, Professor of Pathology. The friendshlp of all these men I afterwards appreciated very much. The difficulties of this day were not yet over for me. The lunch in the Halifax Club, to which President Mackenzie invited me, was quite an unusual affair. It happened that the very day I came to Halifax, the newly appointed President of King's College, the Rev. Mr Moor, had arrived. A lunch was given jointly for both of us to introduce us to Archbishop Worrell, and to Mr G. Campbell and Mr G.F. Pearson, Chairman and Vice-Chairman respectively of the Board of Governors of Dalhousie University. It was pointed out to me that the lunch would be a Nova Scotian one. Indeed, for the first time in my life I was served with fish chowder. Since I for my part had already almost decided to accept the chair at Dalhousie, I ate it bravely. Then we were given some kind of fish, also new to me, but delicious and fresh as only fish in Halifax can be. The dessert gave me an opportunity for revenge. Blueberry pie was served, and I was asked whether I knew this kind of berry. Did I know blueberries! According to the Russian Encyclopedia the name of Babkin appears in about the thirteenth century in the district of Novgorod in Northwest Russia. This is a real blueberry country. Not only from my childhood but undoubtedly all the Babkins in past centuries ate blueberry pies! In spite of my boasting about the blueberries I passed my examination at this 68 luncheon satisfactorily, as the development of events showed me later. After lunch the rain stopped and Mr Pearson took us for a drive to the Ashburn Golf Club, from where I was brought to my hotel and left to my own devices. I stretched myself out on the bed in my room, recollecting all the conversations that had passed. I endeavoured to restore the impressions which different persons had produced on me and to guess what impression I had made on them. I considered again the alternative prospects of work at St. Louis and at Halifax. I realised that these few hours before President Mackenzie would come to see me again at 8 o'clock in the evening were of great importance for my decision. It started to rain heavily again. Drops were forming on the windowpanes. They moved down the glass zigzag, absorbing smaller drops on their way, and near the bottom formed into a little rapid stream. Rain is an unlucky omen at a wedding. Was not this the day of my wedding with Dalhousie? The monotonous movement of the rain drops probably caused me to doze, because when I woke up it was already 5 o'clock. I decided to go for a little stroll in the streets. It had stopped raining. The heavy grey clouds were partly broken, letting through more light from the still hidden sun. The harbour with its dark water looked unfriendly. The small wooden houses, some of which were unpainted and were therefore almost black from the recent rain, looked sad. There was very little traffic in the street. What a contrast to New York and probably St. Louis! Would I have to live here for ever? I found myself in the main street of the city. Most of the buildings here were of concrete, although here and there old wooden two or three story boxes testified to the past history of the city. Street cars, modest stores and a greater number of pedestrians animated this locality. At the intersection of two streets a very tall red- faced policeman was absorbed in a conversation with a short, stout friend. After repeated blasts from the horn of an approaching automobile, the policeman straightened himself up, looked round and indicated the direction requested by moving his arm with such vigour that it seemed as if he were throwing a ball in the face of the submissive driver. Then again he bent down to his friend and plunged into the interrupted chat. I was now standing at the gate of a small cemetery, abandoned probably very many years ago. The growing city had surrounded it with its bustle and noise. The dark gravestones, some of them already sunk deep in the ground, contrasted with the fresh green of the leaves and grass which were still wet. In the middle of the cemetery stood an ark with the figure of a lion on the top. I read the inscription, "Sebastopol" and below "Alma, 1855. Redan", "Weesford, 97 Reg.", "Parker, 77 Reg." This ark was probably in commemoration of two officers killed in action during the Crimean War. Sebastopol! How many memories did this name evoke in me! My grandfather, Ivan Babkin, with the rank of colonel, and my uncle, Alexander, then a young lieutenant, participated in the Crimean campaign. The military traditions and memories of 1854-55 were very much alive in our family. One of my favourite books was a story in three volumes with numerous wood-cuts of the siege and defence of 69

Sebastopol. Admiral Kornilov and Admiral Nakhimov were my childhood's idols. How fine it would be, I thought, to become a hero like one of them and die a glorious death! From the conversations of our elders we children gathered that the chief enemy of Russia was "perfidious Albion". Only very gradually was this impression dispelled among the Russian public, not perhaps fully until the beginning of the Great War. I stood probably too long before the monument, because one or two passers-by looked at me with curiosity. But it was something to think about! The children and grandchildren of those who fought against my own people now wanted to accept me as their fellow member in one of the most vital institutions of their land. How little we understand the tortuous course of history, and how cruelly we are deprived of the capacity of prevision! I do not think that the Sebastopol monument directly influenced my decision concerning Dalhousie University. But the unknown path of Destiny which was revealed by the sight of it undoubtedly reminded me that there is One who knows what is good for us often better than we do ourselves, When the same evening President Mackenzie came to the hotel to talk over the whole matter with me, my decision to accept the chair was already made.

70

(21) I CANNOT DISTINGUISH ONE KIND OF FASCISM FROM ANOTHER

The title comes from a letter to me by Professor Louis Lapicque, a French physiologist. I had written him asking his advice about how to answer a letter (15 October 1935), from , a very eminent French physicist, inviting me to join a Comite de vigilance des intellectuels antifascists. My friend Lapicque, a very good radical but a patriotic Frenchman, had recently returned from the U.S.S.R., where I had been too, attending an International Congress of Physiologists. I knew he disliked the Italian, as well as the German, kind of fascism as much as I did: but I was not sure that such dislike was the real motive of the manifesto that Langevin wanted me to sign. Lapicoue replied on 23 October as follows: : Non: Je n’ai pas voulu m‘inscrire au Comite des intellectuels antifascistes, quoique mes meilleurs amis en fassent partie et que j’aie ete vivement sollicite. Je suis profondement attache ä la liberte; j’ai deux ou trois fois paye de ma personne quand la liberte a ete menace en France par des mouvements que nous puisseons retrospectivement qualifier de fascists: le Boulangisme, il y a pres de 50 ans, (j’ai eu ä ce moment, je l'ai su apres, l'honneur d’etre inscrit sur la liste des gens ä arreter, ou probablement ä fusiller dans le Coup d’Etat projete – l’affaire Dreyfus ou j’ai passe en jugement comme fondateur de la Ligue des Droits de l’Homme – l’affaire Herree, ou j’ai ete suspendu 6 mois de mes fonctions universitaires – j’ai proteste contre la tyrannie tsariste pour la liberte academique de Russie au point que l’ambassadeur du Tsar ä Paris a demande ma revocation, etc., et je n’ai pas change de sentiments. Mais le comite antifasciste en question me parait d’une inconsequence intolerable en s’appuyant sur les Comnunistes partisans des Soviets. Les Soviets sont si nettement un fascisme. S’il convenait de protester en ce nomant contra l’ecrasement des libertes civiques dans le monde je ne vois pas pourquoi l’U.S.S.R. serait classe autrement que l’Italie ou l’Allemagne. Mais je pense comme vous que ce n’est pas de cela que nous devons nous preoccuper en ce monent. I did not join the anti-fascist intellectuals.

71

(22) GAETANO MARTINO FROM PHYSIOLOGIST TO FOREIGN MINISTER (1927-1954) Not by P. G. Wodehouse

In 1927 Gaetano Martino came from Italy to work with me at University College London. It did not take long to find out that he was obtaining the results which he thought I expected; and a little inquiry showed that he did not know even how to connect up the induction coil with which he was supposed to be stimulating frogs' muscles. I decided that he had better go elsewhere. When I told him he showed no kind of annoyance or resentment; that was the sort of thing that might happen to any gentleman. He asked only that I would give him a statement that he had worked with me between such and such dates. I had not the heart to say no to so simple a request, and gave him a bald statement to that effect; I did not say what he had done, or how. He thanked me and said that this would be of great value to him in his future profession. But then, he reflected, he could easily have forged my signature, so it would be better to get the statement countersigned by Lovatt Evans, the professor of physiology. This was duly done; but then it dawned on him that he could have (end forged both signatures; so he went to the Provost of University College and got him too to sign. Then it is believed that he got the document stamped at the Italian Embassy. It was not long before this document did indeed promote his advancement in his profession: he was offered a chair of physiology in a South American University. But alas, when he got there, he found they had offered the chair also to someone else, who was already in occupation. Nothing daunted, he persuaded the authorities to make him a professor of . I heard nothing about him for several years, then he appeared as professor of physiology at Messina in Sicily. I had gathered earlier that, being a liberal, he did not approve of Mussolini; which I thought was greatly in his favour, though probably not conductive to advancement in his profession. Fortunately, however, Mussolini was bumped off by partisans in April 1945, so the way was now open for further advancement. He took to politics, to which his accomplishments were well suited and became Rector of his University. The next I heard of him was that he had become Foreign Minister of Italy; previously he was Minister of Education. In 1954 he came to England for discussions with the Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden. And, to our astonishment at University College, he graciously got the Italian Embassy to ring us up and ask if he could come and see the laboratory where he had worked. I improvised another engagement; but my assistant J.L. Parkinson who remembered him well, met him in the laboratory and they looked with pleasure at the bench where he had (though Parkinson never mentioned that) failed to connect up his coil properly in the good old days twenty seven years earlier. Neither did Parkinson remind him that in 1927 he (Parkinson) had insisted on calling him Mussolini. Martin had complained to me then about this and said it was no compliment; though knowing Parkinson, I told him I did not think it was intended to be. But I have always thought better of him for his complaint. 72

It is extraordinary how a simple uncoloured statement of fact, such as I gave him in 1927, could lead to such eminence in his profession. But there may have been other qualities about him of which Parkinson and I were unaware.

Note. This true story was written by A.V.H. not by I.G. Wodehouse.

73

(23) G. H. HARDY A MESSAGE OF RECONCILIATION

In 1940 my wife gave me, as a Christmas present, a copy of the charming little book by G.H. Hardy just published, A Mathematician’s Apology. Looking at it before handing it over she found the (to her) astonishing sentence (p.18): We must guard against a fallacy common among apologists of science, a fallacy into which, for example, Professor A. V. Hill has fallen, the fallacy of supposing that the men whose work most benefits humanity are thinking much of that while they do it, that physiologists in short have particularly noble souls. This puzzled her, particularly because she and I had argued together now and then on that very matter; I taking the view that the most effective motive for doing good scientific research was that of satisfying one’s curiosity - or as Edward Appleton once claimed, "Science for Fun" - she, the beneficial result to be expected. So she wrote to Hardy and told him that after twenty seven years with me she believed my view to be exactly the opposite of what he had written. He took it very amiably and said it was an echo of an old controversy of 1913, on the subject of vivisection; as Secretary of the Cambridge branch of the Research Defence Society I had written a letter to the Cambridge Review which contained something which, "at the time", he said, "had irritated me intensely". Unfortunately he had lost his copy of it * (*I had kept the correspondence which Hardy said he had lost and find that he compared physiologists with butchers. Butchers might be quite estimable people he wrote (and he was not a vegetarian except for mutton) but he would not like to have a friend who was a butcher. I did not tell him that my great- great-great grandfather had been apprenticed as a butcher in Bristol. His obituary notice (Royal Society, 1949) reveals no skeleton like that in his cupboard; but it does reveal that he always referred to God as his personal enemy, that he would not enter a religious building and that he had a great affection for cats.) , and had trusted to memory. His description of my motive (and of the "noble souls" of physiologists) was in fact an extrapolation over 27 years of what he had remembered of an admittedly provocative letter. He agreed in the next edition to change the wording and omit my name altogether. My wife received later from the Press a copy of the second edition. He wrote also: "I have had a lot of correspondence with him (i.e. A.V.H.), since the book was printed, about sides of the refugee problem, and he has been so sympathetic and efficient about it that I feel that my allusion to him is rather ungracious". Hardy and I seldom agreed; I think he knew that in many ways I was a much better radical than he was (he was often curiously conservative). He died in 1947, a few weeks after the award of the to him by the Royal Society was announced. He may have received a message from me about that. His biographer wrote: "He was unmarried. He owed much to his sister, who provided him throughout his life with the unobtrusive support such a man needs". 74

In 1952 I gave the Presidential Address to the British Association. It was broadcast, and I received a postcard next day: Congratulations on your address. Miss J.G.E. Hardy. (G.H. Hardy’s sister). I had never met or indeed seen her and I cannot imagine Hardy himself sending me such a card. Yet somehow it seemed to bring a message of reconciliation from him.

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(24) REMINISCENCES, by L.ORBELI of the PHYSIOLOGICAL LABORATORY at CAMBRIDGE in 1909 - 10. (published in the Journal of Physiology, 212, 1 - 6 P)

Introduction by A.V.H. In 1968 I received from my friend E. M. Kreps in Leningrad a copy of a book which he had edited, containing Reminiscences (Moscow-Leningrad 1966) of L. Orbeli who had died in 1956. Orbeli was a pupil of Pavlov, 33 years younger, and a great friend and admirer. He was well known among world physiologists, and there is a photograph of him in Zotterman's account of the voyage of the Minnekahda which carried several hundred physiologists to the Congress at Boston in 1929. Being unable to read Russian I did not realize at first that this book contained a masterpiece about Orbeli's experiences in Cambridge in 1909-10; and I gave the book to Caroline Humphrey who knows Russian well. She realized what a charming story Orbeli had told and translated the part about Cambridge rather literally into the sort of English that a Russian might use. It makes an entertaining commentary on the story I told in my Bayliss-Starling Lecture in 1969 (J.Physiol.204) of the Cambridge Laboratory between 1907 and 1914. In his Reminiscences Orbeli referred first to his earlier life and a visit to Germany in 1909 - then to the year 1909-10 that he spent in Cambridge. The results of his experiments were published in the Journal of Physiology, 40, 41 and 42. After he had finished them he worked again in Germany before returning to St. Petersburg. When I sent Kreps a reprint of this article he took it to show to Mrs Orbeli (92 years old); and she dictated in Russian a letter to me, which he translated and sent to me at Christmas 1971. The reference in it to my mother and sister is accurate; they enjoyed being kind to people from other countries, and the name (Muriel) of my sister is correctly recalled after 62 years. Following is an extract from Mrs. Orbeli's letter. I am happy to remember now the young years 1909- 1910, when L. Orbeli and I have spent some time in Cambridge. You were then a young fellow of Trinity College, sportsman‚ and full of interest to know the depths of science. You were so kind as to invite us in your student’s college to show your student’s life, and to help us to understand the English customs. And then I remember your dear mother and sister (within my memory is the name "Muriel")- - two charming ladies who were very kind to me so I, now a very, very old woman (92 years old) thank you once more for the pleasure that you have given me... Yours Elizabeth Orbeli.

ORBELI'S REMINISCENCES: In England I saw a completely different way of working. When I arrived I spent a few days in London and then went to see Cathcart in Glasgow. At some time or other he had visited Ivan Petrovich and had asked that we should drop in on him, and so I thought it would be a good idea to accept this invitation first, in order 76 to orient myself in English customs. I arrived, put up in an hotel, and telephoned him. In twenty minutes or so he was already with me in the hotel. He took all my things and conducted me to his home. I was his guest for three days. He lived with his mother, an old woman. She put me up for the nights in her own room, making a bed up for herself somewhere else. When I got into bed on the first night I gave a jump - under the blankets there was a bottle filled with hot water. That is the way they are accustomed to warm their feet. Cathcart gave me many valuable pieces of advice. Having arrived with a beard, it would be quite wrong, it seemed, to have it cut off. Many people arriving in England and seeing that everyone is clean-shaven start to copy the mass, he said, and this is very bad - to assimilate yourself and show that you do not wish to keep what is your own. Furthermore, he advised me, in all circumstances to keep myself independent. If someone asks you out somewhere you must reply directly, 'good, I shall come, thank you', or, 'I shall not come, I do not want to come'. There must be no attempt to dissimulate. That, from this English point of view, is the worst thing you can do. You must be quite independent. Then he gave me some advice about how to conduct myself in daily affairs. On his advice, I wrote a letter to Langley, telling him that I had arrived, that I had a letter from Professor Pavlov, and that I would arrive in Cambridge on such- and-such a train. Arriving at Cambridge I had only just stepped out of the carriage when I saw Barcroft beside me. He grasped my suitcase and carried it himself. I wanted to get a porter- 'No you are a guest.' He carried the case and called a cabman, who immediately took it off somewhere. It appears that in Cambridge there are special rooms set aside in the houses of various landladies for university people. If a landlady has university people, she cannot have other lodgers. All such rooms are registered with the university authorities. In twenty minutes, we already had a flat for myself with two rooms: on the first floor a sitting room, on the second floor a bedroom (that is the English custom) and on the ground floor the landlady. We paid only 50 roubles for the flat and the food. The English method of working is greatly different from the German. Laboratories in those days were still housed in old buildings and were rather homely and modest. Langley was the head. At that time the great scientist Barcroft was working there. He was already a fully qualified worker with his own assistants. Then there was Keith Lucas, also a qualified scientist. A young man called also worked there. He had only just written his thesis and was a mathematician who had somehow done two subjects at the university, mathematics and physics, but he had had no previous connexion with biology or medicine: He was a great enthusiast for various sports, particularly running. Once while he was running the thought occurred to him, 'How does the muscle machine work?', and this led him to the physiology laboratory where he has worked ever since. They all came in to work just when they felt like it. Only when they were to teach students did they arrive punctually. 77

Lucas arrived. I was sitting and working. 'Good morning, sir! I am Lucas. Would you like to come out in my motor- boat?' 'Thank you.' He sat down. 'So, tomorrow, if it is good weather I'll go out and I would like to invite you and your wife to come. If it rains, come to work at the laboratory. Perhaps you would like to see my experiments?' 'Thank you, I would be very pleased to see them.' 'Well then, good-bye' In the laboratory, each person had his place — in truth, his corner. The conditions were very modest. Gradually I got to know people. A man with a pipe appeared: 'I am Hill. What are you doing?' I said, 'I am operating on a frog.' 'Then why are you sterilizing the instruments?' 'So as to make the operation aseptic.' 'And can frogs really have microbes?' I replied: 'Of course they can. The microbes can live in the skin.' 'Can they hurt it? I know nothing about bacteriology or medicine. I am a physicist.' He invited me to see his experiments. Then he disappeared somewhere. I asked: 'Where is Hill?' 'He is reading at the moment.' So it seemed that he read for a week at a time, appearing in the laboratory to smoke his pipe and drink a cup of tea. The next week arrived. 'Where has Hill got to?' 'Hill is at an instrument factory watching the making of his galvanometer.' In other words, Hill knew every detail made specific requests, and himself tried out the range of instruments. 'Then they said: 'Hill has got his galvanometer.' After this, Hill got to work. Where? In the basement. The galvanometer was set up on a special mounting. Hill shut himself up and nobody saw him for a week. Suddenly he finished, came out again, and the motor-boats, running, and all sorts of' fun started up again. In England it is absolutely necessary to drink tea at five o'clock. A small table was set up in the library of the laboratory and a servant brought in a tea-pot with hot water, made some tea, and set out the cups. Suddenly everyone appeared from whatever they were doing, reading or working, and for thirty or forty minutes the whole laboratory drank tea and exchanged the latest news. Then everyone disappeared into his own corner and got back to work. So, by request of Langley, it was Barcroft who met me on the platform. Barcroft was already a professor, a solid man ten or fifteen years older than me. He took my things, fixed me up with rooms and gave me a letter from Langley. It said, 'Dear Dr Orbeli, I would like to talk to you tomorrow morning at ten o'clock'. I arrived at ten and Langley said: 'I am this very moment just going to do an experiment, Would you like to see it?' 'Thank you.' We went to his work place. He had set up the experiment with an assistant. There were no observers. I watched the experiment and after this he handed me a note in which was written, 'I suggest that you work on such-and-such a problem, 78 that you find out the effect of sympathetic nerves on x and z. As a subject for the experiment, you should use the frog. Assistants so-and-so will give you the frogs. Dr Barcroft will show you your work place'. They showed me my place, a little space between cupboards near the window. The assistant brought the frogs and put them on the table. I started to work. They brought a few things but no instruments. At first I could not understand, but then I went to a shop and bought my own scissors and forceps- I had had a chance to see the forceps used by Langley. Four or five days went by. The frogs were somehow strange. I could not understand it. They lay flat and no pulses were visible in the blood vessels- and I had to discover the influence of the sympathetic nerves on the blood vessels. Then on the fifth and sixth day, they brought me a long questionnaire – surname, Christian name, age, country of origin etc. subject of study - the influence of nerves on internal organs. Animal subject of experiment - frog. Number required 1000. All this was necessary in order to have the right to operate on frogs. In England at this time, the antivivisection League was working actively, and in order to gain protection from it, a law was brought in allowing certain people to operate on live animals under government supervision. Therefore there was a particular official who was directed to go from university to university seeing that operations were conducted according to law. It appeared that in those first few days they had given me frogs with the central nervous system destroyed. Before they were brought to me, a special assistant destroyed the brain of each frog. Only after I got a licence did I start to get live frogs. Once I was present at Langley's experiment. Usually each person worked by himself. But once Langley asked me to check what he had done, and so I asked him to check my results. Life went on in this way for several months. One day he arrived with a huge bunch of roses and asked me to give them to Madame Orbeli. He invited us to lunch that day. Cambridge professors all lived in suburban villas. Round the villas there were small gardens with roses. The lunch was very grand. The hostess and women guests wore hats, and the men wore ordinary jackets. I, as is the Russian custom, wore a long frock coat. Each guest was given a choice of two dishes at each course. During the meal wine was not served. Only after the lunch was finished and the ladies had gone out to look at the garden did they serve port and coffee to the men, who had stayed sitting round the table conversing. After ten or fifteen minutes, the hostess called: 'Men! Men come here.' Then there began a general viewing of roses. Langley had forty or fifty different varieties, each labelled. Wearing gloves of thick yellow leather, Langley cut off the blooms with scissors and handed them to us. Everything was very elegant and charming. But at work he was dry and business like. He was the founder of the Journal of Physiology. He himself edited all the articles and wrote to the authors. If something in an article had to be altered, Langley used to tell the author about it, but he would do nothing without his permission. I later heard many good words 79 about him from English physiologists. In spite of the fact that he lived in Cambridge and worked alone in his room he seemed to have been the teacher of a good half of all the physiologists in England and therefore a large number of papers were sent to him for comments. He advised the authors how to continue and improve their work. It was an immense drudgery. His personal library was taken over to the laboratory so that any workers there could borrow what they needed. A very interesting figure in Cambridge was Gaskell. I had heard of him in St Petersburg. He was a powerful figure, tall, with a grey tuft of hair and a small grey beard. Physiology in England did not develop for a long time. Although England had Harvey, systematic work did not continue. Ludwig, Goltz and Hering worked in Germany, and France had , but England was behind as regards physiology. Then at one point Thomas Huxley, the celebrated biologist was asked how experimental physiology could be organized in England. Huxley indicated that he thought Michael Foster, a young doctor, could do much in this direction. So Foster was invited to Cambridge to organize physiological work there. He decided that he himself should not do experimental work, but should devote himself to teaching and training up young people. We know of no work, of which it could be said that Foster did the experiments, but he produced a whole series of distinguished physiologists- Schafer, Gaskell, Barcroft, Sherrington, F. M. Balfour. And this bouquet of great scholars was trained by one man, who ended up by going into Parliament. It was suggested that his place as professor should be taken by Gaskell, but because of his sick wife, Gaskell was confined to work at home for eight or nine years. Thus Langley moved into first place in the laboratory. Langley did all his work on frogs using only simple eyesight and observation. He used to say, 'I believe my own eyes more than any instrument. An instrument may show me something that is not really there, but with my eyes I can see properly'. He was furnished only with a microscope, a magnifying glass, and dissecting instruments. To a certain extent, he was quite right. (added by hand “Langley died on 5 Nov. 1925. A more accurate and sympathetic, if less entertaining, account of him, by W.M. Fletcher, was published in the first number pf the Journal of Physiology that appeared under the new editorship, in 1926.” A.V.H.)

Hill , A. V. : Memories & reflections, vol 2

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(25) GOURAUD AND BIRDWOOD, MAGICIANS

In the summer of 1917 Colonel M.L. Wilkinson (then Assistant Superintendent of Ordnance Factories) and I paid a visit to the French Fourth Army (General Gouraud) in the neighbourhood of Chalons-sur-Marne to look at gunnery equipment. We were, for no obvious reason, treated with the greatest hospitality by General Gouraud and one day had lunch with him and his staff. That afternoon while proceeding to the British Fourth Army, we witnessed a very moving episode in an old French village, in which a battalion of infantry was drawn up for Gouraud to hand out decorations for valour in a recent action. It was a strangely impressive and almost fairy- like scene. The stillness of the village square and of the battalion on parade seemed to carry one back far into history. While we were watching Gouraud noticed us and came over to greet us again as though we were long-lost friends. We went on our way, and by chance came upon a battalion of Australian infantry in a field by the roadside for a ceremony (if it could be so called) in which General Birdwood, who commanded the Australian Corps, also was handing out decorations for valour. No greater contrast could be imagined. The Australian boys were treating it as a joke as their Commander fortunately could too. When a name was called, a man would hurry up rather shamefacedly, while others lying on the grass would try to trip him up as he passed with shouts of ironic and friendly applause. These Australians were first rate soldiers, and in action their discipline was magnificent. Birdwood knew how to treat them when they were being silly and they responded with informal devotion. Gouraud also was a magician with his men, but by a very different method.

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(26) THE ORIGIN OF VERTEBRATES

Walter Holbrook Gaskell (b. 1847, d 1914) is vividly remembered by the few now left who knew him in the Cambridge Physiological Laboratory before 1914. He had made outstanding contributions to the physiology of the heart and its nerves, and had devoted many years to studies largely morphological, of the nervous system. A striking and almost Nestorean figure he seemed to us youngsters to belong to a heroic age. He loved his garden on the Gog Magog Hills near Cambridge and used to entertain us on Sundays by setting us to dig and then to eat and drink, while he told us stories of Ludwig and Heidenhain and other scientific heroes of his younger days. He also had a theory of the origin of vertebrates, but he never (in my experience) talked about that during those Sunday exercises. When he died in 1914 a sympathetic biographical notice of him by the physiologist, J.N. Langley, appeared in Proc. Roy. Soc. B (1915) vol. 88, xxvii— xxxvi. It included a section by H.F. Gadow, Reader in Vertebrate Morphology at Cambridge. Gaskell, Gadow wrote, had devoted many years to what were essentially morphological studies. "His book, the Origin of Vertebrates, published in 1906, has made little impression....the idea of our descent from some crustacean-like ancestor was so subversive of all the other rival hypotheses that the unbiased reader expects at least a clear summarising explanation why Gaskell considered the older hypotheses not only insufficient but wrong". , neurologist, in the Dictionary of National Biography (1912-21) was equally friendly to Gaskell's work in general, but did not accept his theory.

During every Lent term Gaskell gave a special course of lectures on The Origin of Vertebrates. I never attended them, I knew I should not understand. But because of his fame and personality the earliest lectures had a full house. Many years later an American friend (Mckeen Cattell) who, as a young graduate, had spent a year in Cambridge, told me of his memories of them. They were formal and delivered in a doctor's gown. The number attending got less and less until during the last few weeks Mckeen alone continued. But although he would have preferred to give up, a kind heart and loyalty to the great man made him go on. The lectures continued with full academic dignity, to the single student. Neither spoke personally to the other till after the last lecture. The Gaskell walked down to his audience, shook its hand and thanked it graciously for coming. The audience found this rather touching affair, and was glad it had seen the job through.

82

(27) WILLIAM KERSHAW SLATER, (1893-1970)

"Bill" Slater died on 19 April 1970. After "retirement” 1960 he devoted the last ten years of his life to an application of the knowledge, and experience, gained in the previous thirty years, to the work of the Ministry of Overseas Development and of the Freedom from Hunger Campaign. For this, a large part of his time was spent in distant parts of the world. The United Kingdom Committee of the Campaign, in gratitude, organized a Memorial Service at St. Martins in the Fields on 15.June 1970. At this, having known him intimately for fifty years, I was invited to give a short address. I was followed by Sir Geoffrey Wilson, the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry. A full biographical notice by Professor H.D. Kay, is published.by the Royal Society, Biogr Mem.(1971), 16, 563-80.

I met Bill Slater in 1920 when he was 27. I had just been made professor of physiology at Manchester, and he blew in one day to ask whether a place could be found for him in my laboratory. He had taken a degree in chemistry, had some experience in industry and had worked, I believe, with Weizman in making acetone for war use. He was the son of a very competent business man in Manchester; an inheritance that served him well in the many jobs he took on later. He had taken the initiative in coming to see me, I think he saw more scope in something biological; he always welcomed initiative in others. We got a research grant from the Medical Research Council and he continued with me at Manchester till 1923, after that till 1929 at University College with Beit fellowships. Then, by one of those miracles that alter people’s lives, Leonard Elmhirst asked me to suggest someone to come to Dartington Hall, Devon, initially to run a laboratory for soil survey. Later, as things turned out, Bill gradually helped to run almost everything there except the schools; though he loved the students at the dance school, as pleasant, hardworking and strenuous people. Dartington was a place where one was encouraged to ask questions - silly ones sometimes, but also others. Bill anyhow had a bias towards being sensible.

Then in 1942, when Robert Hudson was Minister of Agriculture, Bill was lent for the scientific work of the Ministry; and in 1944 he was appointed Secretary of the Agricultural Improvement Council there. Next, from 1949 to 1960 he was Secretary of the Agricultural Research Council, during a time when its work expanded fivefold. Then finally, having "retired", he adopted the whole world for his parish, his school- house, his farm and his garden. But another of his friends will tell of that. For forty years his green fingers had made the many things he planted grow and flourish abundantly. In the previou5 ten I had formed a pretty clear idea of what made him tick and this was confirmed by all that followed; broad scientific knowledge, good judgment of how and where scientific methods could be applied, quick initiative based on common sense, a complete devotion to whatever job he had - and to his friends. Add to this gaiety, cheerfulness and a simple pervading kindness. Whenever anyone, young or old, made a suggestion, his instant reaction-was to see whether, 83 and how, it could be made to work. And his integrity and sense of fun saved him and them from wild adventures. His life, then, can be put into a plain, old-fashioned under- statement: Bill Slater was a good, wise, simple and kindly man, who helped many and whose friends are multitude.

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(28) HOW I MADE FAIR'S ACQUAINTANCE IN 1909.

In October 1909 Fairfield Osborn* came to Trinity College, Cambridge, as an advanced student from Princeton where he had graduated earlier. His father, Henry Fairfield Osborn, a famous palaeontologist (For. Mem. Roy. Soc. 1926) had been very active for many years with the American Museum of Natural History and had many other connexions with biology. Fair's affection for wildlife of all kinds, and his later intense interest in conservation, were not derived directly from his father's work; though his love for the open spaces of the earth may have been encouraged by his father's travels in search of fossil evidence and material. I was then (among other occupations) a sergeant in the Trinity Company of the Cambridge University Officers Training Corps, and with others, at the beginning of the new academic year, I shared the task of visiting newcomers to Trinity to invite them to join the Corps. I was fortunate, as it proved, in having Fair on my list. I knew nothing about him, and within seconds of our meeting it was obvious that my visit was in vain, as regards its original purpose; an American, as my ears told me he was, could not join the C.U.O.T.C. and I said so. But good luck had provided another result for my visit. It was a question of love at first sight, which continued for sixty years till he died in September 1969. We had many larks together before he left at the end of June 1910. I have forgotten them all, apart from their flavour, except for one which stands out sharply in my memory. In the spring of 1909 I had ridden a bicycle from Cambridge to Cornwall. Cornwall at that season is very lovely, and when I told Fair about it he said he would like to join in another such excursion. We agreed to meet at Exeter station at 2.19 pm. on 29 March, 1910, he coming by train (with bicycle) from London. I by bicycle from Tiverton.

We started off from Exeter for Moretonhampstead, from where the road rises to cross Dartmoor. At the highest point of the road (1500ft., grid reference SX 683- 820) we stopped to look across the valley to the south east. There we could see, a mile and a half away, the famous prehistoric enclosure of Grimspound (SX 700-809), on the slope of Hamildon Tor. I had been there before by other routes, but Fair insisted that we must go there at once. It was hard steep going, over ground heavily scarred by ancient tin-workings, and I managed to strain both ankles on the journey: they swelled up later to an unwholesome size and took some days to settle down. (*footnote. Osborn (1887-1969) was the founder, and for many years President, of the Conservation Foundation. His famous book, Our Plundered Planet, 1948, Little Brown and Co., Boston, Mass., was the first of many by himself and followers. In his foreword to a Paperback Edition, 1968, he wrote: "one does not need be a prophet of doom but there are no rational grounds for optimism".) (I have given the grid references so that anyone who wishes to risk his ankles can retrace our path.)

85

Then we continued on the bicycles, going by Plymouth and the ferry to the road running along the coast towards Looe. We stayed the night at the Sea View Hotel at Downderry. It may seem odd that I should be able to recall that after sixty years; but I had in my pocket the letter from Fair telling when he would arrive at Exeter; and it remained in my pocket throughout that journey and was used for occasional notes. It looks much the worse for wear now but somehow was miraculously preserved o the present day. It has written on it, "Mrs. Hammett, Sea View Hotel, Downderry." The hotel is still in the A.A. Members Handbook, but not Mrs. Hammett. Good luck to her, wherever she is. Next day we went on by St. Austell and Mevagissey, the last a lovely fishing village from which, in the season, the pilchard fleet went out. But Fair would never pronounce its name properly, he insisted to the end of his days on calling it Megavissey (as though it meant a million visseys). Tearing ourselves away from there we went on; there is no record or memory of our route, but I can't think we didn’t go by Porthleven which I always loved. Anyhow we got to Land's End and I keep a vivid picture of Pair on the cliffs looking sentimentally out to sea and reflecting that there was no land between him and New York. Then we started to return, I hope by St Ives, Perranporth and Tintagel. My ankles got better as we went on, but Fair (not being so used to bicycle riding) complained that his saddle irked him. So I asked him in what respect he was like a rail- way locomotive. He didn't know, so I told him - because he had a tender behind. At first this didn't seem to appeal to him and I suspect that the carriage which follows behind a locomotive, holding coal and water, is called something else in America. But when he'd got the idea he liked it so much that he called me T.B. for the rest of the journey. Indeed on 22 June, at the end of the summer term, he wrote me a letter of farewell from Trinity (I was away in camp): Dear old T.B., Just a line. This is my last night in Cambridge...I hate to realize it is all over. Best luck to you old T.B.... Yours always, H.F.C. (Footnote: A year after this was written I recalled evidence that this hope was indeed reality. I remember very clearly that we stayed a night at Bideford (about 40 miles beyond Tintagel) in a hostelry on the Quay (The Rose of Torridge) at which according to Charles Kingsley’s book, Westward Ho, the “Brotherhood of the Rose” was founded. I recall nothing about that inn except one item that stands out: the bedroom in which we slept was hospitably furnished with ten (repeat ten) chamber pots. Whever we looked we found them. If Fair were still alive I should write to him to ask if his memory confirms mine. But he died in Sept. 1969.)

In those days he neglected to give the year when he dated a letter. In July 1969 I found this letter and wrote to ask him if my 1910 was right. He replied (26 86

July) that it was, and referred to his nine months in Cambridge as "one of the finest experiences of my life". I enjoyed it too and all our later contacts.

Note added in 1972, three years after his death. In July 1914 Fair was in London. His wife-to-be, Marjorie, had gone to France and they were intending to meet in London and be married there when she returned. But in the disorganisation in France, resulting from the outbreak of war on 4 August, she was lost and Fair had some anxious weeks waiting. Finally they were married at the Church of St. Margaret, Westminster. I knew nothing about this though I had often met Marjorie with Fair in America. Then in 1964 I was invited to a Golden Wedding celebration, a repeat as accurate as possible of the original: a service in Saint Margaret's followed by a wedding "breakfast" at the Hyde Park Hotel. This took place on 8 September, the exact anniversary, and the same day of the week. The episode is characteristic; a bright idea, probably cherished over the years; then followed up as suddenly as that visit to Grimspound, which nearly wrecked my ankles in 1910.

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(29) A ROUGH-USAGE TRIAL

I had a good friend, Commander R.F.P. Maton R.N. (commonly known in the service, for obvious reasons, as Baldie). At the time of this episode he was Naval Superintendent of Experiments at the School of Gunnery at Shoeburyness. When he got married we sent him a wedding present; this was a silver fruit basket. It was packed up and sent by my wife Margaret. When it arrived at Shoeburyness it had been flattened by the Post Office. Baldie thought this was unreasonable, so he removed the packing and carefully noted its lay-out. Then he wrote an official letter to the Post Office, in characteristic Naval jargon, demanding damages. The Post Office, as usual, admitted no liability, saying that the silver basket had been improperly packed. This raised Baldie's temperature, so having photographed it he packed up the fruit basket exactly as it was when it arrived. He carried out what, in Naval circles, is called a "rough-usage trial". He dropped it 50 ft. several times on to a cement pavement; he applied various measured impulses to it; he put it into a sack containing various dangerous and offensive implements and got a naval petty officer, who was good at Rugby football, to tackle it and throw it about as though it was a member of one of the Sister Services. Then he unpacked it and photographed it again, and was unable to detect any additional damage. Finally he drew up an official report on what he had done, in strictly service language; it might have been a report by the Ordnance Committee on a rough usage trial of a naval gun-sight. This he sent to the Post Office for their attention please. The Post Office recognized that they had met a worthy opponent, who knew all the tricks of their trade as well as of his own. They replied that they adhered to their original opinion of improper packing, but that "in the circumstances" they would pay to have it repaired. The "circumstances" of course were simply that they had met a master-craftsman in their own profession. The fruit bowl was repaired at the cost of the Post Office and Baldie reported officially to Margaret the results of a successful operation.

88

(88) TRENCHARD, AN ARGUMENT

Trenchard was a great figure in the fighting services (Marshal of the R.A.F., Viscount, 0.M., etc., b. 1873, d.1956) and indeed wherever he moved. I got to know him when I was in the House of Commons and he in the Lords. We "had great argument about it and about", since he was convinced that the war could be won by his bombers, and I was equally sure it could not (and had said so publicly"); but that it was more likely to be lost to the German submarines if we wasted our aircraft on relatively fruitless bombing: though we remained good friends and he went on trying. Why I never could under- stand. On 1 September 1942 he sent me a memorandum on war policy, and arranged for "Bomber" Harris, the Chief of Bomber Command, to invite me to stay the night. On 8 September I replied 'co Trenchard as follows; I visited Harris as arranged and we had a long discussion lasting till 2 in the morning. I saw the photographs (Of blasted German cities) which are certainly very impressive and I sympathize with many of his difficulties and troubles.. * (In the House of Commons, 24 Feb. 1942; see E.D. pp.2:38-295)

I wish he would not exaggerate, and that he would state his case without bitterness towards other people. He would feel much better if only he had a clearer idea of what our air policy is. I wish I could help. We had better talk about this some time when we meet. Now, as to your notes. 1. You total say that operational Bomber Command strength; comprises only about 10% of our total operational strength; 10% in respect of what? 10% in the number of machines is very different from 10% in the number of their crews, or in the cost (in man-hours) of their production and of training their crews. 2. As regards the huge armies - particularly in America - I agree: I don't see how they and their equipment can be transported (added in 1971:) with the U-boat situation as it then was which was largely due to wasting bombing on German cities 3. As to the damage done by bombing German cities, I agree; recent methods have been a vast improvement on former ones, hut the offensive by air against the U-boat up to 600 miles or so from our coasts has been very effective, as shown by sinkings in that region, and it is also now being effective on the eastern seaboard of the United States. The Renault Factory bombing was a thoroughly good show, but when you say it destroyed the equivalent of the fighting vehicles and transport of five Panzer divisions, I think that whoever put the words into your mouth is misleading uncritical people. They might believe that the vehicles and transport were in the factory and were destroyed; in fact, you mean, I suppose, that in the next five years this factory would have made fighting vehicles and transport to this extent. A large part of that effort certainly can be transferred elsewhere. The factories 89

supplying material for Renault to turn into fighting vehicles were not themselves destroyed, and the workmen doubtless have been transferred elsewhere. I don't like this kind of illustration unless the assumptions are made explicit, it is too apt to be misleading. 4. I, too, am extremely doubtful about an invasion of France [ but see.the addition to 2.] 5. The attack on U-boats by escort vessels is "defensive", but the attack on U-boats by the R.A.F. is not. The difference between offence and defence is that in offence you seek out your foe and hit him; in defence you wait until he comes to hit you and then you strike him back. Can U-boats really be prevented, to any considerable extent, from emerging from their lairs by means of mines dropped by the R.A.F? 6. The chief losses in the Malta were by U-boats and motor torpedo boats: not by air attack. How could these U-boats and motor torpedo boats have been prevented by air? Surely we put all the available air effort that we had into the job and did not prevent the sinkings. 7. The air mastery on the day of the Dieppe raid was possible only because the weather was fine. On a bad day, such as that on which the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau went up Channel, it would be impossible to obtain complete mastery in the air. 8. We should not necessarily concentrate our air effort on a single end; that is a matter for arguing out quantitatively. 9. You say, and you underline, that air power is the dominant, deciding and final power. I don't honestly believe that an impartial observer, looking at the attack by Germany on Russia, would admit this proposition. That the air is an essential part, I would not dream of denying, but the Russians were not driven back mainly by air power. 10. I agree that we want a unified war policy, but the trouble about getting that is that it is still regarded as blasphemy to say anything against the Navy and its leaders, however old they may be, however unsuited to their jobs, however they may fail. It is quite gentlemanly and proper to abuse the poor Army, but to say anything against the Navy is lie sitting down and putting one's hat on when the band plays God Save the King. Somebody ought to say quite openly that the First Sea Lord ought not to be an old gentleman of sixty eight - excuse me - and that the fifth sea Lord ought not to be an old gentleman of sixty six, whose chief interest up to date has been in 15-inch guns. The Navy still thinks in terms of 15 knots, and we have to think of this war in terms of 500 knots. The truth is that we are still fighting three wars, and not one, and somehow we have to get together and fight one with all available arms without considering whether or not they come under different political departments. 11. For a large part, therefore, you see we agree. Probably we shall meet some time in the House this week and perhaps continue the discussion. You will notice I have said nothing about St. Thomas( or of any other of the 90

apostles) this time; but I am sure that St. Thomas would have asked nasty questions about the Renault Works and the five Panzer divisions, and about Bomber Command being only 10% of the total operational strength of the R.A.F. He would have said he wanted to know exactly how these calculations were made, and you would have had to reply to him "Blessed is he that hath not verified the arithmetic, and yet hath believed."

Later (1973), years after this article was written, a book was published on "The Legacy of Lord Trenchard" (by Wing Commander H.R. Allen D.F.C.,) in which the ruinous effect of Trenchard's obsession of bombing as the main weapon of warfare is critically considered. An abstract of this book was published in The Times of 3 Feb. 1973, and was followed by a deluge of letters expressing contrary views. Trenchard died in 1956 and was buried in Westminster Abbey. Dowding who saved his fighters from futile sacrifice in France, and led them later to win the Battle of Britain, was not.

91

(31) WHEN YOUR PANTS BEGIN TO GO

In 1909 Henry K. Archdale and I met for the first time at Trinity. My Mother, who lived in Cambridge, had an Australian Students’ Song Book (Henry is an Australian with an Irish father) which contained what I call a “hymn,” with the title When Your Pants begin to go”. She accompanied us on a piano when we sang it. Sixty years later we tried, without success, to recall the tune and the words. He, having been for many years a dignitary of the Church (Archdeacon, Canon, Principal of Lampeter College, etc) thought these verses were very touching as well as very funny; they referred to a down-and-out Australian: he believed they might provide a suitable subject for a sermon, so he decided to get a copy of the whole "hymn" to replace the bits and pieces we remembered; never lacking resource, he wrote to the High Commissioner for Australia in London. The Liaison Officer of the National Library of Australia replied that the verses were by Henry Lawson and were published in 1892. He sent us copies as follows, together with the music.

When your Pants Begin To Go. [By Henry Lawson,1892; in his Collected Verse, Vol.I, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1967] When you wear a cloudy collar and a shirt that isn't white, And you cannot sleep for thinking how you'll reach tomorrow night, You may be a man of sorrows, and on speaking terms with Care, But as yet you're unacquainted with the Demon of Despair; For I rather think that nothing heaps the trouble on your mind Like the knowledge that your trousers badly need a patch behind.

You are none the less a hero if you elevate your chin When you feel the pavement wearing through the leather, sock, and skin; You are rather more heroic than are ordinary folk If you scorn to fish for pity under cover of a joke; You will face the doubtful glances of the people that you know; But - of course, you're bound to face them when your pants begin to go.

If when flush, you took your pleasures - failed to make a god of Pelf, Some will say that for your troubles you can only thank yourself; Some will swear you'll die a beggar, but you only laugh at that While your garments hang together and you wear a decent hat; You may laugh at their predictions while your soles are wearing through, But - a man's an awful coward when his pants are going too.

Though the present and the future may be anything but bright, It is best to tell the fellows that you're getting on all right. And a man prefers to say it - 'tis a manly lie to tell, For the folks may be persuaded that you're doing very well; 92

But it's hard to be a hero, and it's hard to wear a grin, When your most important garment is in places very thin.

Now the lady of refinement, in the lap of comfort rocked, Chancing on these rugged verses, will pretend that she is shocked. Leave her to her smelling-bottle; 'tis the wealthy who decide That the world should hide its patches 'neath the cruel cloak of pride; And I think there's something noble, and I'll swear there's nothing low, In the pride of Human Nature when its pants begin to go.

Over many years Archdall had attended meetings of the World Council of Churches. During the War of 1939-45 the Germans were unable to come, but in 1946 two of them turned up. Henry saw one of them standing about looking very lonely, So acting, as usual, on impulse, he went up to him and said, “Excuse me. I am Henry Archdall. I lost two sons in the war, but that wasn't your fault", and held out his hand. The German pastor said Gott sei Dank and murmured something about Kriminalen. They have been friends ever since. I expect the German will want to come to that sermon. Its text, Henry says, is to be "the cruel cloak of pride", from the last verse.

93

(32) OLD SOLDIERS, AND OTHERS.

Recently my brain at night revolved around various old soldiers I have known, with some others of the same kind. 1.Freeman was a plumber and he somehow adopted me when we were in the Army. The relation between an officer and his soldier servant is a pleasant one. One story only about him - once when we were training in Bury St. Edmunds he said to me - Sir, you need a bucket. He had some petty cash of mine so I said to him All right Freeman go and buy one. He reappeared later with a bucket and explained: Sir, I saw a man going along the road with a bucket. so I walks up to him and sez What the Hell are you doing wlth my bucket, and he sez it ain't your bucket, it's my bucket, so we argued about it for some time and in the end I persuaded him that he’d stolen it and had better let me have it back. There's your bucket, Sir, and it didn't cost nothing. Now. Freeman was a man of the strictest integrity as I always knew. But like other soldier servants he would do anything for his officer.

2. My Punjabi friend. I don't know his name; he was a driver in the employment of Sir Maratib Ali with whom I stayed once in Lahore. Ali lent me a car and its driver while I was there. It occurred to me that the driver looked like an old soldier. He spoke English and I said casually to him You were in the Army weren't you? This gave him enormous pleasure, he had served in the 4th Punjabis, and that was the happiest and proudest thing in his life. How did I know? Because he looked like it. So he became my devoted friend and when I went away to Dacca and returned later by air, there he was at the airport jumping into the sky and waving his arms so I shouldn't miss him. I am sorry I shall never see him again.

3.My good peon. When I worked in the Secretariat at New Delhi during the war, a peon (messenger) sat outside my door on a stool whenever I was there. He was a Muslim called Fatehyab Hassan, and was probably massacred at the time of the Separation in 1947. Neither of us could speak a word of the other's language, but I smiled at him when we met and this seems to have won his heart. Two days before my final departure I gave him an appropriate present. Next day, not only he, but also his tiny son dressed up in his best, sat all day long outside my door on two stools. In the evening I went to stay with a friend outside New Delhi ready to go to the airport to fly home. Next morning, in the garden, hiding behind some bushes, was the peon: he did not approach me, or say good-bye, he just wanted to see me go. He must have walked miles to get there. I did not notice his little boy, but he may have been there too. It is funny what you can do by smiling at somebody.

4.A deaf porter at the Royal Society. When I was Secretary of the Royal Society there was an assistant porter, Pocock, an old soldier (he could not have been anything else) who was nearly as deaf as a post. To help him out, the officers 94 of the Society had given him a hearing aid. He did not like this apparatus and always removed it whenever we were not looking. One day, during the flying bomb period, I sent him with a message from Burlington House to Regent Street. While he was gone there was a terrific bang from that direction. A few minutes later he returned with a triumphant grin on his face; It were a good thing Sir I weren't wearing that Machine, or I would have been deafened.

5) . A black taxi driver in Washington. Another bull's eye. The American taxi driver always talks to his passengers, and he too looked like an ex-soldier, so - when I asked- he told me he had served with the American Army in England and had spent some months in Bristol during the Blitz - which was pretty nasty there. He had been greatly impressed by the steadfastness of the Bristolians during the raids (he didn't know I had any connection with the city) and expressed the greatest admiration for them. I did not tell him that Bristol had been the centre of the slave trade to America; but he would probably have said "let byegones be byegones."

6 Bill Hunt. We once had a gardener of that name who had been a stoker in the Royal Navy. One day, sweeping up our front path, he saw a dog coming in that had offensive habits, and threw a broom at it. Following closely on the dog was its owner, a self-styled Captain Mence, who angrily said he would give Hunt a licking. Stokers R.N. are not to be trifled with even by self-styled Captains in the Army and Hunt took off his coat and waistcoat, turned up his sleeves and said "right, come on". At this, discretion became the better part of valour and the gallant captain went on his way. Hunt came and told me about the episode, which he enjoyed; and shortly after "Captain" Mence rang me up to complain of my gardener. When he announced his name and title I replied that I was Major Hill, 0.B.E., and that I fully agreed with my gardener’s action. Apparently he had not expected to encounter a major in the Army with such eminent qualifications (This is the only occasion on which I have made effective use of the O.B.E.) as well as a stoker R.N., so he rang off. We never heard any more of him or his dog. But Hunt, at the local pub that evening, was stood more drinks than usual as he told and retold his story.

7). Thomas Clarkson. There is a monument on a Hertfordshire road to a Thomas Clarkson who was largely responsible, with Wilberforce, for the abolition of the slave trade. During the war, between 1942 and 1945, American troops were quartered in the neighhourhood, and some black soldiers noticed that the monument looked rather shabby and decided to do something about it. So they secretly in the night and took it away; then in their workshops they cleaned it up, and finally, also secretly, restored it to its place.

95

(33) "I DON'T THINK A PROFESSOR OUGHT TO KICK A CHAP BELOW THE BELT"

This opinion was expressed to me by a porter at University College, London, who had a great respect for professors; quite right too. It happened like this. Following the outbreak of war in 1939 the students in all the departments of University College, London, were "evacuated" to other places; and the departments themselves were closed, otherwise the College would have had to continue to pay local rates which it could not possibly afford. Professor D.D. Rumpus, however, a very eminent statistician, did not hold with such nonsense and demanded to use his laboratory. .But a porter in the front quadrangle had strict orders to prevent such use and apparently a pitched battle ensued. Those who remember Rumpus's appearance, including his beard and spectacles, will appreciate the humour of the encounter. The porter told me about it later in some such words as these: "When I was a youngster I did a bit of boxing myself and I didn't mind being knocked about. But I don't think a professor ought to kick a chap below the belt." About ten months earlier I too had had a fracas with Rumpus, with whom I was normally friendly. It did not result in his kicking me below the belt, though it might have. I sat beside him in the College refectory and conversation turned to the plight of refugees who were coming daily to see me because of my connexion with the Academic Assistance Council and my publicly expressed disgust with what was happening in Germany. I had not realized that Rumpus was a convinced sympathizer with the Nazis. He told me, with firm emphasis, that all was well in Germany, that German Jews were not being persecuted and could leave the country with all, or most of, their capital. This I knew to be untrue, my daily contact with them informed me precisely of their situation; and I told Rumpus what I knew. To avoid altercation I left the refectory. Later I wrote a short statement for the record which I did not send to him, for fear he would burst. Propaganda. On Friday, October 7, 1938, Professor Rumpus protested to A.V. Hill against the propaganda which, he asserted, is current against the Nazi regime. He stated, as an example of the actual clemency of the Nazis, that an exile leaving Germany is able to bring 75% of his capital with him. This statement seemed to A.V.H. so extraordinary that he challenged Rumpus to write it down and sign it, which Rumpus did in the following very cautious form: "I saw in the Times recently that persons leaving Germany are taxed 25% on their capital, as they were before the Nazi regime. D.D. Rumpus." The situation is actually as follows. It is true that there is a flight tax of 25%, but the remaining 75% is transferred to what is described as blocked Marks, and if an attempt is made to negotiate these the only Bank which will handle them will pay a mere 6 to 9% of their value. In the case moreover of several Austrians recently the 96 flight-tax was estimated on a fortune which in fact no longer existed, e.g. on an old assessment, in such a way that the intending emigrant was unable to pay. The question for consideration therefore is whether, as judged by its effect on a critical and distinguished scientist, the propaganda in favour of the Third Reich is not more effective than the propaganda against it. U.C.L. 10/10/38. A.V.H.

97

(34) NOW I CAN TELL THE STORY.

In the summer and autumn of 1940 there occurred, in the United Kingdom, an indiscriminate internment of refugees of foreign ("enemy") origin. The brunt of administering this, with its consequent obloquy, fell upon the Home Office, of which the Permanent Under-Secretary of State, from 1938 to 1948, was Sir Alexander Maxwell. The Home Secretary at the time of the internment was Sir John Anderson (later Viscount Waverley). Naturally people assumed that Maxwell and Anderson shared some of the responsibility of the decision on internment. They did not: it was a panic stroke (or at least a typical impulsive act) of Churchill himself. That Churchill recognised, in the internment, "a grave affront to the rights and liberties of the individual" is shown on p.554 of Volume 2 of his book on The Second World War. I knew Maxwell well and found him extremely helpful in our efforts to get loyal and valuable aliens released. Naturally we never discussed the origin of the internment order. My wife knew his extremely well; Lady Maxwell, universally known as Doctor Maxwell, an able medical practitioner and a very public-spirited Scotswoman, was an enormous help to my wife in all she did in Hornsey for old people. After her husband's death in 1963 Dr Maxwell, knowing my connexion with her husband in the refugee business, may have wanted to put me right about any idea that he was in any way involved in the policy of internment. At any rate she told me spontaneously that the responsibility for it was Churchill's alone and led me to conclude that "Alec" strongly disapproved of it. That was the opinion I had already formed, not from anything he said - his discretion was always absolute- but indirectly from his extreme helpfulness in what we were trying to do to undo the mischief of the internment.

98

(35) THE DEFENCE OF FREE LEARNING by Lord Beveridge, (Oxford University -Press,1959)

"The Book is Dedicated to the Wandering Scholars Whose Triumphant Courage in Adversity it describes."

So Beveridge introduces his theme, his book, and those he planned so successfully to save. Hitler gained supreme power in Germany early in 1933 and by March his obsessions about liberals and Jews were already hard at work. In his book Beveridge describes vividly the sequence of events which, starting at the end of March, culminated in the public Appeal dated 22 May by which the Academic Assistance Council was started. In this, Beveridge himself was both the chief architect and the prime mover. The book gives details also of the salvage work of valuable human talent which the Council achieved over many years before and after 1937 when its name was changed to the Society for the Protection of Science and Learning. The cause of this change was the need, which had become apparent, of a permanent organization for dealing with what by then appeared to be a permanent and growing evil. In fact the work of relief still continues today (1972) in a minor way; and the Society could immediately expand if, and whenever, an emergency occurred. Beveridge recounts in his book, with scrupulous accuracy and modesty, how the idea of the A.A.C. took form from March to May 1933. The Royal Society agreed about the middle of May to take part "by lending one of their rooms to the office staff, with a view to the Appeal being issued from the Royal Society's address". This immediately gave firm public assurance that the motive was genuinely what it claimed to be, the protection of those employed in science and learning from intolerance and persecution; not just the usual left-wing stunt. The initial manifesto and Appeal, dated from the Rooms of the Royal Society, with forty-one signatures follows. It should be noted that the list of supporters was collected in a very short time, and that many more would have been eager to sign had there been time to ask them. The cause was urgent.

ACADEMIC ASSISTANCE COUNCIL. Rooms of The Royal Society, BurlingtonHouse, London, W.1. May 22, 1933. Many eminent scholars and men of science and University teachers of all grades and in all faculties are being obliged to relinquish their posts in the Universities of Germany. The Universities of our own and other countries will, we hope, take whatever action they can to offer employment to these men and women, as teachers and investigators. But the financial resources of Universities are limited and are subject to claims for their normal development which cannot be ignored. If 99 the information before us is correct, effective help from outside for more than a small fraction of the teachers now likely to be condemned to want and idleness will depend on the existence of large funds specifically devoted to this purpose. It seems clear also that some organisation will be needed to act as a centre of information and put the teachers concerned into touch with the institutions that can best help them. We have formed ourselves accordingly into a provisional Council for these two reasons. We shall seek to raise a fund, to be used primarily, though not exclusively, in providing maintenance for displaced teachers and investigators, and finding them the chance of work in Universities and scientific institutions. We shall place ourselves in communication both with Universities in this country and with organisations which are being formed for similar purposes in other countries, and we shall seek to provide a clearing house and centre of information for those who can take any kind of action directed to the same end. We welcome offers of co-operation from all quarters. We appeal for generous help from all who are concerned for academic freedom and the security of learning. We ask for means to prevent the waste of exceptional abilities exceptionally trained. The issue raised at the moment is not a Jewish one alone; many who have suffered or are threatened have no Jewish connection. The issue, though raised acutely at the moment in Germany, is not confined to that country. We should like to regard any funds entrusted to us as available for University teachers and investigators of whatever country who, on grounds of religion, political opinion or race are unable to carry on their work in their own country. The Royal Society have placed office accommodation at the disposal of the Council. Sir and Professor C.S. Gibson, F.R.S.,are acting as Hon. Secretaries of the Council, and communications should be sent to them at the Royal Society, BurlingtonHouse, W.1. An Executive Committeeis being formed and the names of Trustees for the Fund will shortly be announced. In the meantime cheques can be sent to either of the Hon. Secretaries. Our action implies no unfriendly feelings to the people of any country; it implies no judgment on forms of government or on any political issue between countries. Our only aims are the relief of suffering and the defence of learning and science. LASCELLES ABERCROMBIE A.D.LINDSAY S.ALEXANDER LYTTON W.H.BEVERIDGE J.W MACKAIL W.H.BRAGG ALLEN MAWER BUCKMASTER GILBERTMURRAY CECIL , EUSTACE PERCY CRAFORD AND BALCARRES W.J.POPE WINIFRED C.CUILIS ROBERT S.RAIT H.A.L.FISHER RAYLEIGH MARGERY FRY CHARLES GRANT ROBERTSON C.S.GIBSON ROBERT ROBINSON M.GREENWOOD RUTHERFORD J.S.HALDANE MICHAEL S,SADLER A.V.HILL GEORGE F.HILL C.S.SHERRINGTON W.S. HOLDSWORIH GEORGE ADAMSMITH (+ 9 more)

In his Preface Beveridge wrote This book is a contribution.to history, not a political argument. It is the history of one class of human beings - scholars and their dependents – during twenty-five 100 years of preparing for war, of waging war, and of doubtful recovery from war, in -a world attuned to violence....It is, moreover, a history of what was done in one country only - Britain - to help one special class of human beings. If the same sort of thing were to happen again after forty years, I believe the same sort of people would come running to help, and the Royal Society would lend its name and authority to their efforts. But wicked men today have more ingenious methods of doing harm. A.V.H.

(At the end of 1972, 55 of the people aided by the S.P.S.L. have become F.R.S’s and about 44 of them Fellows (or corresponding Fellows) of the British Academy.)

101

(36) STALIN, 1879-1953 and VAVILOV, 1885 -1943

At various places I have referred to the efforts of communists to "penetrate" and spread disaffection and panic. The horrible and brutal character of communism under Stalin was not fully realized till quite recently (1971-2), though fortunately there were enough people in Britain in the 1930's and 40's who had good grounds for their suspicion of what it was like. Lenin died in 1924; Trotsky was eliminated politically in 1927, and was assassinated in Mexico in 1940. Stalin emerged finally as boss in the mid-thirties. In 1971 and 1972 two books by the Medvedev twin brothers (Zhoros and Roy) have been published outside Russia, which describe some of the brutalities of the Stalin era. These were mitigated after Stalin's death and during the years (1953-64) of Khruschev's chairmanship of the Communist Party. Today, however, some of this beastliness seems to be returning, though in rather modified form; and brave men, particularly among writers and scientists, are taking grave risks in resisting and exposing it. In the Western countries of course party reasons, on the conservative side, were largely the cause of the resistance to Communism which posed as an ally to Socialism. Many people of the "right" approved of Hitler, Ribbentrop and Mussolini. as safeguards against Communism. But fortunately there were others, good radicals indeed but not taken in by such nonsense; they realised that all was not lovely in the Communist Garden and recognized the stupidity, or treachery, of the intellectual partisans of Communism in our midst. If the appalling brutalities of Stalin's regime could have been better known and appreciated here by (say) 1935 the morale of the British people as a whole might not have been so deplorably low during the later 1930's; see 60. The cruelties of the Stalin era affected mainly a vast number of simple people whose names are unknown to the world; though "one of the greatest men that the Soviet Union has produced" (so described by Harland, see below) also was among its victims: namely Nicolai Ivanovitch Vavilov; who dared to resist the widespread official myth of Communism, the inheritance of acquired characters. Originally supported by Lenin he was denounced by Lysenko, and in 1939 lost all his official posts. Next, in 1940, during the period of the Hitler- Stalin Pact he was charged as a British spy and sent to the far north-east of Siberia where he died in 1943. His achievements in plant and agriculture were concentrated between 1918 and 1936. The only good that came from his fate was that it cured various geneticists in other countries of some of their political obsessions. Otherwise it was an appalling tragedy to his field of science; though the total misery of the millions of unknown victims of Stalinism may make the tragedy of Vavilov, in human terms, seem negligible. (A short tribute to Vavilov by S.C. Harland was published in 1954 in Vol.9 of Obit. Not. Roy. Soc., 259-264. There is now a N. I. Vavilov street in Moscow near the Academy of Sciences. It was recently reported 102

(Nature,1973, 241 p,81) that the Soviet Ministry of Communication has issued a special Commemorative envelope to mark the thirtieth anniversary of Vavilov's death. He had been rehabilitated by the Soviet Supreme Court in 1955 and his name had been restored to the register of deceased members of the Academy. In 1960 a Vavilov memorial volume was published, and on the 84th anniversary of his birth a memorial plaque was unveiled on the walls of the Institute of Genetics in Moscow. He was an enormously strong man, and had he not been murdered he might well be alive today. ( Handwritten note: One can doubt whether Lysenko, who is still a member of the Academy (1973) dares to approach it by N.I Vavilov Street.)

103

(37) WILFRED TROTTER AT BUCKINGHAM PALACE

In January 1936 King died; and on 20 February the President of the Royal Society, with the Secretaries and two Vice-Presidents, attended at Buckingham Palace to present a loyal address to King Edward VIII on his accession to the throne. Some of us, in fact, did not have too high an opinion of Edward VIII; in 1930, at the Anniversary Dinner of the Society at the Hall of Lincoln's Inn, we were kept waiting for forty minutes or so for our Principal guest, later treated to some impromptu nonsense about the role of the Royal Society, and then witnessed his early departure to a more congenial party. One of the Vice Presidents visiting the Palace on 20 February was Wilfred Trotter, surgeon, neurologist, psychologist, and author of a famous book Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War. While we waited for the King, Trotter told us of his many previous visits to the Palace during a serious illness of King George V. He was, he said, a very perfect Patient, always considerate and kind, always ready to do whatever was required of him. When he had recovered and Trotter was paying a last visit, the King asked him to come to his study because he had something he wanted to say to him in private. To Trotter's surprise, this was to apologize for having been so difficult a patient. It was rather a moving little story; the more moving because one knew that Trotter had no illusions about Royalty, or indeed about anything else.

104

(38) Commander V.L. Bowring R.N.

Try as he will, no man breaks wholly loose From his first love, no matter who she be. Oh was there ever sailor free to choose That didn't settle somewhere near the sea. The Virginity, Rudyard Kipling

I have written elsewhere, of Captain Vivian Lord of the Drifter Salpa and of Brixham, Devon. In retirement Commander Vincent Lewin Bowring had the same reluctance to let the sea get out of his sight. During the summer months he lived at Bantham-on-Avon on the west side of the Start Peninsula, his winter quarters were 11.5 miles away at Torcross on the east side. His friends laughingly insisted that in moving from one to the other he went round the coast by Start Point, so as not to let the sea slip away from him, but a look at the map shows that the story is probably untrue. The tale of "The Brigands" has been told elsewhere. During our three years at Whale Island (1916-19) Bowring was "Commander" of H.M.S. Excellent, in which capacity he was our host and provided us with all possible comfort and accommodation including allowing us, or at least causing us, to laugh at him, When we left in 1919 he was appointed to high office in the Honourable Society of Brigands as “Friend and Counsellor", an honour which he never forgot as shown in many letters received from him fifteen to twenty five years later. His function as "Commander" at Whale Island, was, in his own words: "To look after pigs, fowls, old horse and dogs, grow oats and vegetables, produce chickens and eggs, look after the welfare of some 2000 officers and men and several gardens; and weekly inspect some 65 women W.R.N.S. to see that their clothes were properly worn. Did host to many foreigners, including that American General who told me that I would be surprised at his intelligence". To this can be added: to accept port from the cellars of Trinity College Cambridge and dispense it in minimal doses in the Mess on Sunday evenings as though, it were holy water: to utter bloodcurdling threats of what he would do to any German airmen who had the misfortune to land on the lawn, and repel my suggestion that what he would really do (since he was very good natured) was to rush out and give him a glass of whisky and soda: to insist - as an article of faith - that firing guns before breakfast broke the reproductive cycle of hens, so their eggs were addled; and generally to keep the whole ships company (including anything up to 20 Brigands) happy. After 1919 I lost contact with him altogether, until in October 1934 I received a letter which began "you will be surprised to hear from an old shipmate.(Stone Frigate though she was) as it was about his nephew, a young officer in the Royal Engineers who was doing courses in engineering at Cambridge— and would I befriend him? I passed the letter on to Ralph Fowler who lived in Cambridge, I didn't. But the letter 105 informed me also that his summer quarters were at Bantham on Avon, and in 1935 when my family and I were at Three Corners, some of us went over to Bantham.to see if we could find him. Soon we noticed a tiny dinghy with an outboard motor, going out to sea at an angle of about 30 with the skyline, which showed there must be something pretty weighty in the stern. This we thought might be my old friend, so we waited and indeed it was. After that we had much correspondence, he addressing me "dear Principal Brigand" and identifying himself as "Counsellor and Friend". After 1945 this correspondence referred largely to India, where I had been in 1943-4 and where his family had many connexions. He told a story of how he had once prevented a drunken brawl, which threatened to get nasty, at an annual dinner of a Planters' Club, by the following characteristic action: "Shouting in in my best quarterdeck voice: I'll bet anybody £5 I'll drink a whisky and soda without it going down my throat. The row stopped and I was taken up by many. Standing on my head, my feet against the wall, I drank one: that flattened them out”. On which the best comment is “Blessed are the Peacemakers”. North of Torcross the Dartmouth road runs along a raised beach between the sea and a stretch of water called “Slapton Lea”. To the west of this is a hill running up pretty steeply for several hundred feet. During the war the region was used for training American Marines for the landing on the beaches in Normandy in 1944. By the side of the road, a mile or so from Torcross, is a stone column recording the gratitude of the Americans for the welcome and tolerance of the people of this region, during that period. It seems to me more than likely that Bowring, living at Torcross, had something to do with that welcome; but that is speculation, the rest of the story is history. (letter from Bowring inserted in original has not survived the photocopying in legible form) Not many 70 year-olds, or any others, could write like that. He died in 1951, nearly 76.)

106

(39) BERTRAM HOPKINSON (1874-1918)

Hopkinson died flying alone in a bad storm in 1918. How I came to write this Appreciation of him for the Alpine Journal* (1919, 32, 353-5), of June 1919, I have no idea; I knew him well, but never had any connexion with mountaineering or the Alpine Club. Thirty five years later Henry Tizard, who was really Hopkinson's disciple and successor in relation to the and the R.A.F., seeing for the first time what I had written described it in a letter as "a gem". That encourages me to perpetuate it here. One picture of Hopkinson still stands out sharply in my memory, of a meeting in London with a number of high-ranking officers Present. He was a mere major, but it was perfectly clear to everyone that his personality and knowledge dominated the company. As E.A. Milne wrote about R.H. Fowler in 1945: A position of great and growing influence was already his; what it would have become we can merely conjecture. We know only that we grieve for a prince among men. "Some ten years ago, I forget when or how, a few young men at Trinity were discussing whether anyone they knew at Cambridge could be expected to reach the South Pole if he tried: and they decided that the only man was Hopkinson. It may seem a small thing to record, but it typifies the way in which his personality appealed to younger men; he seemed to combine two great natural gifts—the vigour and enterprise of youth and the knowledge and experience of middle age. "I met him first when, as a young student fresh from examinations I was beginning research on the mechanical nature of muscular contraction; it occurred to me that this might be regarded by the not too earnest, as a problem for the Professor of Mechanism, so to the Professor of Mechanism I went and asked his help. He took my visit entirely in the humour in which it was made, and helped to clear my rather vague ideas as to the meaning of various mechanical conceptions. It was a fortunate introduction, and was followed by many pleasant visits to his house and laboratory, where I learnt to appreciate and admire the vigour, kindliness, and enterprise of his character. My first visit showed me how fundamentally his mind was attuned to the Scientific Outlook: interested in and concerned with practical Problems as he was, and as every inclination made him, his mind remained alert to the methods and ideas of Science, not only for their power—which he fully realized—but for their intrinsic merit. It is for this reason that his loss is such a grievous one to Cambridge, where a Professor of Mechanism can hope to make a School essentially in touch with the traditions of the place, only on condition that his interests are largely if not mainly scientific. In Hopkinson Cambridge had an ideal Professor, and the pupils trained in his School have already, especially during the war, raised a Memorial to him by their work. "Apart from his work as Professor of Engineering he had a variety of interests, among which may be counted mountain climbing, rowing, sailing, skiing and the Officers' Training Corps. He was in command of the R.E. Company in the Corps, and it was in camp at Farnborough that he made his first flights in an aeroplane— surreptitiously before breakfast. 107

"The war, when it came, claimed him at once, though it was not for some months that he turned to the Flying Corps. For all his previous success, and for all his earlier enterprises, it was the war which generally proved him. He lived just long enough to see the recognition of his work and the success of the men he collected and inspired. The Station at Orfordness was the thing on which he really set his heart, and whenever one met him there one could see that there was a kind of domestic feeling about it, a feeling that it was his “show”, his ideas and his men, working together with mutual bond of personal respect and affection for him. In spite of the greatly enlarged scope of his authority during his last year it was Orfordness which retained his chief love: he would turn up suddenly, by air or road, with an oily old raincoat, a long lurching stride, a deep voice, a noisy laugh and a tentative unsymmetrical smile half-hidden by a large gray-brown moustache: and would proceed at once to "touch off” a rocket, to fire incendiary bullets into a gas-bag or a petrol-tin, to inspect some new "gadget" for a machine-gun, or to practise some other of the many strange arts of which Orfordness was the home. One felt almost envious of the good feeling that surrounded him, and of the pleasure which the work there obviously gave him. "Although twice the age of the average pilot, he learnt to fly and took his wings." Few can hope to be really good pilots who learn at that age, and of course he was not: he knew it and did not practise "stunts." He was always flying, however, to France, to Orfordness, to Farnborough, and some of his friends felt nervous, knowing his great value and realising the existence of the ten-thousandth chance. He had, however, faced the matter out with himself, and firmly decided that in order to do his work efficiently and to win the necessary approval of his methods, he had himself to be a pilot, The ten-thousandth chance came, and he was killed flying in a bad storm: Yet I doubt if anyone will presume to say that he was wrong. He could never have got the power and influence he had in the technical development of the Air Force if he had taken the less courageous and generous course: his conviction of his role, and his adventurous spirit, could never have allowed him to do other than he did; and, over all was the fact that he really loved flying and flying by himself. “He was a person of vigorous and commanding mind, softened by a reserved and semi-humorous kindliness and simplicity. He believed strongly in a certain type of men, collected them around him, studied and appreciated their ideas, and backed them up with all his power. The Air Force and the Technical Department owe a great deal to his work and to his wise and critical leadership, and it is difficult to understand why he was allowed to remain a Major while doing work of such importance. I doubt whether he cared much-he cared a little, though he laughed at himself even for that little, and was too busy and too wise to let it worry him-and it was obvious that he cared for the work far more than for any possible recognition of it. “A few months before his death I went to see him at his office in Kingsway to tell him of the success of a scheme the details of which he and his people had suggested and of which he had asked me and my people to undertake the development. He had given us all the early opportunities of experimenting on it at 108

Orfordness, and at one critical Conference he had interposed when an element of the "old gang" was maintaining that no further developments were needed, and that things were perfect as they were. A few wise decisive words he had spoken at the critical moment secured the possibility of the developments required, and the scheme was beginning, at the time I saw him last, to show signs of being a real success: if the war had lasted longer it would have proved a vital factor in air defence. This was merely an offshoot of his work;, his part in it, however, his instant appreciation of a fertile method, the confidence he maintained in it against opposition or indifference, his wise and firm support of the people who were undertaking its development, and his pleasure in its success, were typical of the great part he took in the war, and of the still greater part he was destined to take at Cambridge and for the Nation had he lived."' End page 235)

109

(40) WILLIAM HARTREE (1870-1943)

[This record of William Hartree may revive memories not only of the man himself but of a world, now almost passed, in which people could devote, yes devote, themselves to science as amateurs - for love. It seems to me the best thing I have written; but that may be because I liked the subject of it so much. Nature (1943) 152, 154.] A remarkable fact about William Hartree, who died on April 27, 1943, was that his first scientific paper appeared (in 1920) when he was fifty, his last (in 1941) when he was seventy-one. In those twenty-one years he published ten papers alone and thirty-six in collaboration... In the strictest and best sense, Hartree was an amateur; he worked for love of his work and, I think one dare say, of his collaborators. But he worked also with the intensity and pride of a craftsman in his job, and for all his steadfast modesty, he knew, like a craftsman, when he had done it well; and he worked with quite inflexible devotion. During the War of 1914-18, at Whale Island, he said - almost seriously- that he was going on strike for more work and less pay: his pay could not have been less nor his work more. I had to stop him then from trying to get into the army at forty-seven- because he was enjoying that work too much! Later, at Cambridge, when I pressed him once to take a holiday, he wrote me next day "I have taken a holiday to-day - made a new experiment"- the only kind of holiday he liked. Hartree was known, except by his work, to very few: he never attended meetings: he wanted no credit or praise for what he did. He almost seemed to prefer to do a difficult job well rather than make it easy. He was ready to face the most laborious calculations in order to obtain a result; ha almost resented at first any improvement in technique which made calculation simpler. In his work with me on the physiology of muscle he reckoned that he had written down between 107 and 108 figures, and we very seldom discovered a mistake. He was always ready to take a sporting chance to see what he could make of a new job - as when he took up research on A.A. gunnery in 1916, when he turned (a mathematician and engineer) to experimental physiological research in 1919; and when he took to the theoretical study of atomic structures in 1933, and to the numerical solution of certain partial differential equations, concerned with the in a viscous fluid, in his last years. Yet in some ways he was very conservative; for thirteen years his chair in the physiological laboratory at Cambridge, where he did his arithmetic, was precariously balanced on four old fuse- tins of the last war, when it would have been easy to lengthen the legs or even to screw the fuse-tins on ! He was not an original or brilliant thinker, though he was obstinately independent when he knew he was right; he preferred always to help others, and this note is written, in gratitude and affection, by one whom he helped full-time for seventeen years. Hartree was born on April 8, 1870, the son of John Penn Hartree, F.R.C.S. His mother was the daughter of Samuel Smiles, author of Self-Help (1859) and many other works. J. P. Hartree was the son of an able engineer and, like his son, was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge; he obtained 110 a first-class in the Natural Sciences Tripos (1865). Later he practised, and attended various hospitals in London, but when his son Willie was six years old moved to Belfast. He passed on his temperament and abilities to his son: retiring, silent, able, kindly, with the same high standards and perfection of work. He was a well-known member of the Alpine Club. From Belfast, W. Hartree went to Tonbridge School and later to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was eighteenth Wrangler in 1892.Then after a short apprentice ship in he lectured and demonstrated in the Engineering Department at Cambridge until 1913. He married in 1895 his cousin Eva, daughter of Dr Edwin Rayner of Stockport and sister of Dr E.H. Rayner, late of the National Physical Laboratory. Mrs. Hartree has been mayor of Cambridge (his friends always wondered what sort of 'mayoress' Hartree made!) and has done distinguished public work In many fields. Of their five children, only one survives (Prof. D.R. Hartree of the , later professor of mathematical physics, Cambridge, died 1958); a younger son who had been a 2nd lieutenant in the Royal Artillery and had worked, like his father and brother, at Whale Island on A.A. gunnery, died soon after the War of 1914-18. In 1913 Hartree retired and went to live in Surrey, where he busied himself with experimental wireless. Early during the War of 1914-18, he joined up for work with the G.P.O. and served- with his usual devotion and humility- as a telegraph linesman. In 1916, when R.H. Fowler and I were starting up what later became the Anti-Aircraft Experimental Section of the Ministry of Munitions, Hartree, at E.H. Rayner's suggestion, came to join us. It was hard to believe that this shabby, middle- aged linesman, offering to work for love, was an able mathematician and engineer- but he was, and much more. Whenever a job of hard work had to be done on time, whenever some difficult observations were to be made, whenever something was to be fetched or carried, whenever long hours and discomfort to be endured "at the far end of the base", Hartree was there. Nobody could see shell-bursts so nearly into the sun, nobody could record what he saw so accurately and quickly, nobody could interpret the results so well, nobody would come so early to the office or stay so late to work them out. Quietly, one day, he improvised a long-base height-finder out of some wires, posts, and a steel tape. It came to be called the Hartree height- finder and was used extensively by the troops until sufficient monostatic optical height- finders were produced....Once he was arrested on the beach near Great Yarmouth during a gun- trial, for communicating with the enemy by means of an ordinary field telephone laid along the shore. Once, he was driven to writing verse because the captain of a monitor refused to fire his A.A. gun on a Sunday, the only fine day for three weeks. On Christmas Day 1918 he sent me the four volumes of his grandfather's book Lives of the Engineers, with a note thanking me for my kindness. Everyone else - by then we numbered forty or so - knew who ought to be thanked. When it was all over, the arithmetic finished and the instruments packed up, Hartree came to me with a long face and said it was a bad business; he had never enjoyed anything so much, now what could be done about it. Having no intention 111 myself but to return, after nearly five years' absence, to physiology, and being young enough to believe that I could (It will be harder next time), I said "Why not I could come and do physiology at Cambridge?" So Hartree was set to read Bayliss' Principles of General Physiology, and in a few weeks returned and said that he had not known before that physiology was as interesting as that, and he would come; which he did for fourteen years. We started off in 1919 on the physiology of muscle, its heat production, its dynamics, its recovery processes, and its various peculiarities; and Hartree learned to make and manage thermopiles, levers, galvanometers, oscillators, and Ringer's solution; and - what is much harder for an engineer- to dissect the muscles and nerves of frogs, tortoises, and hedgehogs and keep them alive and working. The observations required skill and patience, and the records needed a deal of measurement and calculation- so much the better! Hartree was the first to discover what ought to be called the "Hartree Effect", that of after-exposure in intensifying photographic records. I left Cambridge in 1920 for Manchester, moving to London in 1923, but Hartree carried on the work in Cambridge until 1933. On the physiology of muscle and allied subjects in that time came ten papers under Hartree's name alone in various journals, twenty-four under his name and others'. We kept in continual touch by post and by as frequent visits as I could pay. I found him always either with his apparatus in a dark room, or perched precariously on his chair on the fuse-tins, doing the arithmetic; never absent, however unexpected the visit. He arrived first in the morning, he usually left last at night - for love. It would not be fitting in such joint work, for me to asses its value; but such value as others may attribute to it is due in large part to my collaborator- it certainly would not have been done without him. By 1933 physical disability had made it difficult for Hartree to stand for the long hours necessary in the experimental work, and he felt also that the job which he had set his hand to in 1919 was more or less finished. He turned to his son, D.R. Hartree, for a new one. Fortunately, there were plenty of them that could be tackled at home, and of the kind that needed patience, accuracy and planned methodical style. The main field of this work was in the calculation of atomic structures, but in the course of time he gave most valuable help in other fields, in particular in some exploratory work on a method for the numerical solution of partial differential equations, in the application of this method to the boundary layer equation in the motion of a viscous fluid, and in connection with the gas flow in a tube. I gather from his son that his contributions to the practical calculation of atomic structures have been substantial and important. This work is not routine computing; it is essentially a matter of successive approximations, involving making and adjusting a set of estimates until a set of results, derived from these estimates by calculations which may take a week or two, agree with the estimates themselves; it needs understanding and judgement, far beyond that required for routine arithmetic. The common experience of father and son at Whale Island, in trajectory and similar work, meant that they could talk the same language of methodical calculation, 112 and another happy and fruitful collaboration developed, lasting until Hartree's death....As D.R. Hartree wrote me, "I regard his work for Cu as a considerable technical feat; one aspect of it is that it forms the solution of a system of 34 simultaneous non-linear differential equations!" This work with D.R. Hartree was done with the same "good companionship" (as B.A. Milne, another of the Portsmouth party, called it) as his previous work with others. "My father”, D. R. Hartree writes, "once protested that he did not know the basic theory of the atomic work well enough to be cross-examined on that part of the papers, and so did not think that his name should appear on the title-page". Exactly the same diffidence had appeared in his earlier collaboration with others. "He would have been quite content with a formal acknowledgement at the end, and would not have been particular even about that. But his contribution in these papers was really the main one, without which they would not have been, and it would have been grossly unrepresentative of our relative contribution to the work if it had been published in papers under my name alone." As in physiology, so in atomic physics! Hartree won a cup for fives at school, his handicap at golf came down to four, he was a good hand at tennis and bridge, and his collection of "postage paid" postmarks is said to be unique in range and completeness.. But of such things he never spoke. For many years before 1916 he had worked, no doubt, as methodically and as carefully as he did later; but there is no printed record of the result. It is strange to think that the method of those ballistic calculations and carefully digested records of observations at Whale Island, and the "good companionship" of the partnership there, could find so far an extrapolation to physiologv and atomic physics at the hands of this shy, gentle, kindly man. The greatest discoveries, however, are made by keeping one's eyes open and one's mind alert for the odd things that turn up — in human relationships as well as science. Hartree turned up in 1916, and those who knew and worked with him since are richer in both. (Handwritten note added: There is a characteristic story about Hartree, not recorded elsewhere, in my book Trails and Trials in Physiology, 1965, Edward Arnold, London, pp 363-5)

113

(41) R.H. FOWLER (1889-1944)

[Ralph Fowler and I worked closely together during both world wars, at other times our activities were widely different. Kaiser William and I, jointly, did a good service to science.in diverting both Fowler and B.A. Milne from pure mathematics to other fields. This note about Fowler appeared in The Times on 5 August, 1944, shortly after his death. See also E.A.Milne (1945) Obit. Not. Ea. Soc. 5, 61-78] The sudden illness which prevented Ralph Fowler - bitterly disappointed but without self-pity or complaint - from taking up the directorship of the National Physical Laboratory in 1938, and a strict warning to avoid fatigue and overstrain, could no longer hold him back when war came in 1939. "Other people are going to take risks now, so am I," was his only comment. He realized what the consequences would be of overdriving the machinery and he accepted them as part of the job. Those of us who know the splendid service he rendered, here and in Canada and the United States, on many technical aspects of the war, are sure he was right: but few are aware of what it cost him, or of the courage and fortitude - equally splendid - that it needed. He gave all he had: that was his nature, and anything less would have been misery to one who had been blessed till then with such overwhelming vigour, sometimes obstreperous but always generous, of body and mind. For four and a half years he drove and coaxed the failing machinery along, perfectly aware that it was failing, bravely and cheerfully till it stopped.

114

(42) A TRIBUTE TO H.H. DALE. as Chairman of the Science Committee of the British Council. [Monthly Review of the British Council (1948), 2, 43 - 5. See also W. Feldberg (1970) Biog. Mem. Roy. Soc., 16, 77-174.]

Sir Henry Dale has been president of more scientific societies and conferences, chairman of more committees, and head of more organizations than any one man can remember: which certainly does not mean that his wise and friendly guidance has not memorably enriched all such activities, but simply that it always seemed to us so natural that we just accepted it as one of the major amenities of a scientific calling. Retiring from the Directorship, in 1942, of the National Institute for Medical Research, he has been more busy than ever before in a very busy life: President of the Royal Society, of the British Association, of the XVII International Congress of Physiologists, Director of the Laboratories of the Royal Institution, Chairman of the War Cabinet Scientific Advisory Committee: chairman or member of many other bodies ranging from German science to biological standards and atomic energy, and now to be President of the Royal Society of Medicine. Had we a sensible Upper House, Dale's influence might perhaps have found even greater scope - were that possible- as a life peer: though how he could have fitted it in with all the rest, goodness (or perhaps he) only knows. Dale's conspicuous experimental skill, the breadth and depth of his knowledge, and the fineness of his scientific intuitions would have made him anyhow a pre-eminent international figure in science. Added to these, his kindly sagacity, his sound and courageous judgment, his droll humour, his affectionate interest in innumerable friends and colleagues all over the world, his deep concern for decent causes everywhere have made him one of the outstanding human personalities of his own and every country. Humanity, indeed, is the clue to Dale’s character and it was natural to him, in his Pilgrim Trust Lecture in 1946 to take up the implicit challenge of the phrase "humane studies" by emphasizing the moral contribution which the methods and principles of science can offer to a free society: "The moral education of mankind needs all that can be offered by man's sincere seeking for the truth....Science alone of man's major intellectual interests has no frontiers and no natural varieties: science, like peace, is one and indivisible...with patient devotion...with vision unclouded by personal or political motive... fearing only prejudice and preconception, accepting Nature's answers humbly and with courage and giving them to the world with unflinching fidelity." And behind all Dale's activities have been the grace and happiness of his home: we who are in his debt acknowledge it jointly to him and Lady Dale. Educated at , Cambridge, Dale worked as a Scholar of Trinity College, Cambridge, in the Physiological Laboratory there during its famous years at the end of the nineteenth century and then went to St. Bartholomew's Hospital. 115

Next he was Sharpey Scholar in Starling's laboratory at University College, These were years of development, and his lasting work began when he became, at twenty- nine, Director of the Wellcome Physiological Research Laboratories.... In 1914 he became Director of the newly founded National Institute for Medical Research. Too often the Public and administrative responsibilities of such a post can damp the flame of scientific curiosity, but never so with Dale. In spite of the scope and competence of all his many activities, including the Secretaryship of the Royal Society from 1925 to 1935, his ardour in research was undiminished, indeed the Institute provided him with a steady stream of collaborators with and through whom his previous interests were greatly expanded and elaborated.... Only the war in 1939, and his retirement from the laboratory in 1942, brought an end to Dale's personal experimental work, but it is being carried on with equal ardour...by those it has inspired. This work, lying in the borderland between physiology, pharmacology, and biochemistry, has been Dale's chief and consecutive scientific interest over many years.... But special attention should be paid to his interest in the problem of biological standardization which resulted in agreement on a series of international standard preparations among workers from all over the world. In this field Dale's influence on international co-operation has been of immense importance because of his adherence to principles which made co-operation possible and of his goodwill, which enabled him to persuade others to agree. The moral of it is of general application: international co-operation is easy and fruitful if only humour and friendliness are admitted and partisanship and self-seeking kept out...,

116

(43) HISTORY AND METHODS OF THE SCIENCES.

[ A review of A.D. Ritchie's book, Studies in the History and Methods of the Sciences. (Edin. Univ. Press, 1958), Nature (1959), 184, 4. ]•

Few professional philosophers can have had Professor A.D. Ritchie's long, intimate and diverse acquaintance with science: or rather, as he would rightly insist, with the sciences, since (in his words) "singular SCIENCE is the Sacred Cow of twentieth century idolatry." Chemistry and philosophy at St. Andrews were followed by the Natural Sciences Tripos at Cambridge, then by four years as chemist with the Naval Airship Service during the First World War. Next came two years return to philosophy, then seventeen years in physiology and biochemistry in the Medical School at Manchester, before he turned whole-time to philosophy. Perhaps when he retires from the chair of logic and metaphysics in the he will find occasion now and then to turn back to his early love of and comparative physiology. In any event he is singularly well qualified to write such a book as this: his scientific friends will welcome the product of his multiple interests and critical thought. But others too will read it with appreciation, sympathy and attention: for Ritchie's long concern with the sciences, their methods and their philosophy, is coloured by a broad humanity, and by a deep reverence which shows itself in a frankly religious approach to ultimate problems. Lest such reverence be misunderstood, misunderstanding as he writes, "has nearly' always come of supposing that there are sacred things, whereas we know directly only of sacred relations." But Ritchie's humanity and reverence do not lead him to compromise with nonsense: Marxists will not like this book, nor those infected with "the common error of supposing that physics is the one and only science," nor any biologists whose attitude s rooted still in the simplicities of nineteenth century physics. But to many others it will give much pleasure and enlightenment, particularly to those, like the present reviewer, who are sadly ignorant of the origin, history, and philosophy of the sciences— if not of their methods. And to any who do not believe too piously that the secretions of the Sacred Cow can cure at once all human maladies, it will bring frequent and wholesome laughter. It covers in a remarkably short space the origin of geometry, , chemistry via alchemy, biology in many aspects, "human order" and cosmologies and, it leaves no doubt of its author's conclusion that all these sciences, including mathematics, were derived originally from observation and experience, from the practical arts. That does not mean, as he insists, that an even greater part in their development was not played by intellectual curiosity, by bold and critical thought, by trying to find order amid disorder: but the order to be found was among real things, thrown up by measurement, by construction, by working metals, by observing the sky and the seasons, by breeding plants and animals, and by medicine. 117

The natural sciences today, and the technologies based on them, are taking an ever-growing part in human affairs; and apart from major disaster the growth will certainly continue. But unless the process is critically watched and wisely guided a sort of chain reaction might set in, which would end in science and technology taking charge and leading man - who knows where? It is vitally important, therefore, that thoughtful people of every kind should know something of the origins, the methods, and the motives of the sciences, that in fact an enlightened public opinion should be formed: the intelligent and humane cannot hope to guide if they do not understand at all. So a world of good might be done if this book were widely read and discussed.

118

(44) THREE CORNERS. God gave all men all earth to love But since our are small Ordained for each one spot should prove Beloved over all. Kiplirg (1902) Or, condensed into eight words "The nearest to heaven I shall ever get".

(I have been in two minds about including this story because I like so much and other people may not. What finally decided me to admit it was the reflection that this book is bound to be more or less, autobiographical; and if I am sentimental about places and people (as may be obvious to the reader) it seemed better not to try to hide it.). "Three Corners" is the traditional name of a three cornered field 2.7 miles S. W. of Western Beacon, the most southerly point of Dartmoor. It is shown, with name, on the 125,000 ordnance map at SX 517 554. We came upon it in August 1927 when the "Six Hills" were camping on the moor near Cornwoođ. We had fallen in love with the neighbourhood and were scouting round for somewhere to take a holiday home. We came upon an unfinished house which Farmer Cane (of Hunsdon Farm) had built because he liked building more than farming. We bought it, with the field, and persuaded Farmer Cane to put in (rather unwillingly) a few elementary modern conveniences which he had not thought of. But the story really began in 1900 when, from a high point near Tiverton, I first saw Dartmoor. From 1900 to 1909 my home was in Tiverton, Devon. From 1900 to 1905 I was at Blundell's school. From 1905 I was at Cambridge, but till 1909 I returned to Tiverton in vacations. I sometimes walked up Exeter Hill, above the town, along the old main road to Exeter and at one particular spot ("Criss Cross", 847 ft., SS 966 050) could see a wonderful prospect to the South and South-West; this extended from the estuary of the Exe as far as Exmouth and Dawlish Warren to Cawsand Beacon and the high plateau above Okehampton. The distance from my viewpoint to the Warren was 15 Miles, to Cawsand 22, so one needed a fine day. From N.W. to N.N.E. was Exmoor. To a boy Dartmoor looked like magic or wonderland, but for five years I had no means or opportunity of going there. But I went at last to Cawsand Beacon in 1905 and to Nanaton and Basdon Tor in 1906. Those visits confirmed my determination to get to know Dartmoor better, In the meantime I became a physiologist and was convinced by Keith Lucas and G.R. Nines that the marine animals available at the Plymouth Laboratory could provide wonderful material for the experiments I wanted to make. It is a pity I did not go there in 1912 to use crab nerves for my experiments on nerve heat; these would probably have been successful, thirteen years earlier than they were finally on frogs. As soon as I managed to buy a bicycle (1908) I went touring round Devon and Cornwall on it. Some time when I was a sergeant in the Officers Training Corps 119

(1908-1910) I spent a night in an Agnes Weston Soldiers' and Sailors' Home in Devonport; very nice, clean and cheap. In April 1909, with Eric Wordley, I bicycled from London to Cornwall where we stayed with my mother and sister in a farm near St. Austell. . In 1910 with Fairfield Osborn I bicycled from Exeter all round Cornwall starting over the moor. Once (or maybe twice) on later occasions I put in to Plymouth and visited the Marine Biological Laboratory. In 1914 the war came and in August 1916, on leave, I took a holiday with Margaret and bicycles, based on Moretonhampstead. In 1919 with three and soon four children I was back in Cambridge. Then in 1920 we moved to Manchester. I still went to Devonshire occasionally, but chiefly to Blundell's School of which, for five years, I was President of the Old Boys Club and then a Governor. But that did not involve visits to Dartmoor. Then in 1923 the six of us moved to London. In 1924 I must have made a reconnaissance of the Plymouth Laboratory and another in 1925. In the summer of 1925, with Margaret, and Polly, a car and a tent, we camped very high in the Quantock Hills for a night or two. It rained hard. Then we drove on to Postbridge in the middle of Dartmoor and stayed in the inn there while it continued raining. One day, by arrangement, I went to Plymouth and collected E.B. Verney, and I de B. Daly, and took them to Postbridge where they spent a week in our tent, a few hundred yards upstream from the bridge. Daly remembers that "it rained every day" and that they had only one book to read. In the winter vacation of 1925 I worked for a time in the Plymouth Laboratory. Then in the spring vacation of 1926 I continued my first research at Plymouth on the properties of smooth muscle. In that year I became a member of the Marine Biological Association. In August 1926 Margaret and I went to the Physiological Congress and when we got back, in the early autumn of 1926, Starling and I went together to Plymouth "to learn some "—as described in my Bayliss-Starling Memorial Lecture (1969, J. Physiol. 204 p.6). We made a wonderful excursion one afternoon to the moor north east of Cornwood and I discovered a spot at New Waste (SX 623 612) where I determined the family would come and camp as soon as we could. That came true in the summer of 1927, with two cars, three tents and four children; and a visit from Otto Meyerhof who was staying at Plymouth. It was then that we discovered Three Corners. It provided a fairyland for the family and many guests till the war in 1939, and then to a decreasing extent till 1961. We went to Three Corners in the spring of 1928 and spent the summer there with many friends. It was then that the "Mystery of Life" exploded, (E.D. 1960 p.148). It was during that "holiday" that I wrote, in the pleasant little study at the front, a rather well known paper on The Diffusion of Oxygen and Lactic Acid Through Tissues (1928, Proc. Roy.Soc.B., 104,pp 39-96). We returned in the Easter holiday of 1929, and Margaret found scope for her architectural talents in designing a wonderful sun-room at the west end of the house which was an enormous asset. It was finished before the Physiological Society held its meeting at Plymouth on 22 June, when several friends joined us there. During August 1929 I went to the 120

International Congress in Boston and what happened at Three Corners was well described in letters from the family that went after me to America. There are five hundred entries in the visitors' book 1929-1940. How many different people came has not been worked out, I should think fifty to a hundred. Several of us were there briefly in September1940 when the first bombing of Plymouth took place, and when we got home the London Docks were ablaze.. After that, for five years, people whose Plymouth homes had been destroyed came and lived at Three Corners. By 1946 the family started to turn up again with various of the new generation, Sarah Humphrey and I are the last entries in the visitors bock in 1961, then I took it away for the family archives. I have not dared, to go to Three Corners for many years. Once I went alone before the war, when there was nobody there, only ghosts. It was horrible. It might be even worse now. (A colour photograph exists showing Western Beacon, with Margaret painting it in the field at Three Corners. She has added to her picture more flowers than were really there; that was her nature.)

121

(45) HOW I BECAME A MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT IN 1940.

From 1603 Oxford University, and from 1604 Cambridge University, had each elected two representatives (called burgesses) to Parliament. This representation continued till 1951. At much later dates other Universities followed : Dublin (1). 1800-1831, (2) 1832-1922 London (1) 1868 - 1951 Edinburgh and St. Andrews (1) 1868 - 1918 Glasgow and Aberdeen (1) 1868 - 1918 Combined Scottish Universities (3) 1919 - 1951 Combined English Universities (3) 1919- 1951 Wales (1) 1919 - 1951 Belfast (1) 1919 - 1951. Many of those elected were famous people, e.g. Francis Bacon and for Cambridge; (see University Representation (1951) by T. Lloyd Humberstone, Hutchinson, London). But during the 1930's it became apparent that these facilities were being used increasingly to provide safe seats for opponents of the Labour Party. The worst provocation was when Ramsey MacDonald was defeated by a socialist in the General Election of 1935 and was promptly returned to parliament at a bye-election as a member for the Scottish Universities I had never myself had any idea of being a Member of Parliament. But during the autumn of 1938 an influential non-party group at Cambridge discussed the objection, already fairly widely held, to the custom of electing University Representatives in Parliament on party lines. I was asked to express my views, which I did in writing; I could not attend the meeting they proposed to call. Following is the statement of their aims as circulated. It is our primary aim to secure the representation of the University in Parliament by Independent Members who through their special knowledge or ability would add weight to our national councils, and who, through having no party affiliations or for other reasons, could not reasonably be expected to fight a contested election in an ordinary constituency. We regard an Independent Member as one who takes no party whip, unless it be "for information", in order to acquaint himself with the future business of the House. We believe that men can be found who have an active interest in political questions and may naturally have a leaning towards one party or 122

another, but who will nevertheless wish to exercise their own independent judgment on issues as they arise. It has been thought by some, though not by all, that one of our representatives might well be a distinguished scientist. We wish to make it clear that we consider it more important that the University should be represented by men independent of party politics, than that one should be a scientist; but it has been felt that in view of the great position of the University in the field of science it may be desirable, if two independent candidates are to be proposed, that one should be a man whose opinion on scientific matters as they affect national policy would carry weight with the House. On this matter we should welcome your opinion. It will be suggested to the Meeting that two candidates should be sought and if found adopted. The practical wisdom of this policy has been questioned by some, and we should be glad of your opinion on this matter. It will be proposed that the preliminary work of selection should be left to a Committee elected by those attending the Meeting. This Committee might number thirty, of whom twenty might be resident in the University. It is not proposed that members of this Committee should represent existing party organizations but it is hoped to include in it members of all political parties. Signed by: G.A. Chase, J.H. Clapham, F. Gowland Hopkins, T.S. Hele, G.A. Weekes. 17 November1938. Early in 1939 I was invited by this group to be their candidate at the next election. This proposal I could not accept, since (apart from other difficulties) to be a Member of Parliament would not be consistent with holding a full-time Research Professorship of the Royal Society. But early in December 1939, after the war had begun, a private inquiry was made to me, on behalf of the Cambridge University Conservative Association, as to whether I would think of accepting their nomination if Sir John Withers retired; he was in fact very ill. I replied that my time was rather taken up with various matters connected with the war, and with being Secretary of the Royal Society, but that owing to the war my previous objection did not hold since it was now Impossible for me to continue my normal work; and that if it were thought useful that I should be in Parliament during the war and if the invitation were made to me I would consider it.

Early in January1940, after Sir John Withers' death, further indirect inquiries reached me, and on 13 January I was invited by Sir Geoffrey Ellis, the Chairman of the London Committee of the Association, to meet him to discuss the matter. In our conversation I said (1) that it was most unlikely that I should be able, if elected, to continue in Parliament after the war, and (2) that I had never been connected with any political party and could not properly be described as a Conservative. His Committee, he thought, would have no objection to this, provided that I was a 123 supporter in general of the policy of the Government. I agreed that I would accept an invitation on that basis. If it were thought best, I wrote to him later, to describe me as an Independent Conservative, I should tell my friends "that I am really an Independent nominated by a broadminded Conservative Association." The London Committee met on 18 January and invited me to accept their nomination. This I did in writing on 19 January. I had understood that a contest was unlikely, since there was an agreement between the main parties to that effect. On 7 February I wrote the following letter to a discreet journalist of my acquaintance: My position is that I have never been connected with a political party and am one of those who feel that University Representation loses its chief value if employed for party purposes, indeed it seems rather likely that University Representation will be abolished altogether in future unless the Universities find some better justification for it than to support one or other side by a party member. The Cambridge Conservative Graduate Association, or perhaps I should say a progressive and liberal minded section of it, has long had this consideration in view. When the party truce was agreed upon after the outbreak of war, and it was understood that the Conservatives (having the then member Sir John Withers) would be allowed to nominate his successor without contest if he retired, the Association looked round for a Candidate, who would be agreeable to the other parties and fulfil the consideration referred to above. They tried to get Mr J.M. Keynes to stand and nearly succeeded, only considerations of health finally deciding against its he is certainly not a Conservative, whatever he is. Other names including mine were then considered, of which Dr J.H. Clapham, Vice Provost of King's, a life-long Liberal so far as his politics go, was one. Their choice actually fell on me. The Conservative Association, therefore, did try to do the generous and broadminded thing in view of the party truce. The Labour Party are not putting up a Candidate, recognising that they are bound by the agreement referred to. Certain, however, of the Left Wing people in Cambridge, not liking the agreement, have evaded it by putting up an "Independent Progressive" candidate on their own. You will see from my Address the chief objects I should have, if elected. I have not elaborated them. You probably know, however, that I have been very concerned with such things as assisting academic refugees from Germany etc.; and that I am strongly in favour of improving public health by more attention to, and expenditure on, public health service, hospitals, nutrition, physical training, housing, etc. I hope to live to see 124

some form of Universal Medical Service set up. I am a strong believer in international co-operation and have worked hard to achieve it in my own field of Science. This letter is not intended for publication, but if you wish to refer to the election you may make use of the information in it as you please. The poll took place on 23 February and I was elected by a good majority. I "took the oath" on 27 February but had only ten days before sailing to America on 9 March on an errand (arranged some months earlier) which has been described else- where.(The Times, 17 June 1941) So, effectively, my membership did not begin till after 13 June when I got back. When I arrived in New York, on about 20 March, I was met by the British Air Attaché George Pirie, today (1971) Air Chief Marshal, then Air Commodore. We had not met before and he described his alarm and despondency when he discovered, a week or so earlier, that his (temporary) colleague at the Embassy was not only a Professor but a Member of Parliament. The R.A.F. in fact had by then adjusted itself pretty well to what it called professors, but Members of Parliament were a different kettle of fish. We tried to hush it up as well as we could. Anyhow we did quite a useful job together before I returned early in June. Then I really did become an M.P. Some people would say I have never been quite the same since. I did not stand for re-election in *45 and, as expected, the large Labour majority of the 1945-1951 Parliament abolished University Representation. The Conservatives loudly protested that they would restore it later, but nobody believed them and they never did.

125

(46) TITLES AND HONOURS.

The most excellent order of the British Empire was established on 4 June 1917. Some time after the first awards had been announced the following little poem appeared in an evening newspaper. The phrase "kept the Germans from the sea" probably referred to the final German offensive of March 1918 which ended in April; if so, this was probably written after the birthday honours in 1918. I cut it out and stuck it to the certificate of an O.B.E. awarded to me on 1 January 1918. This was the poem:' THE BADGE OF HONOUR. I knew a man of industry Who made big bombs for the R.F.C. And pocketed lots of L.S.D. And he (thank God!) is an O.B.E.

I knew a woman of pedigree Who asked some soldiers out to tea And said "Dear me!" and "Yes, I see" – And she (thank God!) is an O.B.E.

I knew a fellow of twenty-three Who got a job with a fat M.P., Not caring much for the infantry- And he (thank God !) is an O.B.E.

I had a friend, a friend, and he Just held the line for you and me And kept the Germans from the sea And died – without the O.B.E. Thank God! He died without the O.B.E.

I was in the army in 1918, aged 31, and entirely fit for active service. But for the fact that my elders and betters had decided that I was needed for investigating the new "science" of Anti-Aircraft Gunnery I should have been in less comfortable circumstances. Anyhow I liked the poem and bore it in mind for later use, in fact for twenty-three years. In 1941, when another war was on, I would have been offered a knighthood had I wanted one. But my friends had tactfully warned me beforehand so as to avoid embarrassment. never accepted any title, and wrote: 126

The sole order of nobility which, in my judgement, becomes a philosopher, is the rank which he holds in the estimation of his fellow- workers, who are the only competent judges in such matters. Newton and Cuvier lowered themselves when the one accepted an idle Knighthood and the other became a baron of the Empire. The great men who went to their graves as and George Grote seem to have understood the dignity of knowledge better when they declined such meretricious trappings. . Of Wilfrid Trotter, an outstanding surgeon, psychologist and thinker, T.R. Elliott wrote in his Obituary Notice (1941) "the esteem of scientific men was the only honour that his ambition welcomed or would accept". On the other hand, during the Kaiser's war, a rather insignificant person, Sir X.Y., who had a column about himself in Who’s Who (Trotter had sixteen lines) and had managed to become a baronet, replied to a letter of mine about some minor matter by informing me that I ought to have addressed him, not as Sir X.Y. but as Major the Right Honourable Sir X.Y., Baronet, M.P., I forget what else. And I do not remember whether otherwise he replied to my letter; but his rebuke I do remember very clearly, and wishing to check my memory I looked him up recently In Who Was Who (1929-1940) where there are many other entertaining things of the same kind about him. I amused myself once by drawing up two shortlists of people who never receive titles: (1) of scientific men and engineers and (2) of scholars and writers. Perhaps some of them had never been asked, but I am certain that most of them would not have wished to accept them anyway. Scientists and Engineers. C.H. Best (physiologist) I.K. Brunel (engineer) (navigator and explorer) T.R. Elliott (physician and physiologist) Michael Faraday J.S. Haldane (physiologist) C,H. Hardy (mathematician) William Harvey T.H. Huxley (zoologist and biochemist) (physicist) 127

Karl Pearson (statistician) (engineer) E.H. Starling (physiologist) (physicist) Wilfred Trotter (neurosurgeon) James Watt (engineer) C.T.R. Wilson (physicist) A. N. Whitehead (mathematician and philosopher)

Scholars, writers a musician and an actor.

Samuel Alexander Samuel Johnson Charles Chaplin Rudyard Kipling Charles Dickens John Masefield T.S. Elliot G.B. Shaw* E.M. Forster William Thackeray John Galsworthy George Trevelyan

George Grote – H.G. Wells Thomas Hardy R Vaughan Williams A.E. Housman These lists are illustrative only, and the names of women are omitted since, until recently, it was unusual for titles to be given to women in their own right.

* Shaw refused a peerage and an Order of Merit; of the latter he said he had already conferred it on himself.

128

(47) THE SECRETARIES OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY

The Royal Society has a President, two Secretaries who conduct the ordinary business of the Society, and a Foreign Secretary who deals with correspondence with foreigners. There is also a Treasurer. One of the Secretaries is concerned with "physical sciences", the other with "biological sciences". The first two Secretaries were appointed in 1663. Between 1663 and 1870 there have been altogether 67 secretaries. 1 was a peer at the time of election 2 were baronets at that time 2 were knights at that time 2 became bishops after election 24 became knights after election 36 remained as they were. Before 1896 there were altogether 48 Secretaries appointed, of whom 7 were later knighted, i.e. 15%. Then a change came over the scene. In and after 1896, 21 Secretaries were appointed, of whom 20 have been knighted, i.e. 95%. The great advantage of the position which the Royal Society holds, as yet, in the British system is that it is regarded as altogether independent of the "Establishment". In the British Civil Service, once a man (or woman) reaches a certain position he (or she) becomes almost automatically a Knight (or a Dame) of some Order or other - there are many varieties. It will be a sad day for British Science if the Officers of the Royal Society come to be regarded as officials of the Department of Education and Science or of Trade and Industry; and are expected to take orders from Ministers. It would be sadder still if the President and Council of the Royal Society were to allow themselves someday to get into a position in which they could be forced by the Government of the day to express themselves as the President and eighteen members of the Soviet Academy did in Vol.14 of the Astronomical Journal of the Soviet Union at the time of the Trotskyist trials: Having sold themselves to the Fascists...this despicable gang of human degenerates, or servants of Fascistic Cannibals, being led by the agent of the Gestapo, the bandit Trotsky, was selling our socialist country and its riches to the worst enemies of human progress... etc., etc. Oh no; these things never happen to us - not yet.

129

(48) EQUALITY

In the Declaration of Independence, as drafted by Jefferson in 1776, it is stated: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Great rhetoric, noble sentiments but bad biology, and usually distorted by omitting everything after "created equal". Let us apply the self-evident truth of the shortened version to the case of footballers. Few men, however radical their political opinions, would contend that all footballers are equal; though a minority might argue that if they are not equal they must be made equal, not only to one another but to the referee. This, if it could conveniently be done, would have the advantage that football, today one of the most important interests of mankind, would become a game of pure chance. This would be, in the popular sense of the word, fair, so that football rowdyism might end. Though whether football hooligans were created equal, and equal to policemen, is not certain; if not, rowdyism might continue and the principle of equality be put in jeopardy. Bored by the verbiage of a current argument on Equality, in Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, I wrote to the Editor myself to ask whether any of his readers would deny any of the following statements?

1. Almost all greyhounds can run faster than dachshunds: Alsatians are more likely to bite you than great danes; spaniels are more sentimental than fox terriers; sheepdogs and foxhounds display an inherited capacity for their professions. But they can all interbreed, like the different races of homo sapiens. 2. Any characteristic of a biological population follows a statistical distribution curve: size, speed, endurance, enterprise, a capacity for mathematics, music or hunting, anything that can conceivably be measured. 3. These distribution curves are not usually the same for different characteristics of different populations. 4. In any human population a man with any particular intellectual, social, athletic, emotional, or adventurous capacity is biased by the company he keeps toward marrying a woman, or the sister of a man, with that capacity. Thus groups arise with specially developed mental, social, and physical characteristics; and these are inherited. 5. Inherited racial differences obviously exist in man in respect of physical qualities. It is hard to believe that intellectual, emotional, and social differences are not based on qualities inherent in the nervous system (reacting of course with social and physical environment) and so can be 130 passed on by inheritance and modified by selection. The only alternative is to suppose that the Creator standardized his invention at the start and has not since let selection work.

Apparently nobody could deny any of these statements indeed there was only one reply, from an unknown correspondent: “Your letter deserves to be transcribed in letters of red and gold and set to music.”

131

(49 PER ARDUA AD ASPRA.

On 30 September 1941 Lord Horder and others wrote the following letter to The Times. Victor Gollancz (1893-1967) had been the prime mover in getting the Anglo-Soviet Public Relations Committee established. By 13 November its name had been changed, the word Committee becoming Association (for short ASPRA), to indicate its wider scope.

The adherence of so many peoples to the Atlantic Charter can, given wise and tolerant statesmanship, mark a new stage in world development. Out of the horror that has overwhelmed us comes now the brightest hope. That hope will be realized if, but only if, the peoples of the British Commonwealth of Nations, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and the United States of America cooperate with one another and with all other free peoples, as equal partners, in solving the problems which peace will bring. In that event the war, in spite of its misery and destruction, may well be the prelude to the establishment and maintenance of a peaceful order, in which, free from fear, insecurity, and want, all men may lead happy and adventurous lives. Yours truly, HORDER, President A.V. HILL, Chairman of Executive ELEANOR RATHBONE, M PHILIPS PRICE Vice Chairmen, VICTOR GOLLANCZ Honorary Secretary Anglo-Soviet Public Relations Committee

During the year from 3 September 1941 to 2 September 1942 my pocket diaries contain notes of 32 meetings. I had been invited to become Chairman of the Executive Committee because (I think) my political position was rather neutral-conservative, with radical opinions on various subjects. The danger I foresaw was that a rush of fellow travellers from the Left would destroy the Association's usefulness. In order to balance this I was able to induce a number of sensible people from the Centre to take part. But as time went on it became more and more difficult not to be dragged into propaganda for a premature Second Front and other unrealistic causes.

The trouble 'was that Gollancz’s politics were very far to the left, so were those of his friend John Strachey (1901-1963) and they did not like my 'sensible people from the centre'. I began to realize that I was really being used as a decoy duck to forward the aims of their partisans. I had put a considerable effort into the job, and towards the end had sleepless nights worrying about what could be done with it. After exactly a year and 132 thirty-two meetings, I could not bear it anymore and resigned. I was so sick of it that I never enquired further about its fate.

The motto of the Royal Air Force, with the change of one letter, describes my own unfortunate experience. But I have had many good Russian friends – though not among the politicians. One of them, an engineer present in London during the war, may have been too friendly with Tizard and me. He suddenly disappeared and we never heard of him again.

Postscript. In 1972, when one knows better what kind of man Stalin really was, one can be glad of the intuition which told one that all was not well.

133

(50) INDIA'S REAL PROBLEM

After four and a half months in India, with every opportunity given to see and find out whatever I wanted, I returned to England in April 1944, fully convinced that what was needed in India was a new approach to reality; not more political bickering, of denunciation of those who wanted to help, or building constitutional castles in the air, but whole hearted attention to the primary complex of biological problems involved in food, health, population agriculture - AND education. But if this was to be the primary purpose, it would need to be supported by a considerable effort to improve industry, manufacture and communications. A number of societies and journals asked me to talk, or write, about my conclusions, and the following article in the Spectator of 9 June summarises most of what I had to say.

In recent years Indian affairs have been regarded here, almost exclusively from the political and constitutional angle; and India too often has been the plaything of British party politics, all faithfully reported in the Indian press. Political recrimination has various advantages; it requires little intellectual effort, little knowledge and little critical thought; and, like a cat- fight it provides exaltation for the performer and cheap amusement for the audience. But unfortunately, as regards India, its chief effect has been to distract attention from the real problem - from the urgent human needs of 400 million people. A completely new approach is necessary. I am wholly with those, here and in India, who look forward to Indian self-government as proper and inevitable. It is true that vital problems of India will remain the same udder any constitution; but progress in national development could be sensibly quicker under a purely Indian government, able to furnish an urgent sense of National Purpose and daring to apply the necessary rigour of persuasion or compulsion. According to A Plan of Economic Development of India, by a group of Indian industrialists, 'during this period...practically every aspect of economic life will have to be so rigorously con- trolled by Government that individual liberty and freedom of enterprise will suffer a temporary '. This is very likely true - but, in peacetime at any rate, no Government for which Britain was even partly responsible could face the consequent outcry. The new approach required to Indian problems is that of welfare and national development; employing all the methods and expedients of modern science and technology (including medicine, agriculture - and education) to the fuller use of natural and human resources and the betterment of the life of the people. Thoughtful men in India realise the need of this new approach and the appalling penalty in human misery of not adopting it. They have seen in 134 other countries, particularly Russia, how quickly modern scientific methods can raise the level of national efficiency and prosperity, and they want to see them tried in India: they realise also that the basic condition of success is cooperation, not isolationism abroad and political and communal strife at home. Such is the background of the very welcome decision recently announced by the Viceroy to set up a new Department of Planning and Development, and to appoint a new member of his Executive Council at its head. The "Honourable Member for Planning and Development" will be free from ordinary departmental responsibilities. With his staff, his function will be to guide all new projects of national development into a single balanced and coordinated plan; and for this purpose to make sure that modern methods of science and technology, and all the natural resources of India in plants, animals, minerals and man-power are properly utilised. Great satisfaction will be given in India by the Viceroy's action, and very warm approval will greet the appointment in April 1944 of Sir Ardeshir Dalal* to the new post.... (handwritten footnote: he resigned in December 1945, disappointed with the difficulties of the job and plagued by increasing ill- health. The politicians, British and Indian, were too much for him. He died in 1949) It was chiefly by his initiative that the enquiry was set afoot from which the "Plan" was published at the beginning of this year. This has just filtered through to this country at an average speed of about 2 miles an hour; in India it was exciting lively interest in January! A good start - the best possible start - has been made: but one danger exists, that of supposing that industry and industrialisation are the chief or the only needs of India. That a great growth of Indian industry is essential nobody would deny: but the fundamental needs of India are related to the great biological complex of population, health, agriculture and food. Industry can readily attract attention because it is located mostly in towns - and industrialists are apt to be rich and influential. But only 16% of the population of India live in towns of more than 5000 people, the vast majority being peasant farmers and their families. The population is increasing already by about 6,000,000 a year, and industry cannot possibly absorb that many, so the number on the land is bound to go on increasing. The country; therefore, not the towns; farming and food production, not industry; are at the centre of of India’s problems: and behind it all is the dismal fact that as yet only 12% of the people as a whole, only 5% of women, are educated even to the extent of being able to read and write. The problem of food shortage is endemic in India, owing largely to the tendency of the population to increase. The mortality rate at any age up to 55 is four to eight times ours. It is true that the crude death rate is only twice ours, but that is due to the population of India being so much younger; the expectation of life at birth in India is 26 against our 62 and only half the people born in India reach 22 years, while here two-thirds reach 60. 135

Corresponding to this very high mortality, there is an enormous amount of ill- health, infection and disease, attacking particularly the chronically under- nourished, so setting up a vicious circle with poverty and inefficiency. As soon as food supply, or health measures, improve, the mortality tends to fall and the population to rise. About 50% more food is wanted in India, for decent health; largely in terms of simple calories, but where that is not so, certainly in quality. But a gradual increase of 50% in food would tend to improve health and to lower mortality, and so would be accompanied by a further increase in population - until once more a balance was reached between underfeeding, mortality and reproduction. Unless family restriction comes in, the pursuit of health and adequate nourishment will be like a dog trying to catch its own tail. At present Indian women produce on the average about twice as many children as English women do. It is true that half of these die by the time they are 22, but the girls had several years by then to produce more babies. Wishful thinkers say that increasing prosperity will diminish the reproduction rate; in fact it is the other way round, in the most prosperous province of India (the Punjab) the official birth rate is 41, against 34 for all-India and 30 for Bengal. Others argue that industrialisation will diminish reproduction, not realising that even if it did the population of India is bound to remain predominantly agricultural for many years to come. Birth control is advocated, but it will encounter fierce prejudice on grounds of custom and religion. Education will gradually produce its effect, particularly the education of women; indeed the future of India depends largely upon its women taking a greater part in affairs, but that will need a long time. No doubt family limitation will be adopted in the end, but that will take many years. In the meantime, if health and prosperity are to be improved - and even if calamity is to be averted - the most drastic steps must be taken to improve agriculture, food supply and food control. That will require more scientific farming, stronger administrative control, and drastic social change. Industry and engineering can aid by improved irrigation and communication, by farm machinery, by chemical fertilisers, by broadcasting; and even by supplying power or fuel to prevent cow-dung from being burnt for firing. One of the difficulties is that social custom demands that a man’s inheritance must be divided between all his sons, with the consequence of smaller and smaller holdings as the population rises. Collective farming may be the ideal; but long education and persuasion, or severe penalties as in the Soviet Union, will be necessary to ensure agreement. Another difficulty is due to Hindu veneration of the cow, which prevents millions of animals from being killed off when diseased or useless. Agricultural improvement in India is indeed a complicated business - but there is no alternative except chronic under-nourishment and ill-health, with the danger of periodic famines and epidemic disease. A great future may lie before India, a future of happiness, prosperity and self-respect among the nations; but there Is no easy way to it, only hard 136 thought, hard work, and the fullest use of scientific methods, together with a general willingness to submit to economic and social change. o o o o o o o o That was in 1944; in less than a year the war with Germany ended, a general election took place and a Labour Government came in which was sympathetic to Indian desire for self-government. Not that most of the Conservatives were unsympathetic, but Churchill was their leader and his prejudices were deeply involved. So, many Conservatives were forced by their Whips to vote against their better judgement in the final division (one of them was dining with me that evening and had to go away to vote). On July 18 1947 the Indian Independence Act received the Royal Assent. Then the tragic nonsense of Partition developed in which a United India was torn apart, during civil war and massacre, into India and Pakistan. The efforts, however, that had been made in planning a better life for the people of a United India were not all wasted. Much of what had been done in the older India remained for the new. With Pakistan, however, most had to start from scratch. But success in both was made permanently more difficult by hostility between the two parts. How much of their substance has been wasted, and still is wasted in preparing to fight (or even in fighting, witness the ridiculous war of 1965) and in all the paraphernalia of boundaries, and separate institutions and services? And how much in this tragic separation has depended on the prejudices of otherwise great men? How simple, for example, mIght have been the solution of the dreadful Kashmir problem if Nehru had not been a high-caste Kashmiri? But that was not all; in 1971 came the misery of East Bengal, then the second fratricidal war. The story is "a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel". But so are many other stories, not only in the past but also today.

137

(51) DEMOCRACY

"When I hear anyone talk about Culture, I reach for my revolver". (Hermann Goering). I had never thought of preaching from a text provided by Goering, but now it has nearly happened! In the days (about 1910) when I sometimes rode a push-bike from Cambridge to London I once had a mishap when a man coming from my right charged suddenly across my bows so that I hit him amidships. His bicycle came in two pieces, mine was intact. We had an altercation about it of which the gist seemed to be that he was a "democrat". I do not think he meant that by being a democrat he was entitled to ride across other people's bows; but rather that he would like me to make a contribution to having his bicycle repaired. It seemed an unprofitable discussion, and ended by my giving him ten shillings without admitting any liability. I doubt whether, in spite of my undemocratic status, I was then any richer than he was. But at any rate I had a stronger bicycle, and a more democratic way of riding it. Since then I have often regretted the use of "democratic" to imply the exact opposite of what the word means. I cannot bring myself, in writing a letter to a friend in Leipzig, to address it to the D.D.R. (the German Democratic Republic) but write simply East Germany. When I hear of it being "undemocratic" to prevent a howling mob of students from breaking up a meeting, if I were there and had Goering’s revolver I might even reach for it. Which is a shocking confession. It is even "undemocratic" to go to the aid of a police constable when he is attacked by politically minded hooligans; and in 1940 a famous American astronomer complained to me at Philadelphia that he could no longer say the Lord's Prayer because it contained the un-neutral phrase "deliver us from evil". The Greeks did the same kind of thing but with a different motive. The Black Sea, notorious for its violent winter storms was named the Euxine Sea in order to propitiate the gods. The name means "friendly to strangers". "Working to rule" might be derived in the same way, though nowadays there are no gods to propitiate, only shop stewards.

138

(52) ANGLO SOVIET RELATIONS 1942 Too good to be true, 1970

After the signing, on 26 May 1942, of the 'Twenty-Years Anglo-Soviet Treaty of Alliance", I had a request from an American Journal for an article on the subject for publication. I wrote it at once and sent it, but never heard of it again; there were risks then to mail crossing the Atlantic. Possibly it was published and I was never informed. It may still worth while putting it on record in 1970 as giving the flavour of those times. Alas, many of our hopes did not come true. In Vol .III, The Grand Alliance, Ch 20 of Churchill’s book "The Second World War", he records the following account, by his Private Secretary, of what happened at Chequers on the day before Russia was invaded, 21 June 1941. During dinner Mr Churchill said that a German attack on Russia was now certain, and he thought Hitler was counting on enlisting Capitalist and Right Wing sympathies in this country and the U.S.A. Hitler was wrong and we should go all out to help Russia. Winant (U.S. Ambassador in London 1941-6) said the same would be true of the U.S.A. After dinner...he reverted to this theme and I asked whether, for him the arch anti-communist, this was not bowing down in the House of Rimmon. Mr Churchill replied, "Not at all. I have only one purpose: the destruction of Hitler. If Hitler invaded Hell I would make at least a favourable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons." My article was written nearly a year later. One thing that was in my mind in writing it was the danger (in the United States only five months into the war) of suspicion of British collaboration with the source of all evil, Communism. There was in fact no such danger in Britain, but the Nazis would naturally try to spread suspicion of it in any fertile soil. I had, and still have, many good scientific friends in Russia. Never, for their sakes, have I discussed the political situation with them. That was, and is, safer for them. I did not know in 1942, nobody could then, that what I wrote was too good to be true. Not long afterwards, however, I had begun to realize the difficulty of friendly collaboration, as can be seen in my article Per Ardua ad Aspra (49), One can be very fond of sensitive and intelligent Russian people without liking their political bosses with their heavy-handed repression. Perhaps it may help to make more intelligible what I wrote if I confess that I was an Independent Member of Parliament at the time, had attended various secret sessions, and had some knowledge of the military situation. This is what I sent to America. “The Treaty recently concluded between the United Kingdom and the U.S.S.R. has given the greatest satisfaction and encouragement to those who 139 have long deplored the continued misunderstandings between the two governments whose peoples, from their natures and characteristics, could so readily be friends. I have no special knowledge of the squabbles and differences which produced this unfortunate result; like most squabbles they are probably best forgotten and left to the historians to sort out. Just as in the lives of individuals, the best way to end a quarrel or a misunderstanding is not to try to apportion blame or failure, or to argue out how the misunderstanding arose; it is to settle down to do an honest job of work together, preferably work involving muscles as well as brains. When I heard a year ago of the German attack on Russia, my first reflexion was - This will bring Russia back into the community of nations; this, if we live that long, will allow me to see my Russian friends again. “One had almost given up hope of a reconciliation, at least in our time. May I refer to personal experience? Up to 1932 Russian physiologists had come to work with me in England with fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation or from their own government. From 1932 the visits were totally shut down. In 1935 an International Congress of Physiologists was held in Russia, a highly successful meeting in which the visitors saw much to admire, particularly the hundreds of keen young people who stood around us to see and listen. One hoped that the previous intercourse and exchange would start again; they did not; and when the next Congress occurred at Zurich in 1938 not a single Russian was permitted to come. This state of affairs was not due in any way to lack of mutual appreciation or understanding on the part of scientific people and certainly our Russian Colleagues did not desire it; many of them would have sold their souls (if they had been allowed to have any) to go and study for a time abroad. It was ordained from above. Much as one deplored it then and since, it may be that this policy of isolation, applied consistently to all except those few who were regarded as completely safe politically, was necessary. (footnote: Those who know now, thirty years later, what manner of tyranny Stalin was inflicting on his country, may smile at the "discretion" of what I wrote in 1941.) In the days when industrial and military development were more important than butter, perhaps it was essential to maintain that intense conviction of the superiority of their political and economic system, which - added to their traditional love of country - has helped to make the morale of the Russian people so formidable a weapon, so fundamental a contribution to the ultimate defeat of Germany. “Since Britain and Russia became allies in June 1941, the same difficulty has persisted. No doubt the stickiness has not been all on one side, and some of it has certainly been due to different ideas of secrecy; but even in matters where secrecy was unnecessary it has been impossible to make contact. This has not been due to suspicion on our part of Russian political ideas; in fact every communist in Great Britain has been exploiting Russia to such an extent as to make people utterly sick and tired of propaganda, and to impede the development of natural normal relations between allies. Guns, 140 tanks and aircraft are now very much more important than butter, and our great collaborator in the enterprise of defeating Hitler may have been right in fearing the effect on morale of a sudden change in his policy of isolation. We have had to say to ourselves that patience was necessary; that the suspicions of a quarter of a century could not be removed n a few months; that the price of failure would be so heavy and the value of success so great that we must go on working away to achieve the understanding which, so far as the people of the two countries themselves were concerned, would be so easy and profitable once they got to know each other. “At last the opportunity has been offered of getting together more closely. We can let bygones be bygones until at any rate we are in such a good humour with one another (when Hitler has been liquidated, if not before) that discussion will not lead to bickering. Not only do we intend, together with our allies and particularly with the United States and China, to ensure the utter destruction of Hitlerism, but also "to work together in close and friendly collaboration... for the organisation of security and economic accord in Europe". A vast change has occurred in Britain in common men's appreciation of Russia and of the achievements of the Soviet Union. It is obvious that we have a lot to learn from a system that has utilised so efficiently, in circumstances so grim, the natural virtues of a great people. This does not mean that we think this system as a whole could be transplanted here; nor does it mean that we underestimate what we ourselves and others have done in peace and war, in technology and social improvement. What it does mean is that we are anxious both to collaborate and to be friends. “I have been very fortunate for many years in friendship, comradeship and collaboration with a multitude of Americans; and I am entirely convinced that the first and most fundamental principle in seeking for an international order based on decency, humanity, toleration and scientific common-sense, lies in the organised and deliberate cooperation of the British Empire and the United States. One's hopes that Germany could be induced to join in that cooperation have been twice shattered; Germany clearly needs a long process of psychological rehabilitation following defeat before she can become a safe and decent neighbour. One's hopes that Russia would come in seemed like a mirage, always receding, but now at last there appears to be a prospect of reality. In China, the United States has long had a special interest and many of the best and wisest people in China have intimate knowledge of America; cooperation between China and the English speaking countries will not be difficult. If these four peoples can agree to pull together, and to go on pulling in spite of the occasional roughness of the road, then a recurrence of the present world disorder may be made permanently impossible, and we may hope to reach a state in which the skill, pugnacity and enterprise of healthy men can be better employed than in mutual destruction of each other’s institutions. 141

“That our present enemies have achieved so much is largely due to the skill and ruthlessness with which they have spread mistrust and disaffection and exploited treachery. The process has been going on since 1933, in many countries, and is still hard at work. In the United States now, through their agents and friends, they will certainly be exploiting the hesitations and doubts of Americans about communism in order to create any difficulties they can. The fact that Britain is now bound by a treaty to the Soviet Union to collaborate in peace as well as in war, will doubtless be used to throw doubt upon the stability of our own political institutions - we shall be said to be infected by the virus of bolshevism and to be unfit company for the healthy individualists of America. “To my American friends, if I may, I would say - do not believe this rubbish. The communists in Britain now are exploiting to the utmost the opportunity offered by Russia's magnificent military, industrial and moral achievements; but their propaganda, like a drink which is too sweet, taken in excess is beginning to defeat its own ends by making people sick. The ordinary sensible citizens of Britain are too attached to their own way of life to be willing to exchange it wholesale for another. They are ready to learn from Russian experience, enterprise and ideas, as they have been ready to learn from America, or from France through our many years of chequered history. But Britain is no more likely to 'go communist' now, as a result of the Treaty, than it was to adopt prohibition in the days of that peculiar adventure of American ideology; or than Russia is today to set up a House of Lords or to permit conscientious objection to military service! When propaganda designed to spread disaffection among allies is put about, it is their duty to enquire not whether it is true, but simply where it came from; the latter they will generally find disreputable. “The stage therefore is now set for collaboration with the Soviet Union by sensible people in Britain and America. The primary object of that collaboration is the defeat of Germany, Japan and Italy, and the utter destruction of Hitlerism. In that destruction the Russians will certainly not be sentimental and we had better not be either. The cancer must be completely removed. We shall have failed, however, in our object of longer range if the collaboration ends as soon as the surgical operation is over and the patient is coming round. There is no hope for the future of civilised man if isolation is to be the prevalent and characteristic mood of peace. It has shown its folly and futility in producing the present beautiful example of the very thing it set out to avoid,”

142

(53) IS THIS A RACIAL WAR?

This was dated from the Royal Society on 18 November 1940, but I have no memory of what it was intended for. My pocket diary records the fact that I spent the night of 16 November with George Trevelyan in the Master's Lodge at Trinity. Did it arise from something we talked about then?

The armies of Gustavus were largely composed of foreigners; there were German and Scottish regiments and only one brigade was purely Swedish. Had Marlborough insisted that his troops should be of pure British descent, Blenheim House would never have been built. In the Peninsula War and at Waterloo the King's German Legion, a regiment of the British Army, did very distinguished service and suffered heavy losses. But those were not racial wars. The singular unanimity of Britain in our struggle with Hitler and Mussolini is due to the common feeling that this is a war of ideas and ideals in the outcome of which all men who believe in orderly freedom have a stake. American sympathy and support, without which we cannot win (footnote: This was written more than a year before Pearl Harbor) are not for the British Commonwealth as such but for the liberties and decencies of which, in spite of failures and backslidings, the British Commonwealth is the home. If Europe and the world are to be saved from the present moral and material disorder the aid of every respectable citizen of the world. must be gaily and ungrudgingly accepted. Our common people know this well; it is their conviction and their hope. But look at this:— 1. No person, however well qualified, whose parents were not British subjects at the time of his birth, may be employed in the Civil Service, including the vast expansions of Service, Supply and Research Departments. British subjects, allies, neutrals and friendly "enemy aliens" are alike excluded. 2. British subjects whose parents were foreigners are not usually accepted as candidates for commissions in the Armed Forces. 3. Aliens, whether friendly, neutral or 'enemy', are not usually accepted for service in the Armed Forces except in the Auxiliary Military Pioneer Corps. 4 British Indians are in fact, though not in principle, excluded from all these forms of service, civil or military, however high their qualifications or their loyalty.

These rules or customs were not made by the common people who are told, and believe, that they are fighting against Hitler's doctrine of racial superiority. They are administered by men who are mostly broadminded and humane, they are the product chiefly of timidity, of fear either that the foreigner will let you down or, more often, that someone else will say so; they are due to a failure to understand that this is not a racial war but a religious one, religious in the sense that a belief in freedom 143 and decency may provide a stronger motive than pride of nationality or the instincts of the herd. Shall we continue to act as though we accept Hitler's doctrine of racial superiority, applied to ourselves, and deprive our cause of the sympathy and help of all men who believe in orderly freedom? Racial snobbishness and timidity are poor weapons to fight with against misguided but fanatical devotion.

144

(54) ILLEGITIMIS NON CARBORUNDUM.

This text looks as though it might be in Latin. Carborundum could be a gerundive ,and illegitimis could be an ablative plural meaning by, with or from the illegitimates. But to a chemist carborundum is silicon carbide, which is used as an abrasive or grinding material. In 1947 I sent to Anthony Bevir, the private secretary of the then Prime Minister, Clement Atlee, a framed copy of the text with the following note. In small letters on the back was the probable meaning :- Don't let the bastards grind you down. 29th September,1947. Dear Bevir, I enclose a present for the Prime Minister which perhaps you could pass on. It conveys a message of encouragement to him in what appears to be Latin. In case he is not sure what it means you might call his attention to the small print on the back. For public use the second and third words might be sufficient. The first word might cause speculation as to who exactly was intended.* * (added in 1970 I had the impression that the Prime Minister's difficulties did not come only from the Opposition.) The history of this is as follows. , a typical New England Yankee, was head of the office for Scientific Research and Development in the United States during the war years. He did a magnificent job. Of course he had his troubles, many of them, but got aver them in the spirit of the precept which was pinned up in his office. Last winter I was at Ardeer, One of the I.C.I. factories, and having to make a speech mentioned Bush's precept. Some of the Directors of the Company were there and were so moved by it that they had it printed at the Kynoch Press and framed. One of them recently gave me a copy, and asked me if I could convey another copy to the Prime Minister with their compliments. They felt that a breath of sympathy and encouragement might not come amiss in his present difficulties. Yours sincerely, A.V. Hill Anthony Bevir, Esq. 10 Downing Street, S.W.1. Mr. Bevir replied as follows: 3rd October,1947 Dear Hill, Thank you for your letter of the 29th September, forwarding a framed print. I will see that the Prime Minister. has it. I feel sure that he will appreciate the kindly intention which prompted the gift. Yours sincerely, Anthony Bevir. Professor A.V.Hill, C.H., 0.B.E., F.R.S.

145

(55) ON CAT FIGHTS: 1898,1944,1970,1972. The phrase "making the fur fly" is stated in the Oxford Dictionary to be American slang. Anyone who has had the privilege of witnessing a good cat-fight will agree that, slang or not, it must exist in some form in any language. When I was about thirteen, coming home one day from school, I heard a horrible noise in a garden and, looking over the wall, saw two cats at war. At intervals, after blood- curdling shrieks by both, one of them would rush suddenly at the other and engage in a rough- and-tumble much too rapid to follow; and clouds of fur rose in the air. Then, just as suddenly, the attacker returned to his corner and the shrieking continued. The same thing was repeated at intervals. Many years later, during Hitler's war, I was a member of Parliament, representing Cambridge University. Throughout most of the war the internecine struggle between the political parties was decently abated; but late in 1944 it became evident that at some time in 1945 the shooting war would end and a General Election would have to be held. There had been none since 1937. Party feelings began to rise acutely and things ware said and done which helped to convince me (needing little convincing) that I should be happier, and perhaps more useful (I could scarcely be less), if I gave up Parliament and returned to scientific work. made no public statement about this, but my friend Philips Price, Labour M.P. for the Forest of Dean and Deputy Chairman of the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee, hearing of it was polite enough, without warning, to write to The Times on 9 December as follows:

The news that Dr A.V. Hill is not standing for Parliament again is alarming to those of us who consider it vital that science should have a greater impact upon legislation and administration and that in the present Parliament there are already insufficient scientists, engineers, or persons with wide scientific contacts. Unless Parliament and Ministers are sufficiently able to appreciate the potentialities and limitations of science we shall never be properly equipped to conduct the affairs of this nation and Empire in the highly technological world into which we have moved... I thought about that for a fortnight, then replied in The Times on 23 December: I am grateful to Mr Philips Price for the generous motive of his letter in The Times of December 9. In fact, however, the growing trend to irresponsible partisanship and reckless recrimination exhibited in recent debates shows all too clearly how small a contribution scientific men would be likely to make directly to British politics during the coming years. Science could have great gifts to offer for national and international well-being; but its dispassionate methods are a poor training for the impending political cat-fight. 146

I had not consciously remembered that cat-fight of forty- five years earlier. But when my friends asked me why I had written "cat-fight" instead of the more usual "dog-fight", I replied that dogs make a decent noise when scrapping while cats make horrible blood-curdling shrieks. G.M. Trevelyan, the historian, a cousin of Philips Price, told me he agreed regretfully with my decision. Other friends also in the House, particularly on the Labour side, rebuked me for it. But to this there was an ironical ending. In the next Parliament, University Representation was abolished by the large Labour Majority. The Conservatives insisted, again and again, that when they came back to power they would restore it. Nobody believed them and they never did. It was almost inevitable that Labour would in the end abolish it; the University franchise had been used too often to provide safe seats for conservatives. This is no special reflection on the Conservatives; the Socialists would have done exactly the same if they had had a chance. Still it is sad that there is no place now in Parliament for people like Eleanor Rathbone, of whom Harold Nicolson wrote in The Spectator (11 Jan. 1946): The memory of her ringing courage and her ardent eyes will not be forgotten. And as, under the gentle guidance of Hermes, she passes over the river of the dead there will be many unknown shades who will raise their mutilated arms to honour one who never forgot when others cried to forget. Curiously enough that good lady once referred, in the House, to "this feline spite" when she defended after Aneurin Bevan had grossly attacked him for something that his son Randolf had done. When she got home (she told me) she apologized to her cat.

Postscript 1970. This postscript is being written in May 1970, while another cat-fight is raging before a General Election in June; there are problems of ''non-violent" demonstrations at cricket matches; of human foetuses being sold for research; of "peaceful persuasion" by strikers of people who want to work; of "peaceful demonstrations" by students against almost everything; of such insoluble economic problems as whether wage rises cause price rises, or vice versa; of whether the donkey pulls the cart, or the cart pushes the donkey; of Felis catus v. Homo sapiens. Postscript 1972. But what was said or done in 1970 is nothing to the events in Parliament of January and February 1972. That can best be described in the words of Abraham Lincoln: "People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like". Postscript late 1972. The same only worse.

147

(56) THE ADORATION OF THE ROYAL FAMILY

In Hymns Ancient and Modern (1900) the first and last lines of hymn 169 are as follows: "My God, how wonderful Thou art What rapture will it be Prostrate before Thy Throne to lie, And gaze and gaze on Thee".

Having, from time to time, as part of my job, attended functions at which Royalty were present, more particularly Feminine Royalty, I have continually thought back to that hymn. The Queen Mother is a dear, and everyone loves her; but when she has, for example, visited a soiree of the Royal society (of which she is a Patron) and made a Royal Progress round the library, bowing right and left, I have felt embarrassed by the way in which several hundred eminent and intelligent people have had nothing to do but gaze and gaze till she passed. The present Royal Family deserve respect and gratitude for the way they have avoided being driven crazy by this nonsense. It is not their fault that they are subject to it, but the fault of the public and the Press, - or perhaps of the Court Officials. Touching the hem of the royal garment, in these days, does not make the sick whole; but it does give people something to boast about afterwards, while others gape with envy.

148

(57) THE ATLANTIC CHARTER IN STANDARD AND BASIC ENGLISH.

On 14 August 1941 Mr Attlee explained in a special broadcast that Mr Churchill, in pursuance of a long cherished plan, had left England previously in the battleship Prince of Wales, accompanied by Government Officials and representatives of the Services. His purpose was to meet President Roosevelt and discuss with him the question of British-American collaboration, both during the war and after. They had met at sea in the Western Atlantic and remained together for three days, during which they had numerous conferences. At the end they had agreed upon a joint declaration, which Attlee read (see below). Churchill once referred to it as a rough and ready war-time statement. The eight principles contained in the declaration soon came to be called the Atlantic Charter and although they were not embodied in any formal document they formed the starting point of the series of pronouncements by the anti-axis powers which found their final shape in the Charter of the United Nations. A striking thing about the whole episode is that the United States was not at war at the time and it required the Japanese insult of assaulting Pearl Harbor four months later to bring Americans to their senses and end American neutrality. In September 1943 it occurred to Mervyn O'Gorman, Henry Dale and me, meeting at the Athenaeum Club in London, to ask Professor C.K. Ogden (1889- 1957) to turn the Atlantic Charter into the Basic English of which he had been the originator. He did so, with a result so interesting that we sent it, with a letter, to The Times (17 September 1943). It would be difficult in general to improve on the craftsmanship of those two masters, Churchill and Roosevelt, of the English tongue. But that was not the object though in the eighth principle I do prefer "for material; reasons no less than because it is right and good" to “realistic as well as spiritual reasons". I think Winston, if not Roosevelt, would have preferred it too. The real object of our exercise was to express it in language to be apprehended by simple folk, or by people for whom standard English was not their mother tongue. The African, whether in Africa or in North America, the Indian in India or Kenya, might well have a quicker and more vivid apprehension of the "basic" form. In what follows, the two versions are side by side. 149

Basic Standard. The President of the United States and the Prime Minister, Mr Churchill, acting for his The President of the United States and Majesty's Government in the United the Prime Minister, Mr Churchill, Kingdom, being now together, are of representing His Majesty's Government opinion that it is right to make public certain in the United Kingdom, being met common ideas in the political outlook of together, deem it right to make known their two countries, on which are based certain common principles on the their hopes for a better future for all national policies of their respective nations. countries on which they base their hopes 1. Their countries will do nothing to make for a better future for the World. themselves stronger by taking more land or 1. Their countries seek no increasing their power in any other way. aggrandisement, territorial or other. 2. They have no desire for any land to be handed over from one nation to another without the freely voiced agreement of the 2. They desire to see no territorial men and women whose interests are in changes that do not accord with the question. freely expressed wishes of the people concerned. 3. They take the view that all nations have the right to say what form of Government 3. They respect the right of all peoples to they will have; and it is their desire to see choose the form of Government under their selfgovernment and rights as which they will live, and they desire to independent nations given back to those see sovereign rights and self- from whom they have been taken away by government restored to those who have force. been forcibly deprived of them. 4.They will do their best, while respecting their present undertakings to make it possible for all nations, great and small, whichever side 4. They will endeavour with due respect they were on in the war, to take part in trade for their obligations, to further enjoyment equally with others, and have the materials by all states, great or small, victor or which are needed for the full development of vanquished, of access on equal terms to their industries. the trade and to the raw materials of the 5.They desire to set all nations working world which are needed for their together, in complete harmony in the field economic prosperity. of trade and industry, so that all may be given better working conditions, and have 5. They desire to bring about the fullest greater material well-being, and be certain collaboration between all nations in the of the necessaries of existence. economic field, with the object of securing for all improved labour 6 After the complete destruction of the Nazi rule of force, they hope to see a peace standards, economic advancement, and made which will keep all nations safe from social security. attack from outside, and which will make 6. After the final destruction of the Nazi certain that all the men in all the lands will tyranny, they hope to see established a be free from fear and need through all their peace which will afford to all nations the days. 150 means of dwelling in safety within their own boundaries, and which will afford assurance that all the men in all the lands may live out their lives in freedom from fear and want. 7.Such a peace should enable all men to traverse the high seas and oceans 8. They believe that all nations of the without hindrance. earth, for material reasons no less 8. They believe all the nations of the than because it is right and good, will world, for realistic as well as spiritual in the end give up the use of force. reasons, must come to the Because war will come again if abandonment of the use of force, since countries which are, or may be, ready no future peace can be maintained if to make attacks on others go on using land, sea, or air armaments continue land sea or air power, they believe that to be employed by nations which it is necessary to take away all arms threat-en, or may threaten, aggression from them till a wide system of keeping outside of their frontiers; they believe, the general peace, more solid in pending the establishment of a wider structure, comes into being. They will, and permanent system of general further, give their help and support to security, that the disarmament of such all other possible steps which may nations is essential. They will likewise make the crushing weight of arms less aid and encourage all other practicable for peace-loving nations. measures which will lighten for peace- loving peoples the crushing burden of armament

151

(58) THE SOCIAL SCIENCES.

In December 1941 there was some lively argument about the "Social Sciences". I was provoked to join in in a letter to The Times on 24 December, by reading the views of certain "eminent and biologists" on subjects outside their (or my own) competence. Here is my letter. Let us be clear, in this argument, about two things. The first is that those who urge that politics should not be mixed with science do not suggest - far from it - that science should not be mixed with politics. The order of admixture is important, as anyone who pours water into strong sulphuric; acid, instead of the reverse, will soon find out. Science is well acquainted with prejudice and emotion; these, however, are the objects and not the instruments of its study. Science is deeply concerned with human welfare; but the social or political convenience of a fact or theory is no part of the evidence in its favour. Let us confidently apply the results of science to human betterment; but not allow our desire for betterment to upset our scientific conclusions or bias our scientific judgments. Above all, let scientists avoid exploiting the public of science, of which they are trustees, for advertising their private political views. The second is that the extraordinary achievements of natural science are chiefly the product of a particular method, the method of controlled experiment. It is unfortunate that the word science has come to be used, without qualification in this limited sense; that cannot now be helped, but only confusion will be caused by supposing that this method, with its proved effectiveness in its own field, is commonly- or even generally- applicable to political, social, or economic studies. Dr George Catlin urges, in The Times of December22, that what is wanted now is the establishment of a representative body of the highest academic standing, able to command respect in the field of the social sciences. The Royal Society might help in this, as it helped in establishing the British Academy in 1902. In the main, however, the task must be undertaken by social scientists themselves: confusion is only increased by pronouncements from the "eminent physicists and biologists" of Dr Catlin's letter on subjects outside their competence.

[1972: I do not recall who all these “eminent scientists” were; but I think I could, after 31 years, recite the names of several of them, finishing with Old Uncle Jack Haldane and all]

152

(59) CONVERSION BY BOMB, BOYCOTT - OR BANTER.

A rather notorious member of Trinity College Cambridge was once observed, with a drawn sword, chasing round Great Court a man with whom he had had a theological argument; shouting that he was going to make him a Christian. This method of conversion is well known in history. The conversion to Islam of the Hindus of East Bengal probably depended on the same method; and the Catholic Faith in the Americas was propagated among the original inhabitants more by fear than by persuasion. Today similar methods are being used, in Ulster, London and even Cambridge; political (or so called religious) differences and wage claims are "settled” by bombs or "peaceful persuasion". A new method is that of "boycott". If you do not like the practice of apartheid in South Africa, you boycott (with more or less violence) cricket matches with South Africans, and so gain notoriety and self-esteem. Whether chess matches suffer a similar inconvenience I do not know. Don’t imagine I favour apartheid, or antisemitism, or racialism of any kind. My record is quite clear about this. I am, of course, known to hold the opinion that not all footballers are equal, and I can well believe that West Africans can jump higher than Scotsmen. But I am not convinced that boycotting everything and everybody (even Barclay’s Bank) connected with the Republic of South Africa is the best way of persuading white South Africans to be more reasonable. The Archbishop of Canterbury said something like this after his recent (1971) visit to the Republic - of which I was glad - but he would not claim to be the first to say it. In fact, boycott of this kind is a sort of exhibitionism which gives the performer an easy sense of self-esteem. Friendliness and amicable discussion are much more likely to lead to useful results, but self-esteem is more easily obtained by boycott or violence. Again I hold that many activities of the U.S.S.R. (e.g. in the matter of Czechoslovakia or Hungary; or of Jews, writers, or political prisoners) are abominable; but I would not wish to exclude their citizens from the Games, or even from chess matches. I have, and have had, very good friends in the U.S.S.R.; but I do not boycott them, or even write letters of protest to them which would probably put then at hazard. In 1954 I persuaded the Soviet Academy of Sciences to affiliate itself to the I.C.S.U.; the International Council of Scientific Unions - with very great mutual advantage - but this was not done by boycott, or protest, or bombs, but by friendly leg-pulling. The methods of those who try to break up football matches would never have led to so desirable a result.

153

(60) PANIC.

Wilfred Trotter (1872-1939) neuro-surgeon and thinker, was a very great man. His greatness and some of his achievements are gracefully and acutely described by his colleague for many years at University College Hospital, T.R. Elliott, in his Obituary Notice. (Obit. Not. Of Fellows of the Royal Society 1941, 3, 325.) In 1925 Trotter, then a demonstrator in at University College, wrote two articles (very far from anatomy!) on The Herd Instinct. These were later published in the Sociological Review. As Elliott wrote of him: "Trotter had essentially the mind of a philosopher, as once defined by Plato. 'The mood of the philosopher is wonder; there is no other source of philosophy than this, for wonder involves some vigour of spirit'. Biology and medicine stirred him to wonder about the workings of the mind even more than about the body that bore it, and he turned keenly to psychology at a time when that study had not gained its present closer association with ordinary medical thought. He succeeded in giving to it a fresh outlook, arguing that the problems of the human mind must be viewed in their broadest biological aspect because the mind of man must contain primitive feelings akin to those of other animals. "In addition to the well-known instincts that are associated with food, sex, and self-preservation he showed that a fourth instinct, derived from the herd life of animals accustomed to live together in groups, was of such power that its workings must be recognized throughout the feelings and even the intellectual processes that dominate man's behaviour. The idea itself was not new, for Karl Pearson had used it to indicate that altruism, the ethical process which makes the individual willing to sacrifice his own immediate interests for the sake of others, was a natural and instinctive product of gregariousness. But Trotter subjected it to a closer scrutiny, particularly in respect of the human processes of rationalization which with the development of self-consciousness and speech had been used to justify or even to conceal the primary satisfactions felt in obedience to instinctive belief'. Thus to quote directly: 'It is of cardinal importance to recognize that in the process of rationalization it is the instinctive belief which is the primary thing, while the explanation, although masquerading as the cause of the belief, as the cbainof rational evidence on which the belief is founded, is entirely secondary and but for the belief would never have been thought of’ "And again: 'Conscience is an indirect result of the gregarious instinct; and is in no sense derived from a special instinct forcing man to consider the good of the race rather than individual desires.' "The main idea was emphasized in a later postscript: 'We have in man an animal in whom instinct is as vigorous as in any of his primitive ancestors, but who superficially is scarcely an instinctive animal at all. His instinctive impulses are so greatly masked by the variety of responses that his intellect opens to him that he has been commonly regarded until quite recent times as a practically non-instinctive creature, capable of determining by reason his conduct and even his desires. Such a conception made it almost impossible to gain any help in human psychology from the study of other animals, and scarcely 154

less difficult to evolve a psychology which would be of the least use in forecasting and controlling the behaviour of man'. "The high value of this analysis was recognized by all psychologists. In 1915, when the War was summoning its display of herd feelings on a gigantic scale Trotter was persuaded to republish the original papers in book form, together with an addition of almost threefold their size in which he sought to use his principles of biological or comparative psychology for analysis of the affairs of nations when at peace or in war. Much of the new addition was less strictly reasoned than the earlier papers, while it was warmed by Trotter's own strong instinct of patriotism and by his trust in the virtues and wisdom of the common Englishman. He warned his readers against the danger of accepting too readily the validity of speculations which seemed more plausible when 'viewed through the refracting air of national emergency’ and then availed himself of the freedom gained by that warning in order to touch with his illuminating thought upon many questions in the government of mankind. The book offered a new method of approach to many political problems, but it characteristically avoided dogmatic conclusions. In England it had a popular appeal through its comparison of the types of nations then at war with such herds of animals as are represented by the aggressive wolf and the highly socialized bee respectively. So the phrase 'herd instinct' passed into common talk as familiarly as that of the ‘inferiority complex' " In the Second Edition, published in 1919, a Postscript was included 'Prejudice in Time of War'. The thirteenth impression was published in December 1940, a year after Trotter's death. On 26 September 1939, when the nation was again at war with Germany, a letter of his was published in The Times on "The Mind in War". A few weeks later he wrote for the British Medical Journal a last article which appeared after' his death, on 17 February 1940. It is worth repeating here exactly as it came. The nation, by its absurd political conflicts in the preceding years, had been asking for the Panic which Trotter so vividly described. PANIC AND ITS CONSEQUENCES "Some weeks ago a few remarks of mine were printed on the need for active thinking in the conduct of war. Among the subjects I named as needing attention was that of the relations between Government and people. These relations, which were at first perfect, have already shown a slight but sensible decline that must deeply concern us all. It has been said that the uses made of the great powers given to the Government by the people have not always been wise, and have sometimes been such as to stagger common sense. lt is of interest therefore to call attention to an element in the general situation that may have had an influence on many of the decisions of the Government now causing dissatisfaction. As this element lay beyond the direct reach of the human will, we can discuss it without undertaking the odious task of distributing blame amongst persons who were doubtless animated by as pure a passion to serve the country as any of us. "Anyone who was in London in September and October 1939 must have been aware of something new in the moral attitude of the people. Trenches were being feverishly scratched open, many of those who could afford it were openly running away, and people of whose nerves better might have been expected confessed to an uncontrollable alarm. It was generally believed that a first-class air-raid might kill 50,000 and wound 300,000 more, 155 that there was no real defence, and that an attack might occur at any moment. In the blackest days of 1917 and 1918 no such moral landslide was seen. The stoical endurance of the Londoner had gone, and in its place was something to which the thoughtful mind could not refuse the ominous name of panic. The weakness did not, however, spread indefinitely. The common people - as always the moral background of the country - resisted and at length threw it off. But it lingered elsewhere and especially perhaps among those who also had the heavy strain of being responsible for the safety of the country. Innumerable critical decisions had thus to be made by people exposed to, and more or less deeply affected by, the insidious solicitations of panic. The results of such a condition need for their understanding no more advanced a psychological equipment than a moderately enlightened common sense. "Man experiences two kinds of fear, which we may call individual fear and panic fear. Of the former we need only say that it is by no means incompatible with mental activity of the best kind, and that it is directly related to its object. Panic fear, on the other hand, is not directly related to its object, but is derived by its subject from the reactions of his fellows; it is, therefore, so to say, infectious. Being an experience solely of social creatures, it has for its function the obliteration of the individual consciousness, which becomes merged in an impulse shared by its fellows. It thus happens that panic, however mild, has an immediate effect in weakening rational judgement. Every conclusion arrived at under its influence, however plausible it may seem in the deceptive medium, will be corrupted by departures from sound sense. In examining decisions reached under the influence of panic we are not to look for blunders and errors of judgement, for the fruits of ignorance or the fatuity of office, but for something at once more subtle and more characteristic. We are to look for decisions that could have been reached only by people in whom the faculty of practical reason was actually impaired. "The hypothesis that vast sir-raids were inevitable upon or even before the declaration of war was always a dubious one and rested on all its elements being greatly magnified; it also ignored the fact that the German military command, however purged of its best minds and however infatuated with Schrecklichkeit as an end in itself, was the best judge of short-range strategy in the world, and little likely to waste its strength on eccentric blows that could not be followed up. The idea, however, was not unreasonable and certainly deserved all consideration. Nevertheless, panic insisted that a modest probability must be treated as an immediate certainty, and used the hypothetical horrors it had foretold as part of the evidence that they would occur. A total black-out was enforced without compromise or graduation or any provision for the devoted pedestrian. The consequences may well become a classical example of the staggering paradoxes that result from mixing good intentions with panic. Deaths by violence on the roads rose in the first month of the war from 500 to 1,100. Thus by sitting quietly at home Hitler's air force was able to kill 600 British citizens at a cost to itself of exactly nothing. "With all its crudities the black-out is no more than a mild example of the effects of panic. Many other instances lie about us of which it can be maintained that they embody decisions which no normal mind in any circumstances could have assented to. Some happily are merely grotesque. Such escapades as carting tea about the country with the effect of eluding at once both bombs and consumers, and the outbreaks of a fatuous secrecy deserve no more than a smile. But what are we to think of patients with infectious 156 tuberculosis discharged to spread the disease; of medical practice half paralysed and medical education wholly disorganized; of the great hospitals three-quarters empty; of elementary education crippled and higher education almost at a standstill? "I have expressed belief that we should not be concerned in the distribution of blame. There is none to distribute. We have discussed a natural phenomenon and its results. If these observations have been just, certain considerations of practical importance proceed from them. The first is that decisions bearing the diagnostic marks of having been affected by panic should be reviewed without mercy or any regard for the saving of face. The second is to take to heart the fact that under the influence of panic it was possible to ignore almost completely two kinds of strength in which this country is eminent, if not unique - its capacity for courageous endurance and its principle of reasonable compromise." ------I have myself vivid memories of how, a little more than a year before Trotter wrote that last warning, attempts were being made to produce the very sort of panic he described. In May 1938, four months before the Munich futility, I received from a self-appointed "Cambridge Scientists' Anti-War Group" a letter inviting me to support an appeal for funds to make a film on the subject of air-raid precautions. In a synopsis of the film the conclusion from it was emphasized that the only completely effective air-raid precaution was an enduring peace. Any effect of the film in exposing the horrors of war, under these auspices, would clearly be to lower the will of the British people to resist Hitler. There was no suggestion that the film should be shown in Germany! I had been since 1935 a member of a Committee of the Air Ministry "for the scientific survey of air defence". The most important problem before us was how to make contact with enemy bombers as quickly and effectively as possible; then our fighters would be able to deal with them. This seemed more useful than to vote for an "enduring peace" with Hitler! My reply (9 May) to the invitation was as follows; though I cannot imagine it had any effect. "I do not wish to subscrilbe to the fund for making the film to which you refer. I believe I am just as anxious for peace as any members of your organization, but I do not believe that the way to obtain peace is to weaken the determination of this country to resist possible attack by Germany. To attempt to spread alarm and panic in this country by the fear of air raids seems to me to be playing directly into the hands of a form of government, and a view of human and international relationships, which I dislike probably more than your members do." Knowing many of the signatories of this manifesto I recognized the political motive behind it, and its deliberate intent to spread panic rather than resolution. Four months later, at "Munich", we saw the horrible betrayal of Czechoslovakia, largely due to political motives of the opposite tint; that is, of conservatives who imagined that Hitler was saving the world from "Bolshevism". On 26 September 1938 Chamberlain told Parliament of Hitler's invitation to him to come to Munich. (Halifax was then Foreign Secretary, having replaced Anthony Eden who could not tolerate Chamberlain's "" of Hitler and Mussolini). Chamberlain returned from Munich on 30 September and in a radio speech next day put forward his deluded claim of "peace for our time". Could I believe it? My many contacts with refugees from Germany since 1933 had given me a pretty just assessment of Hitler 157 and his gang; and brooding over it on Sunday 2 October I wrote the following note. Nobody saw it at the time, or for a third of a century; now it seems worth putting on record as written in 1938. WRITTEN TO CLEAR MY OWN MIND AFTER THE SEPTEMBER CRISIS OF 1938 Two years ago I was invited to join a "vigilant committee of anti-fascist intellectuals". No doubt a publicly expressed dislike of intolerance and persecution, and some efforts to relieve their victims, brought me this and similar attentions. I wrote to a wise old friend in France (from which country the invitation came) who replied that he had often suffered for his liberal opinions, since Dreyfus onwards, but that he could not distinguish between one form of intolerance and another, whether of the left or the right. Again, because one was known to prefer reason to violence, honesty to blackmail, gentleness to truculence, in the settlement of national (as of personal) differences, one was asked to join pacifist organizations which would leave this country, and others, at the mercy of violence, blackmail and truculence. Now, when the imminent danger of a major world disaster, due as history will show to the combined follies of most parties in several states, has been - at least temporarily - averted, one is invited to join with other "intellectuals" in publicly attributing those follies to one of the parties in our country. The truth is that, for the present unhappy situation, all parties are about equally to blame. The unchivalrous treatment of Germany after the war of 1914-18, and the intolerable demands made upon her, rendered the existence of a decent Government there impossible. It was clearly becoming impossible before the break of 1933. Then a reign of violence, truculence and persecution set in which obviously demanded that we should be prepared, to the utmost of our strength, for all emergencies; for the moment bygones must be bygones. One party, however, was unwilling to cooperate, or cooperated only grudgingly, in preparations which today are two years behindhand; partisan feeling and expediency, and to some degree an unreasoning idealism, were preferred to the safety of the state. On the other side the complacency of rich and influential people in Britain towards Italian aggression in Abyssinia, and towards Italian and German aggression in Spain, showed the same willingness to sacrifice international decencies and British strategic interests alike to party feelings. "Non-intervention" became a notorious farce; one party, because of political aversions, did not want it to succeed; the other, equally for political reasons, by its backwardness in cooperation for defence, had deprived us of the means of insisting, without grave danger, of making it effective. Then the Anschluss with Austria came. Some of those who previously had refused to allow economic cooperation between Austria and a liberal Germany were not so very disappointed when the bulwark against so-called "Bolshevism" was thus extended; and apart from the persecution which resulted, and the violent manner of the Anschluss, many reasonable people saw only a natural and inevitable development. The other party still hindered the fulfilment of defensive measures (e.g. of A.R.P.) without which Britain's voice, if it were for reason and gentleness in international readjustments, would have little influence. Finally, the Czecho-Slovakian problem emerged, as it evidently must, in spite of Tory sympathizers with Fascism, in spite of pacifist intellectuals and Labour Borough Councils. A readjustment has now been made, under the imminent threat of violence, and the danger is deferred or averted; a thorn in Germany's side has been removed, a fortress in 158 her flank has been neutralized to the natural regret of the French General Staff; and a small democratic country has been forced to give in to threats. Its sovereignty, however, is to be maintained, within its racial borders, at great cost indeed but without the destruction and massacre which were ready for it. We have cause indeed to be ashamed of the events which led to the situation that existed at the beginning of September, though the responsibility is not ours alone, and others (e.g. in the U.S.A.) have no right to throw the first stone at us. The present need, then, is not for bickering and recriminations, but for joint action in clearing up the mess which is made. In the first place, let us not talk about the disarming, particularly in defensive preparations, of Britain; otherwise our voice, if it is for reason and decency in international readjustments, will be weaker than the moral sense of our people as a whole deserves. In the second place, let us exploit the present desire for reconciliation, without fear that the forces at our disposal are not great enough already for a firm stand to be taken when required. In the third place, let us recognize the price which has been paid by Czecho-Slovakia for the present respite, and the extraordinary dignity in distress of its people and their leaders. Postscript. 1972 In October 1972 a book by Nicholas Bethel was published on The War Hitler won ( Allen Lane, the Penguin Press). This describes how, when war had actually started in 1939 a number of conservative aristocrats and anti-Semites tried to persuade Prime Minister Chamberlain to seek still another Compromise with Hitler. The "Cambridge Scientists” of the Anti-War group, referred to above, if any still exist, may be interested to find the sort of company they had got into, from the Duke of Westminster down. 159

(61) THE CENTRAL REGISTER OF THE MINISTRY OF LABOUR AND NATIONAL SERVICE. In 1938 the Officers of the Royal Society strongly impressed on H.M.G. the urgent need to compile a register of scientific people, for use in connexion with the war which was evidently coming. The Ministry of Labour was already considering the need for a register of people with all kinds of professional skills, and the Society agreed to construct thr3 scientific and technical section. In consultation with other scientific societies the Royal Society put all its available resources into the job and the scientific section of the Central Register was functioning some months before the war began. Later it was taken over and operated by the Ministry of Labour and National Service. In the spring of 1941 Dr J.B. Conant, the President of Harvard, came to England in order to start off an agreed exchange of scientific information between Britain and America. While he was with us he studed also the system of Reserved Occupations, of University Joint Recruiting Boards, and of the Central Register; and in the autumn of 1941 he published an account* ("University Training and War Service in Great Britain”. Association of Anlerican Colleges Bulletin, XXVII, October 1941,pp.372-380) of his conclusions as a guide to action in the "emergency" which he foresaw for the universities of his own country. These still make interesting reading, but the final paragraph will give a taste of the whole : In retrospect if seems clear that the British were wise beyond measure in establishing a list of reserved occupations, carrying through their scheme of enrolment of students under Joint Recruiting Boards, and establishing the Central Register. If these steps had not been taken, many physicists, engineers and chemists desperately needed in the war effort might today be dispersed throughout the armed forces and their talents wasted.... The situation in the United States at present is very different in many respects from that in Great Britain. Nevertheless, we will be well advised to see to it that technically trained men are available for those positions in which they can best serve the country in a period of emergency. That steps along these lines have been actively taken in recent months by those in charge of the Selective Service Act must give profound satisfactiom to all who are engaged in college and university work. Of course if one hopes to guide people Into their proper jobs one has to ask questions; and the scope of the expected need was so wide that the only way to do that was to get them to fill up forms. Most people were extremely kind and helpful in providing the information needed, but on 23 May 1941 a chap (dare I call him?) who signed himself Ignotus sent the following letter to The Times.

Sir, I have been in Government service for 30 years: I am a Knight of one Order and Companion of another: my last salary in Government service was about £5,000 a year; my history is recorded in most books of reference. Though I have no greed for remuneration, I thought I ought to offer my services to the Government. I gave the Central Register of the Ministry of Labour and National Service a full account of my qualifications. After a considerable delay I have been asked in a letter measuring 9 in x 7 in. to fill in two forms, each measuring 3 in. x 5 ins. The request is contained in an envelope 8.5 in. x 5.5 in., and 160 an envelope 8.5 in. x 5.5 in. is enclosed for reply. The form is singularly ill-adapted for my case or for anyone who is not expert in writing the Lord's Prayer on a threepenny bit, and it asks for no information which I have not already given. It is sent in order that "particulars of my qualifications may be available in a standardized form". All this is very reassuring. Clearly there can be no scarcity of paper and no shortage of man-power. The Central Register are amassing the most magnificent collection of "standardized forms": but they must be careful lest they should be beaten by the Government Department which asked me to state on a standardized form what were the birthdays of the dozen chickens that I keep. Yours faithfully, Ignotus. This was "asking for it", and I replied as follows next day: Sir,

Unlike Ignotus, writing in The Times of to-day, I am neither a Knight of one Order nor a Companion of another, my salary has never been £5,000 a year, and I have not been in the Government service for 30 years. In spite, however, of these disadvantages, having been connected with the Central Register since its inception, I venture to point out that is impossible, in any orderly system, to make special provision, or to supply special forms, for ex-Government officials who may have recorded their histories in most books of reference, but whose qualifications for more ordinary jobs may not be so obvious. When the Royal Society undertook to construct the Scientific Section of the Central Register the president, then Sir William Bragg, 0.M., and a former president, Sir Charles Sherrington, 0.M., gladly filled up their two forms, 8 in. x 5 in. like Ignotus’s; not because they can have supposed that they were unknown, but because their modesty demanded that they should be uniform with their colleagues. Sir William remarked to me that perhaps he might be able to teach physics to release a younger man,-And Mr William Thompson Hay, better known as Will Hay, the popular headmaster (B.B.C.),of St. Michael's, whose salary may even have been comparable with Ignotus's, completed the same forms meekly as an amateur astronomer and instrument maker. Ignotus complains, about the size of the form, that his distinguished services could not be recorded on it unless he was capable of writing the Lord's Prayer on a three-penny bit. It may relieve him to know that extensive experience with the Central Register has shown that it is those of the least importance who write in the greatest detail of their qualifications. Yours faithfully, A.V. Hill. House of Commons, May 23.

This did not seem to require an answer and received none; though I wish I could have heard the comments of the famous actor and broadcaster Will Hay. But he was busy by then in some humble rank of the R.N.V.R.

161

(62) INSTANT WIT.

It happened like this, sometime about 1942 when the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, was answering Parliamentary Questions. One of these referred to the number of people killed in an air raid on a city in the North of England. Churchill gave such answer as he could in view of security; and immediately up popped the Hon. Member for Queen's University, Belfast, and in a menacing voice demanded: Does not the Prime Minister realize that two hundred people were killed in the raid on Belfast? The comment was completely irrelevant; but the Prime without a moment's hesitation replied, in a loud hoarse whisper heard throughout the Chamber: One too few. This was not to be found in Hansard next day. Another example: James (Jimmy) Maxton (1885-1946) was Member for Bridgeton (Glasgow) from 1922 to 1946. In spite of his unorthodox political opinions he was a general favourite, because of a merry wit and a lot of human kindness, enhanced by his romantic appearance with long black hair. In a discussion of the Catering Wages Bill in 1943 a Member was vigorously attacking the system of tipping; and straying rather far from his brief he announced, "Why, even when I go for a hair-cut I have to hand out a tip." Like a flash of lightning came the comment from the benches near by : Jimmy Maxton doesn't.

That seemed to explain everything; and the Honorable Member who was speaking passed on, as soon as he could be heard, to another aspect of "Catering Wages".

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Chapter 3. Science, Citizenship, Morality and History (63) SCIENTISTS ARE QUITE ORDINARY FOLK [In 1951, in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Vol.7, No.12, various scientific people replied to the Editor's invitation to appraise the position and responsibilities of "the scientist" in society. Following is my effort.]

I do not believe that there is any such thing as "the scientific mind". Most scientists are quite ordinary folk, with ordinary human virtues, weaknesses, and emotions. A few of the most eminent ones indeed are people of superlative general ability, who could have done many things well; a few are freaks, with a freakish capacity and intuition in their special fields, but an extreme naiveté in general affairs. If these latter, in Einstein's phrase, were put to do their work in lighthouses in the intervals of tending the lights, one would feel sorry for the poor sailors who had to trust to them! The great majority of scientists are between these groups, with much the same distribution of moral and intellectual characteristics as other educated people. By and in their scientific work they have developed the habit of critical examination, but this does not save them from wishful thinking in ordinary affairs; or sometimes from misrepresentation (even occasionally from treachery and falsehood) when their emotions or political prepossessions are strongly enough involved. Their minds are no more amoral (and no more moral) than those of surgeons, soldiers, scholars or bankers. As investigators, their job is the improvement of knowledge, and most of them, but not all, realize that their function would be stultified were they to introduce moral data into a scientific argument. A surgeon is not required to consider whether it would be better for the world if his patient died under the operation; he needs only to carry it out with skill, care, and integrity. The decision, of course, to become a surgeon instead of a clergyman, a politician, or an explorer, involves moral considerations as do all human judgements. The decision to study tropical medicine instead of may similarly involve moral considerations, but if the result, by increasing the population in backward countries, is famine and war, the moral judgment may prove wrong after all, though made in good faith. One consideration only in this connection I would urge, that scientific people do not get an exaggerated idea of their importance, or of their moral superiority, but regard themselves as citizens who have the same moral obligations of honesty, kindness, courage, and tolerance as others. They have no more right to insulate themselves from the common affairs of life or the common obligations of citizenship, than have other people. If they have political aspirations, or a mission to improve mankind, let them follow these as citizens, not claiming scientific fame or notoriety, as justification for public pronouncements on unrelated matters. The integrity and prestige of science are common property and must not be exploited for selfish ends. And scientists should be implored to remember that, however accurate their scientific facts, their moral judgments may conceivably be wrong. I doubt whether the new importance which natural science has acquired in industrial, national, and international affairs, with the inevitable consequence of restriction (in certain fields) of completely free exchange, is a serious deterrent to able young people from 163 entering science as a profession. The field of science is vast, and those who wish can keep out of the special fields where governmental, or industrial, secrecy prevents free discussion and publication. I should regard as rather hysterical a youngster, with good scientific ability, who was deflected from science simply by a fear of secrecy - if indeed one did not conclude that he really wanted to do something else and was giving a fashionable excuse. It is extremely important to maintain the smaller independent units, as places where people of special ability can follow out their ideas. The essential thing is that the decision about such matters should ultimately rest with scientific people with personal experience of how scientific discovery is really made and a current acquaintance with their younger colleagues. With the present importance of science, organization cannot be avoided. But if those who have to help in steering it have a sympathetic understanding of their colleagues, and of how scientific advance is really made, no great harm will happen, and, on the whole, the right kind of people will find the opportunity they need. The British tradition, of very long standing, is of friendly cooperation between independent people and institutions on the one hand, and governmental or industrial organisations on the other. This cooperation is general, not limited to the scientific field; and it would be a major disaster if it disappeared under the inflUence of "planning"— but I do not think it will. I do not anticipate general dislocation or frustration because of secrecy or limitation of free exchange - unless major political changes occur, which does not seem likely. Those who find their special conditions of work irksome can easily take to something else. If they cannot, they must have a poor capacity for adaptation and so be rather second-rate people.

In the practical world, as it is likely to exist for a long time yet, complete abandonment of secrecy (in government and industry) is quite out of the question. Instead of demanding the impossible one must try always to achieve the maximum of freedom and exchange, by emphasizing (a) the advantage of international relations, (b) the advantage to scientific progress itself and (c) the impossibility (in a free democracy) of keeping the best people unless the conditions of their work are reasonably congenial. Of these (a) and (b) will appeal to the idealist, but (c) will appeal to the practical man who wants to obtain the best results. If scientific people consistently avoid, or give up, jobs in which the conditions are too uncongenial, they will force changes of organization so that only really necessary secrecy is maintained. The penalty for filling a governmental (or industrial) organization with second- rate people, cheerfully amenable to unnecessary restrictions, is far too evident in its effect on efficiency to be tolerable for long. The cure, therefore, is largely in the scientists* own hands. We want all kinds of research and preferably free and frequent movement from one kind to another. It does a man no harm, indeed in many ways it does him good, to work for a while on "research of recognized national or international usefulness". It does the universities and free research institutions good to have men come to them with previous wider experience of research in industry or under government. It does industrial and 164 government research good to have a steady interchange of experienced people from academic institutions. Pension schemes and other conditions should be adjusted to this end. What is important then is that the outside institutions remain genuinely independent. The price of freedom is perpetual watchfulness. The virtues to be cultivated by a scientific man are courage, integrity, friendliness, and humility; courage to insist on the value both of ascertainable fact and of its logical consequence; integrity in experiment, in argument, and in criticism; friendliness to ensure that research, so far as possible, is of concern to every reasonable man anywhere; humility to provide a consciousness that one may conceivably be wrong and the other man right.

These virtues are partly inherent and intuitive, but nourished by one’s environment of home, friends, teachers, and colleagues - and by the high tradition of science itself. But in days like these when the public importance of science and its popular esteem may turn some people’s heads, it is well that scientists should remember two things - that these virtues are not at all their unique possession, but that other callings demand them just as insistently - and that the prestige of science is not their personal property, but a sacred trust which they have an obligation to pass on uncompromised to their successors. One cannot make people happy or virtuous by legislation; one cannot produce scientific discovery by planning. Laws and plans are indeed necessary, but they are futile without the moral impulses and restraints that govern the behaviour of any healthy community of men. As citizens scientists have the same moral obligations as others. And as citizens of the world it is up to them to look critically at their own actions whether as citizens or as scientists. It is quite impossible to lay down general rules of conduct governing human behaviour, whether of citizens or of scientists, or of any sort of specialist; but one can be sure that general happiness and healthy development are possible only if people make a habit of examining their consciences and actions and recognize explicitly the need for an ethical basis of their conduct.

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(64) SCIENTISTS AND MORALS

The following article, written at the Editor's request, appeared in the Sunday Times on 5 December 1954. As expected, a mixed bag of correspondence followed. The best was a letter from a lady, addressed to my home: "I am glad that I know nothing of you personally, as you may be quite a pleasant old gentleman to meet, and did I know you I might be less outspoken - from a foolish reluctance to (possibly) hurting your feelings." Months later a well known propagandist for unlimited human fertility (X.X.) wrote an article in the Sundav Times denouncing the part of my article that referred to world population. I was in New York at the time, and heard of X.X.'s article on the day when I was having lunch with Fairfield Osborn and his colleagues of the Conservation Foundation. I told Osborn about it; he rose at once to his feet, shook me warmly by the hand, drank my health and said that this was the best thing he had ever heard about me (we had known each other for forty-four years). Osborn's opinion about X.X. was that he was a fatuous ass who had been granted a revelation, so that nothing could cure him except death. Mine was the same and I knew it would be useless to answer him. The Sunday Times article: Concern is widely expressed today about the ethical implications of scientific research. But it is not science itself that is really the object of concern, except by those who want a whipping-boy; the trouble rather is about the social, political and military effects of its wholesale application to practical affairs. Every new discovery in science, every new invention or improvement in technology, is liable to promote another one. If each new element in the series were smaller than its predecessor, the progress of discovery would slow down and knowledge and its applications would be stabilized: but if each is followed by a greater the process continually expands, and in the absence of adequate control either ends explosively when the system is overstrained (or someone throws a spanner in the works) or slackens off when all available material is used up. If the former does not happen the latter certainly will. The anxiety now widely felt about the world situation is largely due to the fear, often unconscious or inarticulate, that the chain reaction of scientific, technological and industrial development, which mankind is following now with such enthusiasm, is getting out of control and will end in major disaster. Apart from human judgment of what is good or bad, there is nothing inherent in the process itself to act as a controlling mechanism. The whole world is feverishly pursuing the aim of increasing national prestige, welfare, comfort and security by replacing traditional practices by those of engineering and largescale industry: while all the time world population is rapidly and alarmingly increasing. But the resources of the earth in food, soil, water, energy, metals, chemicals, and a dozen other necessities of the new progress, are 166 not unlimited: and, as more and more people reach the higher standards of living which are widely regarded as a natural right, the readily accessible raw materials will become scarcer and scarcer. Substitutes will be found for many of them, but it is not a law of nature, or of economics, that supplies of everything will necessarily hold out, however much we use and however many of us there are. We are far too liable to quarrel about them as they run short; and sooner or later some control or restraint will be vital. Without it the struggle for resources, of "haves" against "have nots", egged on by political exploitation of poverty, jealousy or ambition, may land the world in general chaos: we have been near it already. The present kind of progress depends on a relative plenty of raw materials. By expending them now we may possibly learn to base our technology on other less limited resources (such as sea-water and sunlight) whose large-scale utilisation needs more knowledge and plant than we have today. But if a new and better chaos erupts when the readily available materials have been largely exhausted, there may be no recovery at all of our present kind of civilisation. It cannot be emphasised too often that no automatic governor exists in our current system: no limit to scientific discovery is in sight, no end of technical application. Some form of human control is essential. But a totalitarian order of dictatorship for the whole world, even were it achieved without the calamity of a third world war, could not work for long, except by the continual and wholesale liquidation of all courageous and independent- minded people: which would lead to a gross depreciation of human values and a rapid degeneration of the race. The only possible control, therefore, is the moral one, based on the corporate sense of ordinary men of what is fair and decent, or bad and unjust.

It is no good asking the scientists alone to provide such ethical control, or the technologists. It is useless to demand that nuclear energy should not be developed, lest its products be used for bombs. It is senseless to argue that should be stopped for fear of biological warfare; that public health should not be advanced, because it will lead to overpopulation and famine; that control of human fertility should not be sought, if that offends some people on religious grounds; or that communications should not be improved, because they allow the spread of propaganda and disorder. Research and its applications will certainly continue. The scientists, it is true, can help by insisting on a high standard of integrity in their own work, by taking the trouble to explain it to the public in plain words, by working towards the goal of making scientific discovery freely available to all and by promoting the fullest international co-operation in research. But the future welfare of mankind does not depend to any special degree on the morals of scientists and engineers, it rests on the morals of mankind as a whole; and that is a matter for ethics and religion, not for science. In promoting scientific knowledge, and its practical application in world-wide industrialisation, mankind has embarked on a great adventure altogether new in history; and the scientists and technologists, for good and for evil, have discovered the principles, made the tools and pointed out the way. In no orderly fashion can our steps be now retraced. With wisdom and generosity all may go well, and the full resources of nature be 167 made available for the benefit of mankind, in peace and freedom everywhere. But it may be that moral control will be lacking and that the chain reaction now in vigorous operation will end, sooner rather than later, in unprecedented disaster. In principle, by known methods so far as science and technology themselves are concerned, that disaster can be avoided: there can be enough for all if only men are neighbourly - and reasonable in fertility as well as exploitation. The question is, whether the moral sense of human beings will be strong enough to take charge of the machine they have created, and whether the methods and sacrifices needed will be acceptable to the controlling groups of mankind. To understand the nature of a problem, and to state it clearly, is to go a long way towards solving it. It may not be easy, or agreeable, to recognise what is happening, but people of good will ought to try. To proceed carelessly on our way, to imagine selfishly and complacently that such things never happen to us, is to invite such things to happen - to our children if not to ourselves. This is not a matter for the next million years, but for the next fifty.

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(65) THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF SCIENTISTS IN MODERN SOCIETY

On Sunday 17 February, 1946, the Association of Scientific Workers (A.Sc.W.) held a meeting to discuss the responsibilities of scientists; and I was invited to take the Chair and to make some introductory remarks. I was not a member of the Association, indeed I had strongly disapproved of some of its activities - before, and in the early days of, the war. Defining politics as "the art and science of government" I was all in favour of bringing more science into politics; but all against bringing party politics (quite another ratter) into science. And when party politics led people to say, deliberately, what was not true I had no patience with them. Still the war had ended six months earlier, and the invitation of the A.Sc.W. seemed to suggest letting bygones be bygones. So I agreed... The problem we are here to discuss this morning is far from being a new one. Seventeen hundred years ago there crystallized out, from many centuries of discussion and experience of the moral basis and ethical necessities of medicine, the so-called Hippocratic Oath. May I remind you of it by reading a few sentences; this being Sunday morninq they can be regarded as the text for a sermon : The regimen I adopt shall be for the benefit of my patients according to my ability and judgement, and not for their hurt or for any wrong. I will give no deadly drugs to any, though it be asked of me, nor will I counsel such.... Whatsoever house I enter, there will I go for the benefit of the sick, refraining from all wrong doing or corruption, and especially from any act of seduction... Whatsoever things I see or hear concerning the life of men, in my attendance on the sick or even apart therefrom, which ought not to be noised abroad I will keep silence thereon, counting such things to be as sacred secrets. Pure and holy will I keep my life and my art.

Of Hippocrates himself, who lived many hundreds of years earlier, we know little for certain, but as Charles Singer wrote of him :— Learned, observant, humane, with a profound reverence for the claims of his patients, but possessed of an over-mastering desire that his experience should benefit others; orderly and calm; anxious to record his knowledge for the use of his brother physicians and for the relief of suffering; grave, thoughtful and reticent; clear of mind and master of his passions... . While the philosophers developed the conception of a rational world, it was the physician, typified by Hippocrates, who first put it to the test of experience. It was they (the physicians) who first consciously adopted the scientific process which, in relation to medicine, is called the Hippocratic Method." Without an ethical basis to medicine civilisation itself, as we know it, would be pretty, well impossible. The influence and extent today of the national and international agencies described under the title of the Red Cross show how potent still, in spite of , is its moral background. Medicine was the first and remains the most difficult of all the natural sciences, the mother of many of them; and it is surely of extreme significance that tradition has attached to the SAME name the Hippocratic Oath and the Hippocratic Method - the ethical injunction on the one hand, the scientific claim to decide by observation and 169 experience on the other. Medicine in fact has been built up on a joint tradition of scientific method and moral value, incarnated and idealized in a single human personality. The other sciences lag many centuries behind medicine in the ethical approach of their practitioners to their job: one purpose of our discussion today – perhaps the chief purpose- is to see whether anything more can be done about it. There was a time when science and learning were accepted as a natural bond between nations often otherwise not on speaking terms; they might still be so if scientists in all countries would, or perhaps could, insist on collaboration and on maintaining a common ethical standard for their calling. Failing that, one can foresee the time when scientific discovery and invention may provide, instead, one of the chief stumbling blocks to international co-operation and the chief means for mutual destruction. If standards of truthfulness, frankness and integrity are relaxed, either for political motive‚ or for private ambition and gain: if fraud, dishonesty and self-deception are not denounced, if mistakes are not honestly acknowledged and corrected, if propaganda is accepted in place of fact : if the common prestige and good-will of science are prostituted for base, sectional or selfish purpose: if secrecy - or secretiveness - is accepted AS a normal condition of scientific work : if age, prestige, authority, if race or nationality, is allowed to hinder freedom of intercourse, or equality and interchange of ideas, between scientists of honesty and goodwill anywhere in the world: if finally there is widespread failure to recognize an unbreakable obligation - as it should be - that the benefits of scientific discovery must be regarded as a sacred trust for mankind: THEN, science itself may become impossible as a calling for free, honest and decent men, while its exploitation for sectional gain, or national aggrandizement, may lead to conflict and destruction instead of co-operation and welfare. It took hundreds of years for a common standard of medical ethics to emerge; we can hardly expect a common standard of scientific ethics to appear ready-made. All kinds of difficulties will be evident; partly from political barriers and, lack of freedom. of intercourse and discussion, partly from scientists themselves who are - many of them - pretty peculiar animals to steer in a common direction; but not least from the big bosses who look upon science as a purchase able commodity and scientists as back-room-boys to be kept in their proper place. But the matter is urgent and these are critical times, and a clear and unambiguous statement of the problem may help - as it helps any scientific problem - towards its solution. There is no suggestion - at least I make none - that scientific men as such need feel any obligation to spend their time directly in political, social or economic affairs; they have their own specific contribution to make to public and international welfare, and their experience in natural science gives them no special qualification for politics, sociology or economics. Indeed - and I speak with some experience - a dislike of misrepresentation, and of compromise with the truth, makes them usually pretty inefficient politicians. Like other citizens they have their political rights and social duties; but they exercise those not as scientists but as citizens. As scientists, however, they have the right, AND the duty, to question and discuss the nature of their own calling and its special contribution to national and international welfare. They SHOULD feel an honorable and unbreakable obligation to keep the scientific faith of frankness, honesty and integrity; to 170 avoid secrecy and secretiveness as conditions of their work; to treat all honest scientific men anywhere as co-workers in a common cause; not to exploit the common property of science for base or selfish ends; and to refuse conditions of employment, or advancement, however otherwise attractive, which do not meet the ethical requirements of one of the most important common interests of mankind. I would add one further duty : namely to refuse- to co-operate in tasks in which they, or their representatives, are not allowed a reasonable share or partnership in the responsibility of deciding on the purpose, or the policy, or the probable outcome, of their work. To a cynical observer of the recent behaviour of HOMO SAPIENS these moral reflections may sound naive: and I admit I often feel sceptical myself about the outcome. But there seems to be no alternative; we scientists throughout the world must take the initiative in these matters, otherwise we and civilisation will perish together. The world at present is infected with partisanship, - mistrust, fear, political conjuring and the witchcraft of words and phrases; the common lot of mankind will never be raised by such devices of expediency as these, a common motive of personal morality end co-operation is required. That motive, we scientists having faith in our methods and ideals, can help to provide. No grandiose plan for conducting an international scientific orchestra is wanted: that would certainly play out of tune and out of time - if indeed it played at all ! We must build patiently on existing foundations - or, as a better metaphor, we must tend and care for the living organism of those friendly international relations in science which already exist. The need is not for working drawings of new machinery; living organisms do not grow to maturity that way. What is needed rather is the inspiration of a sensible ideal, a common international interest, a common standard of ethical behaviour, a common refusal to sacrifice or exploit a universal good for a temporary or sectional advantage. How we can achieve it only the future can show —but surely it is worth trying. It will not make headlines in the papers: immorality alas not morality, is 'news'. Those who farcy themselves as hardboiled realists, may deride us and our principles. But the truest form of reality is to recognise that human well-being, indeed of the continued existence of human society, depends far more on improvement of morality, honesty and reasonableness than on inventions of machinery or organisation. We scientsts, few and insignificant as we may be, have provided mankind with the knowledge and the tools, physical and biological, EITHER for mutual destruction and elimination, OR for improvements in health, welfare and happiness beyond all previous experience. Let us try to supply also, by our example, a common standard of ethical behaviour, and of courageous insistence on collaboration; so that mankind can then decide, with its eyes open, which of those alternatives of destruction or well—being to choose. (This talk was printed in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, 15 March, 1946)

(66) INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS BETWEEN SCIENTIFIC MEN.

171

On 4 December 1945 the Executive Committee of the International Council of Scientific Unions (I.C.S.U.) met again after six years of war. It was my pleasant duty as Foreign Secretary to welcome them in the rooms of the Royal Society in London. An account of what I said somehow reached Romania then occupied by Russian troops; and a beautiful letter signed by about fifty Romanian scientists and medical men was posted to me from Bucharest on 16 April 1946. It reached me in London on 2 May. It ran: To Mr. Professor A.V. Hill, Royal Society London Bucharest Romania

We have been fortunate enough to learn accidentally just now, the proposal you submitted to the members of the Royal Society, concerning the fraternisation of all man of science...

We perfectly agree with you, that the isolation of scientists has been a great mistake. Therefore words are lacking us, to elogiate in due terms your noble initiative to which we adhere with enthusiasm. We, who are belonging to small countries, were most interested in such am action long ago; but for reasons that are easy to be understood we would have missed any chance of success.... We remain, Sir, Yours faithfully. (signed) V.Gomoiu

Doctor Gomoiu (Victor), surgeon. Honorary member of the Royal Society of Medicine (Londen). President of the International Society of History of Medicine (Paris) Member of the Academy of Medicine, and of the Science Academies of Madrid, Rome, Ferrara, Halle. Vice-President of the Science Academy of Romania. President of the College of doctors of Romania. Ex-Minister of health and social assurance, etc.,

Forty-eight other signatures followed of which thirteen gave detailed descriptions like Gomoiu’s. I doubt whether those who wrote me in 1946 ever saw an authentic copy of my address of welcome to I.C.S.U. in 1945. Nothing was circulated at the time. But someone present may have talked to the Press, for in June 1946 the only one of the signatories whom I knew personally, G.T. Pops, wrote me himself and referred to a report in a Romanian newspaper. Romania in 1946 was a member of I.C.S.U., and of four of its 172

Unions, so its scientists may have had contact with people who were present at the London meeting. Later its membership lapsed, but then was taken up again with membership also of twelve out of sixteen Unions. My address itself is not worth repeating:. But its message somehow reached a group of people who had been isolated for years, who were struggling against every kind of difficulty under foreign occupation, and were longing to regain the contact s they had had before 1939. In the fourteen descriptions of these people it is significant that their connections were emphasized with many learned societies in Paris, Madrid, Rome, London, Ferrara, Halle and The Hague. But their troubles were not over, as is shown by the fact that Romanian membership of I.C.S.U. was not recorded between 1949 and 1957. Moreover my friend Popa, who had signed the letter in 1946, wrote me again in May 1947 very sadly as follows:

I write you now in an altogether different situation. Since one month I am a fugitive, followed up everywhere by the political police. Lately, probably as an answer to the high principles of liberty and justice proclaimed by the international conferences (!), our government, inspired from elsewhere, started a great number of arrests throughout the country. New concentration camps were organized and without any regular form people are put in jail under terrible conditions. I am not a member of any political party but I am a real democrat, in the occidental sense. Besides, I am a decided friend of English and American peoples with whom I made my education. Lately I gave a public lecture with a subject inspired by a clerical society. The subject was: "Is it still possible to believe in Jesus Christ?" In this lecture I was for the return to the Christian morale and against the morals of recent dictatorships. I have criticized the class war and the marxism. For this reason they want to put me in jail and probably they will expel me from the university. In this situation I addressed myself to the Rockefeller Foundation asking for a fellowship for me and my wife, possibly I could work in America or in England. Probably the political terror in Romania shall not be too long, but who knows? Meanwhile I would like to work. If you answer me please do it through the "British Mission" in Bucharest not directly to me. That is the last I ever heard from, or about, my poor friend. There was nothing I could do. A letter I sent recently inquiring about him, to the Romanian Academy (of which in 1965 I was elected an honorary member) produced only the reply that he "unfortunately died". The reticence Of this reply may have indicated fears of suffering the fate of Czechoslovakia in 1968. [ handwritten: Or ought I have gone myself to Romania to try to release him?] 173

(67) SCIENCE AND HUMANITY

Early in 1958 the BBC arranged a weekly series of seven sound broadcasts to Asia under the title "Science and Humanity". We were two physiologists, a neurologist, a medical research scientist, an authority on public health and a geneticist. I had to start the series off and spoke as follows: "Science and Humanity"; there's a deliberate multiplicity of meaning about this title: Science and mankind, Science and human nature, Or Science for humane purposes. In the talks that follow, you'll find your speakers slipping from one meaning to another: and that's intended, for there's a multiplicity about man himself: biological, social, moral, intellectual and aesthetic; and we're setting out to discuss the impact of science on man as a whole. Of the greatness of that impact there can't be any question- but -we mustn't exaggerate it. To hear some people talk you'd imagine that before long science was going to dominate everything in the world - including man himself. What a dreadful prospect! But is human nature, evolved by trial and error, step by step over millions of years, really going to be changed so quickly? Are all the qualities of imagination and idealism, and the yearning for freedom, going to be eradicated in the super-scientific beehive of tomorrow? Won't men and women still be guided mainly by their feelings, not their logic, believing what they want to believe, doing - often against their better interest- what fashion or sentiment dictate? What is changing isn't man himself, but the world of machinery and technical organisation in which he lives and that's due to the work of engineers and manufacturers, based on scientific discovery. There's nothing new about this, except the speed at which it's now happening. FIRE, the most important of all scientific discoveries, has been known since early palaeolithic times, and it has allowed mankind not only to expand over the whole earth, but gradually to exploit nearly all the materials of which the earth's made up. Civilisation itself is founded on tools and inventions of all kinds. But the vast increase in speed of technological change prompts one to ask the anxious question : is this a chain reaction which man, who alters only very slowly, won't in the end be able to control ? Will the machine itself take charge? And what'll happen to man himself? Science itself is a much less glamorous and alarming affair than the machines and industries, the gadgets and weapons that come from its discoveries. It deals with man- made knowledge of the natural world, including ourselves, and with ideas based on that knowledge. But knowledge and ideas can be much more potent in the end than all the gadgets and machines, once they get fixed in people's heads. The trouble is to get them there without distortion ; we know only too well how strangely knowledge can be perverted, how Hitler's pseudo-scientific myths permeated the minds of the best educated nation in the world - with terrible results. But already some of the good ideas of science do affect the common outlook; man isn't any longer the self-important centre of the universe, but part of living evolving nature; his inheritance is governed by rules we're beginning to understand; 174 there's no genetic basis for wild ideas about racial superiority, as equally there's none, except in a moral and legal sense, for the doctrine that all men are born equal; disease isn't due any more to evil spirits, it isn't a sign of God's displeasure, but a condition that can be understood. But, above all else perhaps, people are beginning to develop a confidence in man's own powers to control his surroundings, to avoid or mitigate famine and disaster, to improve his lot, to look the future in the face. Whether that confidence is justified, only the future can tell: but unless free men can learn to control their own behaviour, against the promptings of selfishness and jealousy, and the distortions of propaganda and lies, the machine they've created may take charge. The most evident effects of applied science lie in transport and communications. These have opened up the earth to movements of persons, goods and ideas, until people everywhere are becoming, whether we like it or not, each other’s neighbours. A very different, but just as important, effect of science is seldom realised: that is the overwhelming results achieved by research in infectious disease; not only in improving and lengthening life everywhere, but also in opening many parts of the world to healthy habitation. This is one of the greatest of human achievements, and one that's wholly beneficent. But solving one problem generally provides another, and death control by measures of public health is leading straight to a vast increase of population in many parts of the world which makes it difficult to maintain even the present inadequate standards of nutrition and welfare. Death control, in fact, has led to the absolute necessity of birth control ; which is partly a matter for science, but mainly of social and moral custom. It has stressed also the urgency of improving agriculture, by better methods and machinery, by better breeds of animals and crops, by land and water conservations; and these must be linked with new sources of nutrition and with changing the food habits of enormous groups of rather conservative people. The new kind of civilisation, due to applied science, is coming on us very, very quickly: it's bound to provide new strains and stresses on the men and women who've got to operate it'. In newly developing countries, many people will have to adjust themselves in decades to changes which have taken place elsewhere, more gradually, in centuries. The speakers who follow will deal with various aspects of man's attempt to fit himself to these new conditions. What stresses will they impose on mind and nervous system? What bodily adaptations will be needed to new ways of life and work ? What medical and other hazards will these new ways provide? What modifications may take place gradually, or not so gradually, in man's inherited characters? How rapidly can new knowledge be assimilated, without losing what's good in the old traditions? In meeting this new challenge, all the various implications of our title, "Science and Humanity", will be involved. But before launching the other speakers off, each with his tentative answer to one or other of these special problems, I want to say something that they'd all like me to say : to urge that science is fundamentally a thing of the mind, worthy of cultivation for its own sake. In this sense science is akin to literature and the arts; only it's even more catholic than they are, for its final court of appeal isn't personal taste or public opinion, but nature itself. Many of the most potent influences in human history haven't been directly concerned with "welfare" in the ordinary sense; they've been moral, or intellectual, or aesthetic. Science, in the integrity of its search for truth, in the delight it brings in discovering the wonders and 175 consistencies of nature has these same qualities. The practical applications of science quite naturally are what get most of the public recognition and applause - and sometimes blame! But the true scientist is also a philosopher, a lover of wisdom for its own sake; and happy as he'll be, as a human being, when his discoveries lead to other people's welfare, he gets his greatest joy as a scientist from something else: from confirming his faith in the consistency of nature, from finding out why things work as they do. But pure science is the basis of *applied science, which is what we're going to talk about. The usual meaning of applied science is engineering and technology. The talks that'll follow in later weeks, have a more ambitious aim. They'll deal with science applied not to man's environment but to man himself. [In the autumn of 1936, 22 years earlier, a series of sound broadcasts had been given by six scientists, and I was invited to provide a summary and commentary at the end. .That series was called The Humanity of Science, a title similar to the one of 1958; but the context was different. It was published in The Listener on 30 December 1936]

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(68) THE NEED FOR MORAL AND INTELLECTUAL LEADERSHIP.

On 21 July 1946, about a year after the war was over, a meeting was held in the rooms of the Royal Society, to commemorate the twenty-first anniversary of the British Institute of Philosophy. The President of the Institute was Viscount Samuel 1870- 1963) and he gave the first address. All his life, in spite of multifarious activities, political and other, Herbert Samuel had maintained his zeal for philosophy. But he regarded the natural sciences as akin to philosophy, and had himself been President of the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee, the activities of which were certainly mainly practical. He had asked me to follow him.

(I have not transcribed Viscount Samuel’s speech, but only that by A.V. Hill) The purpose of-this birthday celebration of the British Institute of Philosophy is to emphasize the need in the world today for intellectual and moral leadership of the kind which Lord Samuel, your President for fifteen years, has always aimed, and so successfully to give. But what do we mean by leadership?. We had better be clear. The word "democracy" has been abused and exploited so much of late for purposes of propaganda that it has almost ceased to have any intelligent meaning: it has become a vehicle for the called “argument by epithet," for the expression of political emotion of every shade. If it still has meaning I hope it continues to imply leadership by men who have risen spontaneously from the people, whose rare qualities fall within the statistical distribution of those of ordinary folk. This is supposed to be the day of the average man. "There ain't no such animal," but the delusion that there is is widespread and dangerous. It is imagined for example that America or England can be described in terms of 140 million average Americans or 40 million average Englishmen: the truth is of course that there is every kind of American and every kind of Englishman, with abilities and qualities, rare or common, in different numbers and proportions, according to a statistical distribution curve. The net result is not determined by the average, but largely by those who are far from the average, acting within a society of individuals distributed in a particular way. In a reacting chemical mixture if all the molecules were always the same in constitution, energy and reactiveness, then either there would be an instantaneous explosion or nothing would happen at all. Reactions take place when certain kinds of molecules, in an exceptional or excited state meet others in a similar condition. So it is in human society. It is the peculiar individuals thrown up from time to time who start the various reactions; their genetic constitution determines their latent peculiarities; their own particular experience, and the state of society at the moment, together determine whether those peculiarities shall react with others, and their environment, to produce significant change. In an artificial society of closely inbred white mice almost as alike as pure chemical substances, important changes would be very very slow. Human society consists of people with all kinds of qualities and capacities, and in the complex make-up of almost every 177 human being there are potential peculiarities which could, in appropriate circumstances, produce unusual effects. For the majority however, these circumstances are so unlikely to occur that their potentialities for good or bad (and we must not suppose that all change is good!) remain latent. In the main human society alters because of the initial reactiveness of quite a small proportion of its members, not because of general bulk initiative. The effect; of that reactiveness depends, it is true, on the nature of the social medium in which it exists, and that is conditioned by the statistical distribution of the human characteristics and experience of its members. But at any given moment initiative must come, not from the many but the few. Reactions in human society are unlike those in chemical mixtures, or even in colonies of animals, because of the incidence of reason. Those of you who know Wilfred Trotter's essay, "Has the intellect a function?" may agree that reason plays only a small part in general human affairs; but even Trotter admitted that it plays some. In a system governed otherwise by emotion and chance, reason may cause reactions to go in improbable ways. To take a physical analogy, reason by producing consistency and agreement may decrease, instead of increasing, the entropy, the state of randomness or disorder, of human society; may save it from the uniformity of chaos to which all systems, in the absence of intelligent choice, are bound to tend. But reason alone cannot ensure progress or even stability: employed by clever, wicked men for their own ends it may produce mistrust and hatred, conflict and disorder. Scientific invention and discovery, for example, are necessary to human progress: but used without ethical restraint they can propagate fear and facilitate destruction. Some factor additional to reason is necessary if the human race, or at least if civilized man, is to survive. The state of the world today is peculiarly favourable to changes of every kind; for good or ill, all sorts of reactions are going on. Unguided both by reason and by ethics, the result is pretty certain to be chaos and misery, from which recovery will be long and painful. The majority of mankind, for the greater part of their time, do not reason very much except about details of their personal affairs; nor do they worry over-much about moral principles, except in relation to their close environment or personal experience. They will respond to leadership; but the leadership if it is to be effective must appeal for the most part to their feelings rather than their reason. That indeed is the difficulty; it is illustrated by the common meaning of the the word "demagogue." The problem, therefore, is to find leaders who, basing their policy on reason and morality, are capable nevertheless, of appealing enough to the feelings of their fellow citizens to cause those to follow. Without morality, that may lead merely to propaganda, getting people to behave in some regular and desired way, not for reasons they understand but because of fear, hatred, jealousy or desire. The kind of leadership we are discussing today is based on ethical principles and a belief in the dignity and worth of human individuals; it will seek to appeal not only to the emotional side of men's nature (which is always necessary, because 80 per cent. or so of human action is certain to be based on emotion) but also to the moral sense; and so far as possible not only to these but to reason. In the present high reactiveness, one may even say explosiveness, of world society, far-reaching changes are pretty certain to occur. These may lead either to misery and 178 disorder (indeed they are bound to, if reason and morality do not combine to guide the way) or to advances in individual and public welfare, and in international co-operation, such as have never yet been realized. The English language is fortunate in having a word "reasonable", which gives the sense of an appropriate mixture of the intellectually and morally desirable. To the quality of reasonableness, however, must be added courage, after all, virtue originally meant that; without reasonable and courageous leadership the present reactions of world society may very well end in general and perhaps in permanent breakdown and disorder. (end page 372)

(69) I THE SCIENCES AS AN INTEGRAL PART OF GENERAL HISTORICAL STUDY (1931) and II THE PRICE OF PROGRESS (1971)

Part I THE SCIENCES AS AN INTEGRAL PART OF GENERAL HISTORICAL STUDY (1931) [a paper read to the International Congress held in London on the History of Science, 30 June 1931] It is one of my deep regrets that I am so ignorant of history. My excuse is that if history were presented in a different way to people with defects like mine, we might perhaps not be such incapable students. – Dr Charles Singer (1876—1960) in asking me to speak, wrote: “if we we can persuade historians that Newton was more important, both to England and the world, than Walpole, and Hales than the husband of Queen Anne, the campaign is effectively won." The campaign is against ignorance and pride: the ignorance and pride of otherwise educated people who do not realise that science is part of culture just as scientific discovery is a part of history; who do not understand that natural knowledge has changed not only the face of the earth but also the complexion of men’s minds, and that to know nothing about physical science and - worse - to have no acquaintance with biology is as disgraceful as to have learnt no foreign language or to be unaware of art and literature. The Thirty Years War was fought for reasons, partly religious, partly political, which seem very dim and ridiculous to-day. For many years Germany was the battleground of French, Spanish, Austrian and Swedish armies, which reduced the country to a state of misery that no historian has been able adequately to describe. In 1628, in the middle of that war, there was published in - though it was written in England - a little Latin quarto of 72 pages on "The motion of the heart and blood". Was history really made by Gustavus and Wallenstein, or by Harvey? 179

The futile wars between England and France In the fifteenth century are known to every schoolchild because of the romantic story of Joan of - what importance, however, have they in the story of mankind, as compared with a single technical advance of the same time? In 1445, to quote the history, "Suffolk achieved a great success by negotiating the marriage of Henry VI to Margaret of Anjou"; how magnificent does that success appear to- day when contrasted with the invention of printing and the humane and pleasant devices and improvements which led to it? In 1859 John Brown attacked Harper's Ferry, the first step, as it proved, in the American Civil War; in the same year Darwin published "The Origin of Species". As a result of the war a million men were killed, the Southern States were devastated and embittered for more than a generation, slavery was abolished a few years earlier than it would have been, and two most gallant and tragic figures, Lincoln and Lee, are left for the use of dramatists and authors, and the admiration and warning of posterity. Darwin, a simple, peaceable, kindly man, by his writings and his patient observation, changed the outlook of nearly the whole of civilized mankind. Which was the more important, the Alabama or the Beagle, and which receives the more generous mention in history? If history is to deal with human greatness, with things which have given man control of himself and his surroundings, that have relieved him, and can relieve him, of superstition, ignorance, ill-health, and incompetence in the face of natural forces, then Harvey, Darwin, Newton, Faraday, Maxwell, Pasteur and Rutherford, and their discoveries, deserve a more worthy place even in children's history books. At present not man's greatness, but his patient stupidity, his courageous folly, his selfishness, his intolerance, are what we emphasize; indeed , a French physiologist, urged that man's scientific designation should be changed from homo sapiens to homo stultus. Doubtless to realize man's folly is important, but need it be the chief lesson of history? How far does human progress depend upon the slow and continuous development of ideas, upon careful observation and laborious perfection of technical devices by common intelligent men; how far, on the other hand upon the genius of a few? A not unimportant question, one would think, for those concerned' with education. I once urged a distinguished historical colleague to attempt to answer it; he replied that he could see no possible means of finding out; ha obviously thought it of no interest. An old friend of mine in America is writing a History of Tolerance. Is the growth of tolerance more or less important than improvements in the Art of War? Are political frontiers and their frequent and violent readjustments, is the plague of artificial nationalism, of more interest than the biological conception of man and mankind? Was not the industrial revolution of the last century so absolutely determined by scientific discovery and invention that the causes of these, and their chief agents, are as worthy of mention as the political ideas and disturbances of the time and the politicians whom they made prominent? May not the development of transport and communication today, depending as it does on the work of engineers, physiologists, and - not least - bacteriologists, be of greater ultimate significance than the storm which broke loose in 1914? When man has learnt to control the gigantic forces of reproduction, when he has exploited the possibilities of improvement in hygiene and nutrition, when he has realized 180 that medical research is more important than aviation, and the synthesis of urea than the invention of gunpowder, will not a greater revolution have been achieved than that which the last few years have seen in Russia? Were Pasteur, Claude Bernard, and Mendel, are Hopkins, Sherrington and Morgan, and the ideas they represent, of more or lass significance than Cobden, Bismark, Disraeli, Trotsky and Lloyd George? I would not assert that they are, but I will not have it assumed without argument that they, and many far less famous, are not. Astronomical discovery from Galileo to Einstein has gradually produced a change so vast in man’s idea of the universe that it is difficult indeed to give it its full significance. Those revolutions in thought are not without effect - even in politics or law! A series of connected events, the invention of the hobby-horse, the bicycle and the pneumatic tyre, of the internal combustion engine, and so of the motor lorry and the aeroplane, were determining factors in the character and duration of the Great War of 1914-18. Bacteriology and parasitology are rendering vast tracts of the earth habitable; plant breeding, cold storage, the transport of food, the manufacture of artificial fertilizers, the recognition of vitamins and their importance, the hygiene of large industrial centre: these are making possible an increase of population, a concentration of population, and a movement of population which were regarded until recently as impossible. Plagues are recognised in history because of their dramatic intensity; what about the discoveries which are making plagues increasingly less probable? Civilizations have waxed and waned; how far was this due to the malaria mosquito, or to deficiencies of nutrition? Does a disbelief in the inheritance of acquired charactersi.affect our social and political views? If so, it is just as well to be sure that our disbelief is justified. Has knowledge of the mechanism of inheritance a bearing on the choice between aristocracy and socialism as forms of government? Have wars, by killing off the ablest and strongest, a calculable effect in diminishing the fitness of the race? The political and social problems of the next hundred years will depend partly upon physical and biological forces released by scientific invention, partly on psychological forces set free by scientific discovery and speculation. Already the biological concept of man as a co-operative living organism, comparable with the community of living cells and organs in the higher animals, is beginning to force itself though crude political nationalism and to express itself in international institutions and law. The physical forces released by scientific discovery are obvious enough; it is fashionable to acknowledge if not to understand them. The biological forces are stronger, but they require more intelligence to perceive. The mental forces are the strongest of all, but slower in their working and less obvious to unthinking people. Christianity should have prevented hatred and torture, vainglory and superstition, but it notoriously did not. Had it to wait for astronomy and to give men a due humility, for biology to provide a neighbourly feeling for other living things? Will the mental habit spread by an appeal to nature, the arbiter, finally eliminate intolerance, pride and unreason as things to be admired? Will the custom of co-operation in scientific research lead to a friendliness to which literature, art and religion should have led long ago but never did? Will social problems, problems of the betterment of the race, problems of sex and population, yield to 181 biology where they have failed to yield to religion ethics and philosophy? They may. If so, will the histories of the future continue to describe only the events, without reference to the underlying causes? That is what we must try to prevent. I cannot believe that, in the pageant of history, man is merely a puppet controlled by destiny beyond his reach. He is a fool - certainly: but he is not an imbecile, or an automaton. The forces that move him are forces of his own making, forces of feeling, belief and knowledge. Are these forces of less importance than the results they produce? Is not a study of these forces of more satisfying intellectual value - perhaps because it is more difficult - than a mere recording of their effects? And if these mental forces are largely due as some of us think - to scientific discovery, should not Discovery (and the men and changes that led to it) be given a more worthy place in our history books?

Part II THE PRICE OF PROGRESS (1971)

I was once paid a compliment which I liked very much - until I had thought more about it. The previous address (Part I) was given in 1931 when I had more faith in Progress than I have in 1971. In 1961 my friend Harold Himsworth, then secretary of the Medical Research Council, having read my book The Ethical Dilemma of Science, , wrote me very kindly quoting a saying which he attributed (wrongly) to John Stewart Mill (1806- 1873), that the price of liberty is unremitting vigilance. He said that I could claim that the price of progress is unremitting integrity.

In 1971 I found Himsworth’s letter in my file and began to think about it again; the "unremitting integrity" gave me a lurking sense of arrogance, which I disliked, and I felt moreover that the present state of the world, social, industrial, political, moral, religious and international, may well indicate that the idea of Progress (other than purely technological progress) is an illusion. Can unremitting integrity really lead only to so miserable a result? Then I remembered that the most memorable event in the Congress of 1931 (Part I above) was that immediately after I had finished speaking four visitors from the U.S.S.R. who had been lurking around jumped up in prearranged order, like jack-in-the-boxes, to tell us their good tidings - that Marxism, not science, would determine future history. To me, in 1931, that seemed to be nonsense; but in 1971 I can believe almost anything, even that the price of progress is unremitting Marxism. Is that due to old age? Is it not rather the current jargon of many of the youth of to-day?

(70) LET HIS CHILDREN BE FATHERLESS

Between 1912 and 1914, believe it or not, I was Junior Dean of Trinity College, Cambridge. It was a queer job and after a year and a half I decided that I could not bear it 182 any longer. I was not really a radical then; but could not stomach such nonsense as was circulated to undergraduates, and posted on the screens: e.g. undergraduate members of the College are expected to attend the Chapel Services twice on Sundays and twice on week-days. Nobody expected anything of the kind, except by a misuse of the English language. And it was my supposed duty to invite undergraduates to come and see me to explain why this alleged expectation had not been fulfilled. One of them gave a simple explanation; he was, he said, a Scotsman. When I was appointed I got an amusing letter from G.H. Hardy telling me that if I saw the minutes of the Council, when it appointed me, I would find that he voted against me (in a minority of one) and asked for his vote to be recorded. In this, he wrote, he was not expressing disapproval of me, only of the job itself. I did not see the Council minutes, but should have expected him to vote against me anyhow for some reason or other. We seldom agreed, though we did once sign a suggestion together that the College should use metal filament lamps in the lavatories instead of carbon filaments. He pretended he was a radical, but helped to organise a vote in favour of retaining compulsory Greek in the Little-Go.(The examination for entrance to the university). I pretended to be a conservative, yet was actively concerned with getting chapel services reformed. We still could sing at the top of our voices there (or listen to the Choir singing) Psalm 109, referring to our enemies (this was before the First Great War): "Let his children be fatherless and his wife a widow." I gather that this Psalm is no longer regarded with favour, except by the I.R.A.

Anyhow we tried to reform the Chapel Services, with complete lack of success. The Master pointed out that many old members of the College were sending their sons there with the hope and expectation that they would receive the full benefits of the Church of England - including, presumably, that of cursing their enemies in verse. I have failed in many of my ventures, but never so completely as in trying to reform the Chapel Services at Trinity. "Let his children be continually vagabonds and beg." Thus Christianity in 1912-14. It must be admitted that in 1912, in spite of the "expectation" mentioned, no sanctions were applied to those who did not go to chapel. In 1838, according to J.W. Clark*, things were very different. The Governing Body of the College had laid down that undergraduates and scholars must attend chapel at least eight times in every week; if, after three admonitions, anyone continued to disobey this rule he was to be removed from the College. Thereupon a number of undergraduates enrolled themselves as "The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Undergraduates" (S.P.C.U.): one or more of their number attended every chapel service and noted the attendance of the Fellows. The results were published in a weekly paper which circulated in Cambridge and London and found its way 183 into London Clubs; a Prize was offered and lists were announced in four Classes. A future Bishop of received tne prize. * "Cambridge", 1908, Seeley and Co., Ltd., London; pp. 294-8.

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(71) BIOLOGY OR THEOLOGY

A hundred years ago there was a prolonged dispute between biologists and theologians about evolution. That silly struggle is now over. But another, related to it, rages today about the so-called "sanctity" of human life. There are many who believe that men and women, and even fertilized ova, possess some peculiar metaphysical property, which they call a "soul"; this seems to demand that their biological lives should be preserved, however miserable, sordid, or beastly, and whatever the expense and effort involved. Must the cost to the community, the misery to their friends and relatives, or the degradation of their guardians, warders, and fellow prisoners be tolerated, because they possess these "immortal" souls? Apart altogether from war, or the processes of maintaining "law and order", the community is prepared to accept risks of a much more ordinary kind that involve statistically the certainty that a very large number of ordinary people will be killed. Operations of engineering, building, manufacture, mining, motoring, seafaring, fishing (or even crossing the road to get to school, or to buy an ice-cream) involve statistically the certainty that a large number of fatal accidents will occur. But these are "acts of God" so they are accepted and nobody bothers except the relatives and dependants. But murderers, kidnappers, hi- jackers, and the like, are given a prison sentence of limited duration, involving the demoralization of milder offenders, and of warders, together with vast expense to the community. And people with incurable diseases, physical or mental, are kept alive against their will (if they have any) at great expense to the medical services which had better apply their efforts to patients who need them more.

To the biologist this looks like nonsense; to theologians and to many ordinary sensible people it seems an inevitable consequence of our common humanity. But there is potentially an unlimited supply of decent ordinary people, why not spend some of this futile effort on them instead? Many of them need it. There are daily accounts in the papers of sexual assaults on children and young women. If these are not associated with murder, as in fact they often are, the obvious treatment is not a few years prison, but castration (not vasectomy). That, after a shorter term in prison, would largely remove the impulse to a repetition of the crime. If it is associated with murder, the simplest treatment would be carbon monoxide. The objection to hanging is that it is a barbarous procedure which inevitably attracts a flood of morbid public interest; this is inflamed by the Press and Television and has a demoralizing effect. If nobody else is willing to turn on the tap and let in the carbon monoxide to dispose of a man known with certainty to be guilty of the brutal murder of a child, I am perfectly ready to undertake the job. And I should not have a sleepless night afterwards if I thought it might save another child from barbarous assault. I am a biologist by long experience and interest. I have strong religious feeling, though not of a formal theological churchgoing kind. I think I have a reasonable quota of natural humanity. I have for many years thought deeply about war and know that in war, which is sometimes inevitable, men have to be sent to a pretty likely death. They accept it 185 usually in a high spirit, so equally do women when they are called. I doubt if most such men, and women, would dissent from what I have written, and I believe they are really a large majority of the community. [This was written two years before the current rather futile public discussion (1973) of capital punishment.]

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(72) I AM NOT A PESSIMIST, WHEN I EXPECT EVIL WHAT HAPPENS IS GENERALLY WORSE THAN I EXPECT. (G.M.Trevelyan to A.V.H.) I too am not a pessimist. The world has treated me very kindly. I have no reason to bear any living man a grudge. I have, and have had, many good friends. I have enjoyed doing most of the things I have done. If I have overworked sometimes no permanent harm has resulted. I have a lovely family, and friends who are very kind to me. What more could I want? The trouble is that I do not see any convincing reason why the human race should survive; which would be a pity. Most of them are good, kind, friendly people - some rather stupid, many a bit dishonest if they can get away with it, easily misled by a small proportion of crooks, cleverer, more plausible and ruthless than themselves. But now that a small minority have realized the effectiveness of guerrilla warfare against the rest of us, with no holds barred, it is becoming almost impossible by accepted methods to protect the decent majority. It would be easier, if we were not too sentimental, to adopt appropriate and more potent methods of prevention and retribution. But try to imagine the howls of anguish from the sentimental left if they were seriously proposed - in the name of human rights and freedom! Kidnapping, with intent to obtain ransom by threat of murder, could be made a capital offence; it would be if human life, however brutal and beastly, were not regarded as sacred - I write as a biologist, not a theologian. If the universities of the world are in future to be the target of student guerrillas, for whatever motive, and if the rest of us try to cope with these only by peaceful methods one can see education, learning and research relapsing, under threat of violence, into futility. Please dear reader do not suppose I think of all youthful enthusiasts as thugs and blackguards. They are, as to 95%, really decent sensible people who, if Hitler were suddenly resurrected, would cut off their extra hair, join the fighting services and behave as gallantly as their fathers and grandfathers before them. The trouble is that it might take them several years to realize the existence of an emergency, as it did in 1910 and 1935; and events to-day move so much faster that the assassins and the disaffected could gain control long before the sensible 95% had time to pull themselves together. That is why I am not an optimist about the future. If they had time to think it out the 95% would find a decent and reasonable answer. But they would not have time: one must prepare one's counter moves beforehand and stick to them.

Here is a flippant minor example from my own experiences, about 1920. Having observed dogs rushing dangerously at motor bicyclists, of whom I was then one, and being a physiologist, I worked out what I should do if attacked on my motor bike. I formed a primitive pattern of a reaction in my nervous system and and muscles, and rehearsed it in my mind, never really expecting it to be needed. But one day in the traffic of Stretford Rd, Manchester, on the way to the University, it happened just as I had imagined. The response worked instantly and beautifully, and the dog retired, head over heels, disillusioned. If the 187

95% of sensible young people would make up their minds beforehand how they would act in a sudden emergency, they would probably be able to cope; otherwise they will be the easy prey of the of revolutionaries and hoodlums who have made up their minds and thought it out. A pessimist (O.E.D.) is "one who habitually takes t e worst view of things". "Optimism", however, is defined as the disposition to hope for the best in all circumstances. There was an optimistic governess who when the weather was very bad said she was still thankful because it was better than no weather at all. She would have been a poor guide on how to deal with hijackers, or guerrillas, or student hooligans; or with the sentimental nihilists who think that the police (or the army) should not be called in to cope with violence. Well, that's that. I may be wrong, I hope I am. I hoped I would be after Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler in 1935; I often have been since, but not always. The trouble is that human affairs have a singular analogy to those of physics. It is so much easier to produce chaos and disorder, to wreck and destroy, than to build up reasonable order. Also an orderly system can so easily be crystallized into one in which human freedom and initiative are not permitted; where an original thinker is put into a mental hospital, or even (like N.I. Vavilov the geneticist) banished and finally eliminated, because he resisted Lysenko's nonsense! It is no good saying proudly and complacently that such things never happen to us.

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(73) SCEPTICISM AND FAITH. [Written by invitation for "Vox Collegii", the University College Magazine, December 1931; reprinted in "The Student", Edinburgh University, 10 May 1932. - E.D. (1960)]

It is a duty of all intelligent people continually to question, not seldom to disbelieve, what they are told. That is what one learns rather suddenly when one leaves school and enters a university. Even the laws of physics are not above reproactx,even professors and writers of books may be wrong, even young unlearned people may make important discoveries (they also may not I), even proverbs may be untrue. Scepticism, however, is not a sufficient index, or the sole duty, of an intelligent person: it must be balanced by some genuine enthusiasm. Disbelief alone leads to sterility, it must be examined just as critically as belief, its emotional basis must be sought. Those who disbelieve from ignorance and meanness are as many as those who believe from stupidity and laziness. Faith is not necessarily a sign of mental infirmity. Most men are fundamentally good and kind, some are far-seeing and wise. The problems of life, of medicine, of politics, of international relations, of economics, lack simple solutions not merely because of the stupidity and baseness of mankind. There are good reasons which you can find out if you try. It is safer to have faith without evidence than to doubt without cause. Criticism is the basis of scientific advance, of social and ethical progress: it is also the corner stone of intellectual honesty, of the conservatism which preserves as well as creates. To be uncritical, particularly of oneself and one’s ideas and motives, is the first long step towards dishonesty. Much criticism, however, is mean, mean indeed in its ancient sense of wicked. It is mean to pretend that politics is necessarily a "dirty game": to imagine that piety is always a pretence. It is mean to sneer at those who carry a heavier burden than one’s own. Let us laugh at, and - by good fortune - with, those from whom we differ: let us recognise, however, that they are probably neither criminal nor insane, that we also may be wrong. We come therefore to a university to learn, apart from our Chemistry or our English Literature, three things: to disbelieve: to discount our disbeliefs: and to develop an enthusiasm, a faith, for ourselves. Universities are staffed by queer people. Most of them could be making more money at other jobs, but because of their enthusiasm for strange things they remain in universities. "I am the most fortunate of men: I am paid for doing what I like best." How many others can say that? From such people we develop our own enthusiasms - and if we return later to join them in their quest, they regard that as their best reward. A few weeks ago a distinguished American physiologist, W.B.Cannon (1871- 1945), confided to the Royal College of Physicians how, reading as a boy the saying in Ecclesiastes, "Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days," he reflected "What an unappetizing meal!" Now after many years, as his pupils return, or when he sees what they have done, he rejoices in the discovery that the bread which he cast upon the waters has come back (as he says) in the form of buttered toast. 189

In the last few years there has been a harvest of books and lectures about the "Mysterious Universe". The inconceivable magnitudes with which astronomy deals produce a sense of awe which lends itself to poetic and philosophical treatment. "When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy hands, the and the stars, which thou hast ordained: what is man that thou art mindful of him?" The literary skill with which this branch of science has been exploited compels one’s admiration, but also, a little, one’s sense of the ridiculous. For other facts than those of astronomy, other disciplines than that of mathematics, can produce the same lively feelings of awe and reverence: the wealth and complexity, for example, of living things: the extraordinary fineness of their adjustments to the world outside: the amazing faculties of the human mind, of which we know neither whence it comes nor whither it goes. In some fortunate people this reverence is produced by the natural beauty of a landscape, by the majesty of an ancient building, by the heroism of a rescue party, by poetry, or by music. God is doubtless a Mathematician, but he is also a Physiologist, an Engineer, a Mother, an Architect, a Coal Miner, a Poet, and a Gardener. Each of us views things in his own peculiar way, each clothes the Creator in a manner which fits into his own scheme. My God, for instance, among his other professions, is an Inventor: I picture him inventing water, carbon dioxide and haemoglobin, crabs, frogs, and cuttlefish, whales and filter-passing organisms (in the ratio 1023 to 1 in size), and rejoicing greatly over these weird and ingenious things, just as I rejoice when I devise some simple bit of apparatus. But I would not urge that God is only an Inventor: for inventors are apt/ to be very dull dogs. Indeed, I should be inclined rather to imagine God to be like a University, with all its teachers and professors together: not omitting the students, for he obviously possesses, judging from his inventions, that noblest human characteristic, a sense of humour.

This College, like other colleges and universities (for apart from the name it is really a university) is a place where criticism and belief, scepticism and enthusiasm, clash; where new ideas are brought to birth by contact of mind with mind and feeling with feeling. We come to argue and strive with one another, just as much as to struggle with apparatus and books. Knowledge is divided into its great compartments, not because of the very nature of things, but by reason of human limitations and the requirements of human organization. Very often the most fertile fields of activity are those which lie across the boundaries of existing subjects. Do not imagine that by sticking too strictly to your proper job you are really doing all that is in you. It is only stupid people who cannot do more than one thing well. This, however, is dangerous doctrine; for the last thing I would urge is that he or she, who does half a dozen things badly is better than one who does a single thing even moderately well. First learn to do one thing well, and the others will be added unto you. Be as dull as is necessary in your devotion to an object, until you have made yourself its master - then, and not till then, give yourself time to look round and survey the world anew. Do not be afraid to overwork when the occasion needs: but do not be ashamed to take food and spiritual refreshment when you have the chance. The human machine was designed for a considerable overload - but not for all the time. And remember that the directing force is not simply an intellectual one: feeling, emotion, religion, sentiment, name it as you will, are what ultimately direct one’s activities: and these are refreshed and purified in the 190 intervals between going "all out". You are no good at all if you can do nothing peculiarly well: you are worth ten men if you can do two things well, a hundred men if you can do three things better than the majority. But first you must do one thing well; learn to go "full speed", then to stop and look round. Where and how to stop? That is what you came to a university to find out: and the answer is very simple, here, there, and everywhere, whenever the opportunity turns up. Strange and paradoxical teaching, after being told to go "all out"! On the staircase, in the laboratory or library, at lunch or tea, in all the casual things that happen to you when you are thrown into contact with people different from yourself, Nearly all the good things that happen, nearly all the services you may be happy enough to render, will come either as a result of hard work, or as gifts from your friends, gifts they never know they were making, gifts imparted by their disbeliefs and their enthusiasms, by their special knowledge different from your own. Twelve years ago Sir Alexander Kennedy, sometime professor of Engineering here, (1874-1889) confessed to me that he "had once written something really serious, a sermon in fact", an "Address to the students of the ," In it he urged that "to obtain the greatest and most worthy pleasure out of your few years of life it is...essential that you should have so trained your faculties as to take interest in, and pleasure in, the most various matters, in everything in fact around you, and even In many things far off and inaccessible." Kennedy generally over - worked at his proper job - engineering; but he found time to gain great joy from music, photography, mountaineering, archaeology, and many other things, particularly in helping and arguing fiercely with young men. To learn to love such men as Kennedy, to be able to argue with them about things of which they and we know something, or sometimes nothing at all, is one great privilege offered to those who become, and to those who remain, students. Kennedy's mind was given to such inquiries - between his spells of overwork. "A hundred other questions will occur to any who will open his eyes. And yet to none of them have we as yet even the beginning of an answer. Remember how these same questions were asked thousands of years ago – 'Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?...Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? Who laid the cornerstone thereof; when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?' "Does the modern man object that all this is poetry and not science? Yes, truly it is poetry - the mere words stir one like a Beethoven symphony - but who among us is entitled to say where science ends and poetry begins, in matters about which we are so supremely ignorant? May not the poetic vision be sometimes as far in advance of the scientific as the scientific is in advance of that of the ordinary commonplace mortal?" It is often asked, does not scientific scepticism lead to a denial of spiritual values, to a mechanistic interpretation of the world? It is true that research gives us no evidence of any place at which scientific investigation need stop: we can always go on, delving deeper into nature. It does not follow, however, because investigation is unlimited that the apparent purpose which one sees everywhere in the organic world, the conceptions of beauty, 191 honesty, justice, and romance which exist in all men's minds, the courage one finds in their hearts, are no more than an illusion. To suppose that chemistry and poetry are incompatible, or that biology is inconsistent with a religious outlook on the world (I do not say with theology!) is to misunderstand entirely what the human mind, by contemplation and experiment, has achieved. By extreme specialization at intervals, by overloading the machine to its limit, discoveries and progress are made: but their bearing is best seen by letting the engine idle and giving oneself time to look round. The chemist and the poet are both right, the biologist and the saint: and each must pull up now and then to find where he is going and adjust his spectacles. That is the function of a university; that is why you and I are here; and that, I imagine, is why a classical colleague urged that another physiologist should cast his bread upon the waters. End of page 400)

192

(74) THE USE AND MISUSE OF SCIENCE IN GOVERNMENT

[From 26 to 28 September 1941, the British Association for the Advancement of Science held a conference at the Royal Institution in London to discuss "Science and World Order".Looked at after thirty years this seems, in view of the circumstances of the time, to have been a very extraordinary affair. There was no clue then as to how the war could end, the battle in North Africa was still precariously undecided, the United States was still "neutral", and in fact years of trouble lay before us; yet here we were, hundreds of us, discussing the future as though we were completely sure that it would all come right. The first session was on "Science in Government" and the earlier part of my own contribution 2 is given below the later part, dealing with more specific questions which are referred to mostly elsewhere, is omitted.3 In its place, however, is included an article, describing the conference as a whole, which I wrote during the following week. 4 From B.D. (1960)] In the Manchester Guardian recently appeared a little poem, entitled "Die-hards," referring to the present meeting of the British Association. As a description of our President,Sir Richard Gregory, it could hardly be bettered for "die-hard" is just what he is - in his determination that science, the friendly tolerant spirit of science, the liberal internationalism of science, the power provided by science, shall be applied humanely and firmly and whole-heartedly in world affairs. Having got this idea firmly in his head, about seventy years ago, and being more anxious now than ever to apply it, he can justly claim to be called a die-hard - and die-hards we all need to be in these days, if we are to preserve civilization. The British Association by deciding "circumstances permitting" to hold its meeting this September shows that it has the same die-hard spirit as its President; and since civilization itself is at stake, civilization is what we are here to discuss, and how science can help in maintaining and improving it.... Just before the war, and five months before he died, Wilfred Trotter, surgeon, neurologist, teacher, and acute observer of mankind, lectured at St. Mary's Hospital on "Has the Intellect a Function?" He started out, as he dryly said, from the innocent and laudable idea that people should be encouraged to think for themselves. By so doing they might be enabled to "contemplate usefully our current experience and to develop opinions on social, political, and national situations without being entirely directed by custom and by prejudice." He warned his hearers, however, not to imagine that the practice of the scientific method alone would enlarge the mind to deal with human affairs. "Nothing is more flatly contradicted by experience than the belief that a man, distinguished in one or even in several departments of science, is more likely to think sensibly about ordinary affairs than anyone else". • [footnotes 1. For a full account of the proceedings see Nature (1941) 4 and 11 October: also The Engineer (1941) 3 and 10 October. 2. Printed in full in The Engineer, (1941) 172, 222-4, and discussed in a leading article, ibid. 236. 3. Most of this later part was printed in Science, (1941) 94, 475-7. 193

4. This article was clearly intended for publication, but the only copy I have kept contains no record of where it appeared.] For thousands of years, Trotter recalled, "the ablest men of every age have been fidgeting with the mechanism of the intellect in the hope of helping mankind to think and therefore behave reasonably." If our social system is to be saved from increasing confusion, he reflected, some radical corrective is necessary to our thinking; due allowance must be made for our emotions and prejudices, "We must get rid of the disastrous belief that there is any activity of the mind corresponding with the conception of pure reason....All processes of reasoning, however abstract, are participated in and influenced by feeling. What we can do is to suspect the grosser cases of the effect of feeling and to make an appropriate correction." I have quoted Trotter's words at :length because as soon as science is involved in government, i.e. with practical affairs in which strong emotions and irreconcilable interests occur, there is grave danger that it may give up its normal attempt at objectivity and resign itself to advocacy; it may cease to take account of all the facts and - what is all too easy - may select only those which fit some conclusion arrived at already by interest or feeling. "The intellect," as Trotter said, "has shown itself to be, after all, no more than a human organ, with preferences and caprices like the stomach and kidney.” We should not be here today unless we felt that science had an important place in government. But if science is to play its proper part, it must be consciously aware of the dangers which beset it, it must deliberately choose objectivity instead of advocacy, it must condition its followers to the conviction that scientific integrity and a clear scientific conscience are much better bedfellows for a scientific man than political honours or public fame. Few things are harder in public affairs than to maintain that attitude consistently. Compromise is usually and admittedly necessary in matters of feeling, interest, or policy, and in the ordinary affairs of life; without compromise the machinery of government would not run. It is fatal, however, to compromise with scientific facts or to select only those facts which agree with the conclusions arrived at by other kinds of compromise. Unless, indeed, the integrity of science is sternly maintained, damage rather than advantage will result from its introduction into government. A gay and light-hearted application of half-digested science to public affairs, or the use of scientific prestige to push political or social stunts, will get us nowhere. Science is a fine tool, but every good workman knows that the finer the tool, the greater must be the skill and discretion of its user. Some years ago in a Huxley Memorial Lecture I quoted a statement by Robert Hooke, dated 1663, describing what he called the 'business and design of the Royal Society, namely :-

"To improve the knowledge of natural things, and all useful Arts, Manufactures, Mechanick practises, Engynes and Inventions by Experiments- (not meddling with Divinity, Metaphysics, Moralls, Politicks, Grammar, Rhetorick or Logick)." , This statement I dared to adopt as a text for some further reflexions. Several times since I have been accused by certain scientific colleagues of inconsistency; indeed they point out now that as a Member of Parliament I cannot avoid meddling with "Moralls, 194

Politicks and Rhetorick"- though some of them perhaps would not accuse M.P.s of meddling overmuch with "Logick". Be that as it may, I am quite unrepentant and will repeat what I said then:- "Not meddling with morals or politics...I speak not with contempt of these- indeed, the scorn with which some superior people talk of such necessities of social existence as morals and politics seems to me intolerably childish and stupid. The best intellects and characters, not the worst, are wanted for the moral teachers and political governors of mankind; but science should remain aloof and detached, not from any sense of superiority, not from any indifference to the common welfare, but as a condition of complete intellectual honesty....If science... becomes tied to emotion, to propaganda, to advertisement, to particular social or economic theories, it will cease altogether to have its general appeal, and its political imnunity will be lost”.... By this I did not mean that the results of science should not be applied to government- that, indeed, would he inconsistent- or that scientific men should not take part in government, that science should not be financed by government, or that the direction of research should not be pointed by public needs; and I certainly did not wish to imply that scientific men, as citizens, should not be expected to hold political views. But I did mean that the sole object of science is to arrive at the facts, that no consideration of religion, morals, or politics should be allowed to deflect it by one hair's breadth from its integrity, that the repute of science itself (which is the collective property of all scientific men) must not be exploited by selfish or sectional purposes, and that neither authority nor vested interest, emotion, precedent, or custom, greatly as they may influence us as men, should be allowed to bias our scientific observations or the conclusions we draw from them. It may be asked, isn't this all very obvious? Why go on labouring it? There was a time - not so long ago - when freedom and peace and reasonably decent standards of national and international behaviour seemed obvious, too. Had we not been blind to the fact that these could be maintained only by continual watchfulness, effort and sacrifice, the state of the world to-day might not be so deplorable. There is a grave danger that by a gradual process, too slow to give any of us a sudden jolt, the integrity of science may be undermined. We have only to look at Germany and Italy to see how. But, some people will say, these things never happen to us. That kind of unteachable complacency has dogged our national footsteps these many years. No good cause, alas, is permanently won - even in England! We can avoid disaster of this kind, not by trusting to feeling rather than reason, not by denying evident facts because we do not like them, but only by incessant watchfulness and an obstinate determination to maintain our scientific independence and integrity.... Not only, however, by allowing one's thinking apparatus to be tied to one's interests or emotions, but in other ways, may science in government be misused. The primary difficulty is that the bureaucratic method, with its authority, its routine, its discouragement of initiative, its lack of freedom and criticism, its secrecy, provides the antithesis of the environment in which good scientific work is usually done. I know well enough that planning and direction are necessary in governmental and industrial research; but somehow the spirit of freedom and initiative, of criticism, of intellectual equality between senior and junior, must be combined with them if science is not 195 to be frustrated. This is not impossible. There are Government establishments in which the spirit is 100 per cent right; unfortunately there are others in which it is miserably wrong. The spirit is likely to be better where contact with outside science is the rule, where publication is normally permitted, where criticism and discussion are possible, where something more like the atmosphere of a university exists, and where a guiding and inspiring influence can be exercised, sometimes behind the scenes, by advisory bodies of experienced independent scientists....

ANOTHER ARTICLE ON THE CONFERENCE. As originally planned, the conference on "Science and World Order" was to be more or less a domestic affair, taking the place of the usual Annual Meeting of the British Association, impossible in wartime. It early appeared, however, from the interest shown in it, that it would be anything but a domestic affair; and in the end it grew into a large international gathering, filling the available accommodation throughout the meetings, and intent on discussing the relations of science to human society, particularly but not exclusively in connexion with the problems of post-war reconstruction and relief. The meeting itself was remarkable: but even more remarkable was the widespread interest taken in it. On the day before it began the British Council arranged a luncheon at which the Foreign Secretary was the chief speaker: it was attended by six cabinet ministers, the President of Czechoslovakia, the Chinese, Soviet, and United States ambassadors, three High Commissioners and a number of distinguished persons, largely scientific, from most of the countries in the world. Two distinguished Americans, Professor Luther Gulick and Professor Alvin Hansen, had flown over specially from America to take part, (not so easy in 1941) The press devoted considerable space to it: the B.B.C. provided a large number of special broadcasts for British and foreign listeners: and the National Broadcasting Company of America arranged a special party between five of us in London and four in New York to discuss for half an hour, for the benefit of American listeners, some of the points brought up by the conference. Among the speakers on this side was Mr. John G. Winant, the United States Ambassador. . Anthony Eden. The chairmen of the six sessions represented, as well as the subjects discussed, the international aspect of science in relation to human affairs. They were respectively: Sir Richard Gregory, the President of the Association (science and government); Mr. John G. Winant, the United States Ambassador (scienceand human needs); Mr. Maisky, the Soviet Ambassador (scienceand world planning); Dr Benes, the Czechoslovak President (science and technological advance); Dr Wellington Koo, the Chinese Ambassador (science and post-war relief); and Mr E.G. Wells (science and the world mind). The speakers were about equally British and foreign, or - to use a phrase which slipped out - British, foreign, and American. The wide interest shown in the meeting was a clear, indeed dramatic, demonstration of two things ; first the strong public conviction that science has a great deal to say in world 196 affairs, and second an eager interest in anticipating the human and material problems which will arise when the war is over. It was agreed by all, at least nem. con., and frequently emphasised. that victory over aggression throughout the world is a necessary preliminary to any reconstruction. We must win the war if we are to win the peace, and there can be no compromisebetweenour outlookand that of the aggressors against whom the nations of the world are now in arms: but what would be the good of winning the war unless we made sure of winning the peace afterwards? That after all is what we are fighting about. It was perfectly clear to all alike, to British and Russians and our Allies, to Chinese and Americans, that we are all in both these enterprises together. Science is aiding us in the war, and under our system of freedom for scientists and scientific research it will aid to a steadily increasing degree; under the system of our adversaries the contribution of science must, if slowly, diminish. Scientific knowledge, scientific standards, and scientific planning also must be brought into reconstruction and post-war relief, if human suffering, disorder, and disaster are not for many years to dominate the international scene. Of all the subjects discussed, food and its distribution and standards of nutrition in the post-war world, occupied perhaps the first place. Philip Noel-Baker, with his special knowledge of relief problems, made a strong and eloquent plea for deliberate international planning in nutrition in the countries devastated by war. Other speakers referred to the necessity of accurate surveys being made of minerals, raw materials, and fuel supplies, before detailed plans could be made. Now that public interest has been roused the important thing is that steps should be taken to "implement" (to use a phrase too frequently employed at the conference) the various proposals made. That work has yet to be done: in the words spoken to me by a wise old cynic, "It will take more than this to train statesmen and journalists not to think of science as something of which you can take a large table- spoonfull before breakfast daily." The British Association is well aware of that and proposes to set up a number of committees to deal with the various questions raised at the conference and the various proposals made. Possibly they will find during their considerations that much more has been done and much more information is available than is commonly known if so, all the better: they will certainly find, however, that in many directions there has been insufficient use of scientific knowledge already fully available, or of the capacities for research still ready to be used in the universities and scientific institutions of the country. It was suggested (yes!) that a committee should be set up to see that the Government took proper advantage of science for the prosecution of the war! That is indeed a well-trodden path! There are fields, however, particularly in relation to the needs of the future, where paths have yet to be made, along which public opinion would gladly travel if it could only be guided. It is in such directions that the committees proposed to be set up might help. The conference provided an admirable opportunity of emphasizing the role which science, scientific research, scientific knowledge, and orderly scientific planning should play in human affairs. In this we must bear in mind the hard warning of Wilfred Trotter not to imagine that the practice of the scientific method alone will enlarge the mind to deal with human affairs. As he said, "nothing is more flatly contradicted by experience than the belief that a man distinguished in one or even in several departments of science is more likely to think sensibly about ordinary affairs than anyone else." It is not for the scientists to lay down 197 the law about politics or social structure, or economics, or banking. It is for them to collaborate as equals with those who have made a special study of these things. So it is in war: we scientists had better not set up as experts in strategy; but since strategy today necessarily involves scientific problems, there should be constant consultation between strategists and scientists on these. In all such gatherings a certain amount of naive nonsense is talked, and proposals made which are quite impracticable. The Officers of the British Association no doubt will keep watch lest it should unconsciously become an Association for the Advancement of Good Works, or even for the ventilation of "modern" the political ideas. One noted, for example, that several horse- power of human effort was devoted on one occasion, by a section of the audience, to applauding a statement that no real reconstruction could be effected without a complete abolition of capitalism - which had nothing to do with the subject. One heard of “dialectical materialism" more often than one would among an average group of British scientists, and one had to recall that those who normally use the phrase least are probably more occupied in the war effort elsewhere. Early in the proceedings I had ventured to express the warning that "a gay and light-hearted application of half-digested science to public affairs, or the use of scientific prestige to push political or social stunts, will get us nowhere." An idea or a method is not made scientific by calling it so, any more than a patent medicine is: and , in a remarkable little address, expressed a rather common feeling that perhaps too much emphasis had been laid on planning scientific thought and too little on the absolute necessity of scientific freedom; as the President later remarked, this may have been because scientific freedom was taken as a postulate at a meeting like this. Such criticisms, however, are of minor importance provided they are heeded, and the audience did not take too seriously the obvious little attempts at political propaganda or social uplift. Most scientific people are well aware that science can remain useful only so long as it preserves its intellectual integrity and impartiality. If science became just another political party, as two young enthusiasts proposed to me after one of the meetings, it would soon become a joke too. Criticism is one of the chief methods of science, and if my present remarks be regarded as critical, they need not be taken as unfriendly.

(end of page 414)

198

(75) THE ETHICAL DILEMMA OF SCIENCE

[Following is the more substantial part of my Presidential Address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, meeting at Belfast on 3 September1952. The earlier portion (not given here) referred particularly to the contributions to science made in Belfast in the preceding hundred years. The general motive of this address had been in my mind for many years. No certain answer to the problems posed is apparent, for opinions are bound to differ; but only good can result from their open discussion.] The Advancement of Science (1952) 9, 93-102, slightly abridged in Bull. Atom. Sci.: (1952) 262-6. In German in Physikalische Blätter (1953) A deliberate misrepresention of it was published in Moscow on 1 Dec.1952. E.D. (1960)

…….The Duke of Edinburgh concluded his Presidential Address last year with the words "It is clearly our duty as citizens to see that science is used for the, benefit of mankind. For, of what use is science if man does not survive?" Here was a challenge to his successor; to discuss how far science has already contributed to human betterment, how far it has provided fresh problems, dangers and difficulties; and to suggest ways in which all who are concerned with science can help, as citizens, to make sure that its results in fact are beneficial. As citizens: for scientists as such have no title to superior wisdom or virtue, and outside their special knowledge they are just as likely as others to be misled. The fundamental principle of scientific work is unbending integrity of thought, following the evidence of fact wherever it may lead, within the limits of experimental error and honest mistake. On this there can be no compromise. And since science is a universal interest of mankind, recognizing no barriers of race, class, religion, or opinion (provided that is honest), a necessary condition of its advance and application is one of friendliness, frankness and equality. Goodwill and integrity, therefore, are indispensable alike to scientific progress itself and its successful employment for the benefit of mankind. Those who look to Scientists as magicians, able to conjure a universal formula out of a hat, may be disappointed to find only so ancient a doctrine; and. Admittedly there is far more to science than integrity and goodwill. But these are the qualities chiefly required to utilize the opportunities, to resolve the problems and difficulties, which science has provided for present day society. The common phrase, "this scientific age," is too apt to imply, with little justification, that the majority of people, at least in highly developed countries, now think and act scientifically; and, with no justification at all, to suggest that science can replace the older motives of human conduct. It is true that the external circumstances of life have been vastly altered by the applications of scientific discovery and invention, though as yet for only a minority of mankind. The future alone can decide whether natural resources and human ingenuity will prove sufficient, given statesmanship and goodwill, for the same transformation gradually to affect the whole of human society. If not, are stable conditions ultimately possible? Or will there be perpetual conflict between the "haves" and the "have- 199 nots"? It is true also that the methods, ideas, and results of scientific enquiry have penetrated widely, if not deeply, into popular thinking and belief: .the jargon at least of science is widespread, and magic and superstition are gradually losing, if not their currency at least their respectability. Yet such changes may have little real influence on the basic pattern of human behaviour, and if witches are no longer hunted down and killed, political and racial intolerance can lead to even wilder and crueller excesses. In clearing away old idolatries there is always a danger of allowing new ones to creep in: the unclean spirit went out when the house was swept and garnished, but only to return with seven others more wicked than himself. The improvement of man’s estate by the application of scientific knowledge is one of the loftiest of adventures; but a belief that it can be achieved by scientific methods alone, without a moral basis to society, is a perilous illusion. If the methods of human experiment and racial improvement adopted by the Nazis could be regarded purely as applied biology, there might be much to say for them. But most of us believe that by abandoning a faith (which has nothing directly to do with science) in the sanctity of the human individual and of moral law, they were heading straight for disaster. Yet we shall see later the dilemma in which such scruples put us, in respect of the gravest of all world problems. The conflict between new knowledge and traditional belief is no novelty. When Eve “saw that the tree of knowledge was good for food and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and to be desired to make one wise, she took the fruit thereof and did eat gave also to Adam and he did eat”. Which led, as you have read, to their exclusion from the garden and the warning "in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life." Again and again the attempt has been made to forbid the fruit of scientific knowledge. In 1874 in this city to John Tyndall (1820-1893) delivered a presidential address to the Association which provoked a hurricane of controversy: the records tell us that it was denounced from every pulpit in Belfast. Yet, reading it now, one is impressed not only by its courage but by its reasonableness. It is true that he claimed that science will wrest from theology the entire domain of cosmological theory, whether of living or of non-living things; but he had previously referred to the immovable basis of the religious sentiment in human nature, bringing as he said "completeness and dignity to man". The views of Lucretius and Bruno, Darwin and Spencer, might be wrong; whether right or wrong, he insisted, we claim the right to discuss them. If to-day I claim the right to discuss not only the scientific facts themselves but their consequences in human affairs, I doubt whether denunciation will follow: if it does I shall be sorry but unrepentant. The development which has brought most vividly to the public conscience to-day the ethical problems aroused by the advance of scientific knowledge lies in the field of nuclear physics; and groups of scientific people in the free countries of the world are vigorously debating its various consequences, among them particularly the secrecy attached to weapons as new and devastating as those provided by nuclear fission. Atomic physics, however, is only one of many scientific developments which have brought, or are bringing, a mixture of possible good and evil about which judgments of relative value must be formed: we should not get too excited about one of them. There is no secrecy about most of these developments, they occur gradually and continuously before our eyes, we tend to accept them without question as though they were natural phenomena; yet in fact the 200 consequences of one of them provide the most solemn problem in the world. The dilemma is this. All the impulses of decent humanity, all the dictates of religion, and all the traditions of medicine insist that suffering should be relieved, curable disease prevented. The obligation is regarded as unconditional; it is not permitted to argue that the suffering is due to folly, that the children are not wanted, that the patient's family would be happier if he died. All that may be so; but to accept it as a guide to action would lead to a degradation of standards of humanity by which civilization would be permanently and indefinitely poorer. Conduct usually falls short of principles; but that would be the worst reason for abandoning principles altogether. In many parts of the world advances in public health, improved sanitation, the avoidance of epidemics, the fighting of insect-borne disease, the lowering of infantile death rates, and a prolongation of the span of life have led to a vast increase of population Not only is the population increasing but in many places its rate of increase is still rising: and these processes will take so long to reverse that for many years to come the shortage of natural resources, particularly of food, is bound to provide increasing deprivation and disturbance. ...In the meantime there is more than danger that the emergency will result in an over-use of natural resources, leading by land erosion, deforestation, and other factors to permanent and irretrievable loss; this has happened already, and is visibly happening now, in many parts of the world. In a special Section on "Family Planning" the Report in 1951 of the Indian Planning Commission recognizes that "an alteration in population trends takes at least a few generations to materialize"; and steps are suggested for the education of public opinion on the need for limitation, and for experimental efforts to be made in the application of simple methods of birth control. For its wisdom and courage in acknowledging the gravity of the situation the Indian Planning Commission deserves every support: but the problem itself has not begun to be solved, and its consequences will dominate the development of India for many years; indeed, its gravity will continue to increase. Malaria is admitted by the Planning Commission to take an annual toll of a million lives, tuberculosis of half a million. The resolute use of insecticides and anti-malarial drugs could soon reduce the former to a small fraction; tuberculosis is bound to require more effort and a longer term. Nobody would dare to say that steps to combat these diseases, and others such as cholera, to improve rural and industrial health, to increase the supply of drugs and medical equipment and services, should not be taken on the highest priority: but the consequence must be faced that a further increase of a million people per annum would result. Thus science, biological, medicinal, chemical, and engineering, applied for motives of decent humanity entirely beyond reproach, with no objectionable secrecy, has led to a problem of the utmost gravity which will require all the resources of science, humanity, and statesmanship for its solution. The example of India has been taken because of the sheer magnitude of the problem and because its seriousness is now admitted by humane and responsible men: but the same conditions exist already in many parts of the world and will soon exist elsewhere. It is not a question only of food: if a higher standard of life is to become universal, with education, communications, housing, reasonable amenities, and public health, a far greater demand will be made on all such natural resources as power, chemicals, minerals, metals, water, and wood. One is left wondering how long these can possibly take the strain. Could 201 world supplies conceivably hold out if the present requirement per head, in the United States, were multiplied in proportion to meet the same demand everywhere - even without any increase of present population; and if so, for how long? There is much discussion of human rights. At what level can these be reasonably pitched? and do they extend to unlimited reproduction, with a consequent obligation falling on those more careful? These problems must be faced not only with goodwill and humanity, but also with integrity and courage, not refusing to recognize the compulsion of simple arithmetic. It is right that the scientific imagination should be allowed to play sometimes with the more distant future, when possibly new methods and resources may be found to solve all problems; but only on condition that our minds are not deflected from the urgent realities of the present. By vast improvements in communications, which have made the world so small, applied science has been one of the chief agents in the present ferment of social, political, and economic thought. Can one urge, after the event, that the application was a mistake and that the majority of mankind could better have remained isolated and in ignorance? By making world war technically possible, applied science has helped to stir up national ambitions and social revolutions which, if poverty and deficiency continue without hope, may lead to major world catastrophe. Should we therefore refuse to employ science in defence of liberty and resign ourselves to a universal police state where no scruples are permitted? Are we, in scientific research, to say that some subjects may be investigated, but not others for fear of the consequences? Who then is to decide and by what international authority? And is it practical to insist that all scientific knowledge should be fully and openly disclosed, without secrecy or reservation of any kind, military or industrial? These are problems which cannot be solved by rhetoric, or by any simple formula. The purpose of setting them out is to make clear that we must face them with honesty and courage; for they will not solve themselves. I have led you to the ethical dilemma which perplexes many of us by taking an example in which few would question either the motives of those who made the original discoveries, or the humanity of their application: or indeed could wish that the fruit of the tree of knowledge had been left untried. It is easy to say now that side by side with the control of disease there should have been an equal and parallel effort in education, particularly the education of women as responsible citizens: for there is no possibility, if women remain ignorant and illiterate, of intelligent widespread family planning and control. But education alone would not have been enough, or indeed possible itself without a substantial measure of material and social betterment: and the expense and effort involved in this would have been indefinitely greater than in the application of medicine and hygiene, which after all has been relatively cheap. Had it been possible to foresee the enormous success of this application, would humane people have agreed that it could better have been held back, to keep in step with other parallel progress, so that development could be planned and orderly? Some might say yes, taking the purely biological view that if men will breed like rabbits they must be allowed to die like rabbits, until gradually improving education and the demand for a higher standard of life teach them better. Most people would still say no. But suppose it were certain now that the pressure of increasing population, uncontrolled by disease, would lead not only to widespread exhaustion of the soil and of other capital resources but also to continuing and increasing 202 international tension and disorder, making it hard for civilization itself to survive; would the majority of humane and reasonable people then change their minds? If ethical principles deny our right to do evil in order that good may come, are we justified in “doing good” when the foreseeable consequence is evil? I remember asking an eminent Indian who had taken part in drawing up the so-called Bombay Plan of 1944 why there was no mention of the gravest problem of all, overgrowing population: he replied that his colleagues and he had indeed discussed it, but decided to leave it to God. To a biologist aware of the methods by which animal population is in fact controlled by nature, this seemed pretty poor comfort; yet there are many who really take that view, admittedly with the element of reason that we never can be sure that things may not turn up to make our calculations wrong. Should we then just continue to do the good we see in front of us, in confidence that if our motives are humane, good and not evil will finally result? Or, taking that rather easy course, are we not showing a lack of the fundamental virtues of courage and integrity? The dilemma is a real one, and cannot be resolved by any simple expedient. In another form it is perplexing many of those who are concerned with the development of nuclear physics, the ultimate service of which may be very great, possibly essential if our present type of civilization is to continue when other sources of power dry up; while the benefits to medicine and industry are already substantial. But – nuclear fission has released the threat of unprecedented violence, with the possible destruction of many millions of lives and the accumulated treasures, moral and material, of civilization. The individual conscience may tell a man to have no part in it; that is easy enough, for there are plenty of other interesting things to do, but it does not solve the problem. Moreover, it is possible that defensive weapons, based on nuclear fission, but not the type intended for mass destruction, can be developed which would make armed aggression intolerably costly. What then of the abolition of secrecy? In principle, yes, for the historic and unique contribution of science to international goodwill has been in sharing knowledge regardless of race and frontier, and the chief satisfaction of scientific work, the condition of its fruitful development, is frank and free discussion. "Cast thy bread upon the waters, for thou shalt find it after many days," is wise and acceptable counsel in dealing with scientific knowledge; while "he that observeth the wind shall not sow and he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap" is as aptly applied to human relations as to agriculture. Every possible endeavour, therefore, should be made towards international agreement on sharing scientific and technical knowledge and controlling nuclear weapons; but this, like peace itself, is a concern of every citizen, not only of scientific people. It is hard enough to get international agreement in quite simple matters, such as the perilous state of the north European fisheries, where no secrecy is involved and little national prestige, and the scientific evidence is unequivocal; but we must go on trying. Much scientific and technical advance has led to unexpected dangers and difficulties. Without our present knowledge of bacteriology and preventive medicine, gigantic armies could never be kept in the field, and land war on the recent scale would be impossible: is medical science, therefore to be blamed for twentieth-century war? The indiscriminate use of insecticides, by upsetting the balance of nature, can quickly do more harm than good. 203

Radio communication may be used for spreading lies and disorder as well as truth and goodwill. Developments in microbiology, in many ways beneficent, may be used in the future for biological warfare, with effects at present unpredictable; and control by international agreement and inspection might be very difficult. The list need not be multiplied, all are aware that every new benefit to mankind provides also its own dangers, either as unexpected consequences or by deliberate misuse. Science is not alone in this; liberty may lead to licence, religion can be used to inflame passions, laws can be exploited to protect wrongdoing. If scientists feel called upon to examine their consciences, so much the better; but they need not imagine that in this way they are exceptional. It has been debated whether "the scientific mind is fundamentally amoral." The real answer is that there is no such thing as "the scientific mind." Scientists for the most part are quite ordinary folk. In their particular scientific jobs they have developed a habit of critical examination, but this does not save them from wishful thinking in ordinary affairs, or sometimes even from misrepresentation and falsehood when their emotions or prejudices are strongly enough moved. Their minds are no more amoral than those of surgeons, lawyers, or scholars. As investigators most of them realize that their function would be stultified were they to introduce moral data into a scientific argument. A surgeon is not required, or indeed allowed, to consider whether it would be better for the world if his patient died under the operation, he has only to carry it out with skill, care, and integrity; but it would be foolish to conclude that the surgical mind is amoral. The surgeon himself, as a human being, has to make moral judgements; but he does so outside the operating theatre. So it is with scientific people; like all good citizens they must take account of ethical considerations, and the chief of these, as with other good citizens, are of integrity, courage and goodwill. Integrity forbids them to allow feelings of any kind to obscure facts, but that does not make them amoral: after all, integrity is the first condition of morality.

In the practical world to-day, complete abandonment of secrecy, in government and industry, is out of the question. The advantages to international relations, and to general scientific progress, of the greatest possible freedom are evident; to these can be added the impossibility, in a free democracy, of keeping the best people unless the conditions of their work are congenial. If scientific men consistently avoid jobs which seem to them to fall short of reasonable freedom, they will force changes of organization so that only necessary secrecy is maintained. The penalty of filling an organization, government or industrial, with second-rate people, cheerfully amenable to unnecessary restrictions, is far too evident in its result on efficiency to be tolerable for long. The cure, therefore, is largely in scientists' own hands. In this, as in many other aspects of their work, moral considerations come in, and the only way to resolve the dilemma which is in so many minds is to discuss it frankly. To neglect it altogether is not amoral but immoral ,it is the duty of all of us citizens to consider the ethical basis of our work. To-day when the public Importance of science and its popular esteem may turn some people's heads it is well that scientists should realize that the prestige of science is not their personal property, but a trust which they have an obligation to pass on uncompromised to their successors. The popularizing of genuine science is an important public service, we should all be ready to take our part in it according to our powers: but to 204 use the general prestige of science as a bait to attract attention to pronouncements on other topics, for example on politics or religion, is a disservice both to science and the public. As a citizen. I need no more justification than any other citizen in saying what I like about such things: but I have no right to pose as a representative of science in discussing them. In the days when the representatives of religion claimed supernatural knowledge of the natural world it was necessary to insist, as Tyndall did, that the natural world belongs to science. Fortunately those days are past. If they now claim that the facts and trend's of overpopulation are not what we say, we can argue about that as a scientific question; but if they insist that its consequences should be left to God, they must allow us as citizens to take the opposite view. If political pressure were applied in any way to force conformity to particular scientific theories, as happened in Germany and is happening now elsewhere, then one's right and indeed one's duty would be clear, alike as citizen and as scientist. But the nature of political institutions and the policies of political parties are not scientific questions and how I choose to vote has nothing to do with science. Indeed, curious as it may seem, the spectrum of political opinion of scientists in Britain is much the same as that of other similar groups: though the loudspeakers are generally tuned in to one particular wave-band! Some seventeen hundred years ago there crystallized out, from many centuries of experience of the human problems and ethical necessities of medicine, the so-called Hippocratic Oath. The obligation of integrity and trust; the insistent claim of suffering; the care of mothers and children; solicitude for the old and weak; the sanctity of human life; these are as vital a part of medical tradition as its science and its art. Practise, it is true, may lag behind principles, but at least such failure is regarded as discreditable; and it is hard to imagine any kind of civilization in which the ethical principles of medicine are disregarded. That is one reason why the future possibility of biological warfare is particularly repugnant. To-day science finds itself unexpectedly and without those centuries of tradition and experience, in a position no less important to the community than medicine: and its ethical principles have not yet clearly emerged. Every candidate for admission to the earliest American learned associations was required to answer yes to the question, "Do you love truth for truth's sake, and will you endeavour Impartially to find...it for yourself and communicate it to others?" That affirmation might have its place in a modern scientific version of the Hippocratic Oath. But again the same dilemma arises - "endeavour impartially...to communicate it to others." Apart altogether from considerations of national security, in many fields to-day. Much of the best research is done, and done increasingly, in industrial laboratories. Those who have seen and admired such work, and , the people who do it, cannot but applaud the foresight which made it possible. But if all the results are to be communicated at once and Impartially to others, could directors and shareholders be reasonably expected to continue their support? Indeed, if an industry were nationalized could it afford to give away its secrets to competitors abroad? Not in any real world, in which a nation must remain solvent and industry must depend for success on the rapid application of new knowledge. The dilemma must be met by reasonable compromise, of which perhaps the most hopeful sign to-day is that many of the directors of industry come up through research departments. A friendly and familiar contact between management and 205 research, and between industrial and outside scientists, can reduce this particular dilemma to manageable size. A graver problem is provided by research under government, when considerations of security come in. In the emergency which had become evident by 1935, the secret development of radar for purposes of air defence aroused no obvious pangs of conscience; and many other developments come in that class. But the surest of military maxims is that counter-attack is an essential part of defence; to limit scientific methods to defensive weapons would be to ensure defeat, indeed it is quite Impracticable. But let us be realists; so long as offensive weapons may be used, the part played by the scientist is no more immoral than that of the engineer, the workman, the soldier, or the statesman, and the attitude of "holier-than- thou" is unbecoming. We all bear, as citizens, an equal responsibility. But is it practical to suggest that all scientists in all countries should agree, and hold to their agreement whatever happens, to take no part in research on offensive weapons? or at least should endeavour impartially to communicate its results to others? The answer is evident. There are individuals in all free countries who find such work intolerable. In those countries their scruples are respected and they are at liberty to do something else; but let them not imagine that the problem is solved that way, or that those who think otherwise are necessarily stupid or immoral. The first condition of freedom is freedom of conscience, and the scientist has the same right to that as any citizen; but freedom does not extend to giving away other people's property, whether of goods or knowledge. There seems to be no simple answer to the riddle. All knowledge, not only that of the natural world, can be used for evil as well as good: and in all ages there continue to be people who think that its fruit should be forbidden. Does the future welfare, therefore, of mankind depend on a refusal of science and a more intensive study of the Sermon on the Mount? There are others who hold the contrary opinion, that more and more of science and its applications, alone can bring prosperity and happiness to men. Both of these extreme views seem to me entirely wrong – though the second is the more perilous, as more likely to be commonly accepted. The so-called conflict between science and religion is usually about words, too often the words of their unbalanced advocates; the reality lies somewhere in between. "Completeness and dignity," to use Tyndall's phrase, are brought to man by three main channels, first by the religious sentiment and its embodiment in ethical principles, secondly by the influence of what is beautiful in nature, human personality, or art, and thirdly by the pursuit of scientific truth and its resolute use in improving human life. Some suppose that religion and beauty are incompatible; others, that the aesthetic has no relation to the scientific sense; both seem to me just as mistaken as those who hold that the scientific and the religious spirit are necessarily opposed. Co-operation is required, not conflict; for science can be used to express and apply the principles of ethics, and those principles themselves can guide the behaviour of scientific men; while the appreciation of what is good and beautiful can provide to both a vision of encouragement. Is there really any special ethical dilemma which we scientific men, as distinct from other people, have to meet? I think not; unless it be to convince ourselves humbly that we are just like others in having moral issues to face. It is true that integrity of thought is the 206 absolute condition of our work, and that judgments of value must never be allowed to deflect our judgments of fact. But in this we are not unique. It is true that scientific research has opened up the possibility of unprecedented good, or unlimited harm, for mankind; but the use that is made of it depends in the end on the moral judgments of the whole community of men. It is totally impossible now to reverse the process of discovery; it will certainly go on. To help to guide its use aright is not a scientific dilemma, but the honourable and compelling duty of a good citizen.

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(76) DO I BELIEVE IN GOD ?

The short answer is that I do. I have known, or heard or read about, so many good people (not chiefly the famous ones, but particularly the simple humble ones) that I believe something corresponding to their goodness to be a property of the Universe. The argument is not conclusive for I have known of bad, cruel and horrible people; I have learnt from history, some quite recent, of many appalling crimes committed, and now read almost every day of disgusting offences committed by wicked man against children and other helpless people. From this one might be tempted to believe in the Devil, or Satan, rather than God. I find it impossible to believe in both and prefer to believe in God. I admit this is an emotional preference, logically it be better to believe in neither! I do not suppose that the good people survive this life as themselves in any sense, or the bad people either. I do not expect in this world, or in any other, to meet them again. But they are part of history in an infinite record of what has happened. Whatever you do, nothing is ever quite the same again. It has continually been insisted that "the goodness of God in creation" is universally evident in the wonderful devices of all kinds that are found by anyone who looks for them in the natural world. These wonderful devices are evident enough; but they were produced by a thousand million years of trial and error (so called evolution), working on material which has the capacity of passing on the qualities that have survived the trial - what we call "inheritance". The singular adaptability of living things, the extraordinary skill of the "designer" of the machinery, the fitness of the biological apparatus to survive and carry on its "functions", none of these are signs of a personal creator, or a supreme engineer; they are sufficiently accounted for by trial and error working for a thousand million years and capable of passing on, by inheritance, the qualities of those that survive the test. [footnote: The Silliman Lectures at were founded to iillustrate, the wisdom and goodness of God as manifested in the natural and moral world; and there are many other such foundations, e.g. of the Swarthmore Lecture or the Gifford Lecture.} Possibly it is just wishful thinking when I project the lovely qualities of many of the people I have known, to give a picture of God. There is wonderful teaching in the Bible, as in other books; but these are human documents and carry no magical authority. There is no way of being certain. Bede ("The Venerable Bede", 673-735) wrote: Such seems to me the present life of men on earth, as if when on a winter's night you sit feasting with your ealdormen and thegns, a single sparrow should fly swiftly into the hall, and coming in at one door instantly fly out through another. In that time in which it is indoors it is indeed not touched by the fury of the winter, but yet, this smallest space of calmness being past almost in a flash, from winter going into winter again, it is lost to your eyes. Somewhat like this appears the life of man; but of what follows or what went before, we are utterly ignorant. Thus we are ignorant, and must remain ignorant, of the nature of the goodness which some of us call God.

(77) WHOSOEVER WILL BE SAVED. 208

When I was a boy and young man, and went to church, I was subjected on certain days to recitation of the Creed of Saint Athanasius at Morning Prayer. These days were : Christmas, Epiphany, Easter, Ascension Day, Whitsunday, Trinity Sunday; also seven Saints' Day. I found this recitation intolerably dull, from my earliest experiences of it; but only gradually did I realize that it was also complete nonsense. It does, however, provide a pattern for some very pleasant parodies; though the point of the parody is lost if the reader has never been subjected to the full impact of some of the original. The first parody I became aware of was hung, framed, in the Offices of the Ordnance Committee at Woolwich, some time before 1920. In it, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost were replaced by the Horse Artillery, the Field Artillery and the Heavy Artillery: this was the Ballistic Faith, which except a gunner believe faithfully he cannot be saved. I used it as a model for a Ballistic Faith which I drew up for my Brigands at the end of 1918 when we were getting frivolous after the Armistice. It referred particularly to the mirror-position-finder which we had used for all our observations; and it was originally a part of the certificate of appointment presented to each Brigand. Unfortunately one of the Brigands (a Fellow of an Oxford College) was a devout and conservative churchman, and he was deeply offended by the apparent blasphemy of my Ballistic Faith; so the B.F. had to be removed from the certificate and distributed separately. Poor old Haselfoot; one of the articles of the B.F. to which he objected was that eggs could be addled by firing guns before breakfast at Whale Island, Portsmouth ! The next of my essays in Creed making was in 1939 at the time when Germany and the Soviet Union made their joint attack on Poland. It was called the Communist Faith, the three Persons of the Trinity were now Bolshevism, Fascism and National Socialism, and it finished not with Amen after the doxology but with Heil Hitler.

Now, for the benefit of any who may like to compete in the sport of inventing spoof Athanasian Creeds, here is some of the original. This sport is not blasphemous; it can only do good to true religion to deride some of the nonsense which has stuck to it aver the ages like barnacles to the bottom of ships. WHOSOEVER will be saved: before all things it is necessary that he hold the Catholic Faith, Which faith except everyone do keep whole and undefiled: without doubt he shall perish everlastingly. And the Catholic Faith is this: that we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity, Neither confounding the Persons: nor dividing the Substance. For there is one person of the Father, another of the Son: and another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Ghost is all one: the Glory equal, the Majesty co-eternal. Such as the Father is, such is the Son: and Such is the Holy Ghost The Father uncreate, the Son uncreate: and the Holy Ghost uncreate. 209

The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible: and the Holy Ghost incomprehensible. The Father eternal, the Son eternal, and the Holy Ghost eternal. And yet there are not three eternals: but one eternal. As also there are not three incomprehensibles, Nor three uncreated: but one uncreated, and one incomprehensible. It goes on like this, with a further threefold contribution to confusion; and then finishes: And they that have done good shall go into life everlasting: and they that have done evil into everlasting fire. This is the Catholic Faith: which except a man believe faithfully, he cannot be saved. So ATHANASIUS (A.D.296-373). How long will his words continue to be said or sung in Morning Prayer on the appointed days?.

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(78) SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT IN THE EMPIRE

On May 22, 1942, I delivered the Ninth Quadrennial Gustave Canet Memorial Lecture of the Junior Institution of Engineers, at a meeting held at the Royal Institution in London. This was printed in abridged form by Nature June 13, 1942 and by Engineering, May 29, 1942. Reading it again after thirty years (which some people may think a long time) has left two conflicting impressions: how old-fashioned it now seems; and yet, how much the general spirit of it applies, mutatis mutandis, to the problems of the present day. Perhaps in a world pulling itself apart in every possible direction the intense cooperation of those war years may give a more comfortable feeling of solidity. Bat it did not seem that reprinting it in full would serve any useful purpose, I had taken a good deal of trouble in writing it, and to a scientific historian of the period reference to the Institution's Journal (June,1942) or to the abridgements quoted, might be useful. But the general reader may be interested. in my tribute to Gustave Canet. " It might seem a bitter irony of fate that a lecture should be given in memory of a great French engineer in the field of artillery, who lived so long in England and had so many intimate connections here at a time when a government of traitors in France is actively aiding the common enemy against their ally. Were Jean Baptiste Gustave Adolphe Canet alive today we knew very well where his heart would be - not with Laval - as indeed we know where the hearts of very many of his countrymen still are. (*Footnote— Its present name is The institution of General Technician Engineers.)

"It would 43 be impossible", it has been said of Canet "to record his innumerable acts of consideration and regard for the Junior Institution of Engineers" of which he was an honorary member, a vice-president, and president in the year he died. It would be impossible for an Englishman who has been intimate with Frenchmen of his kind not believe that France will rise again, purged by her misfortunes, to better things. The world cannot whether do without a nation which can produce men of his genius, whether for engineering, philanthropy or friendship; and we can console ourselves by reflecting that even fighting against Frenchmen we are fighting of the still for France. I happen to be an associate member of the Ordnance Board, one of the oldest technical institutions in the world, with direct descent from a man who fought at Agincourt; as such, and as vice-president now of an institution proud to call itself Junior, one can bracket the chequered history with the deep community of feeling between France and England; and say in commemorating a great French ordnance engineer who was also a great friend of England that however bitter the irony may seem today, there is nothing but sympathy amongst Englishmen for the true France in her present tragedy, and hope for her future."

Reading that again it seemed possible to me that the phrase “a government of traitors in France" might seem offensive today, thirty years later. So I sent a copy to a French friend who had been deeply involved in the Resistance in South-Wes France, asking him whether what I had said in 1942 seemed just in 1972. His reply left no doubt at all, and the phrase remains..

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(79) "HUMANITY" WITHOUT KNOWLEDGE CAN BE A VERY CRUEL THING.

In June 1929 a man came to see me from the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (R.S.P.C.A.); he wanted my opinion on whether a method of killing un- wanted cats and dogs, then in use by the Animal Rescue League, was humane. The animals were killed by "electrocution" at premises at 397, City Road, near The Angel, Islington, London. (The "League" was still there forty years later.). My visitor seemed to think I could express an opinion straightaway. I told him that this was quite impossible. It would be necessary to visit the premises, to see what was done, and then to carry out experiments in order to find out whether the animals were made unconscious immediately by the procedure, or whether they were merely immobilized and slowly asphyxiated. I told him also that I could not legally make experiments of this kind, (1) unless the premises were licensed by the Home Office for experiments on animals, and (2) until I had obtained various certificates to allow the experiments to be made without an anaesthetic. This rather shook him, but seemed to make him all the more anxious to obtain my opinion. The matter was urgent, and from what I had said he feared that there might be gross inhumanity which ought to be stopped at once. (There was, but see the Postscript.) After some discussion I agreed to carry out the experiments I had suggested— illegally indeed, but if we waited until the formalities were settled by the Home Office a lot of time would be wasted, and grave suffering might continue. Moreover (I thought to myself) what a lark it would be if the R.S.P.C.A. and I were prosecuted jointly for carrying out illegal experiments on living animals!

Anyhow I went to City Road to look at the premises and witness the procedure. The Animal Rescue League had a van (or vans) which went round London collecting animals that their owners did not wish to keep. The apparatus for killing the cats had a number of small drawers, each with two brass plates, one at each end; the animals' forefeet and hindfeet were supposed to make contact with these plates. Current was switched on automatically between the plates when the drawer was closed; and after two minutes or so the drawer was opened and the cat, now dead, was removed. The procedure looked elegant and efficient until one asked what happened to the cat during the interval! The contrivance for killing the dogs was more formidable and revealing. A metal plate on the floor, connected to an electrical machine, made contact with the animal's feet, a metal collar round its neck was joined by a chain to the other pole of the machine. No attempt was made to ensure good electrical contact, e.g. by wetting the fur (under the collar), or the feet, with brine; and a strong smell of burnt fur was evident. When the current was switched on the animal went violently rigid, then gradually collapsed on the floor. There it remained long enough to be asphyxiated before the current was switched off. Naturally I insisted that trials should be made to see what state the animals were in at various moments after the current was switched on. This was simply done, by switching the current off and examining them - with deplorable results. They were evidently alive and conscious for quite a long time. One of the dogs, a large one, was very much alive when the current 212 was stopped. Not unnaturally it was very annoyed and violent, and for safety the only possible course was to turn the current on again at once until it collapsed and was finally asphyxiated. Similar results were observed with other dogs. It was quite obvious that the animals, cats and dogs alike, were conscious for a considerable interval during the procedure. It was clear also that no advice had previously been sought from anyone with any knowledge of physiology. The procedure was carried out by a little elderly lady, who, at least in my presence, spoke in endearing terms to the animals, while she was putting the cats in the drawers, or fixing the collar on the dogs. Hundreds of cats and dogs were killed every week, and the process had been going on for years. Hundreds of thousands of animals had been killed in this painful and cruel way. The man from the R.S.P.C.A. who witnessed these trials with me, was deeply concerned with what he saw; and as a result the electrical machines were soon replaced by a captive-bolt pistol ("humane killer"). I cannot imagine, however, that this weapon was ever used by the little elderly lady; provided that one asked no questions the electrical method looked much more lady-like. That I thought was the end of the matter; but see the Postscript describing the abominable cruelty which continued for twenty five years. POSTSCRIPT In the Veterinary Record, 65, p.561 (25 Sept. 1954): is a drawing of the electric circuit of the very same machines as were in use at the premises of the Animal Rescue League when I went there in 1929. It was stated in the article in the Veterinary Record; in many places in Great Britain where numbers of unwanted dogs and cats have to be destroyed, it has been the practice in recent years to kill them by electrocution in a specially constructed cabinet. At the request of the British Veterinary Association a physiologist made a number of experiments to find out whether the animals were really rendered unconscious by the procedure and the machines employed. The conclusion drawn from them was the same as from mine in 1930, that the animals were conscious for some time after the current was turned on. The Euthanasia Sub-Committee of the B.V.A. had recommended that the use of these machines should be discontinued forthwith.

Apparently the R.S.P.C.A., in the early 1930's after my report‚ had not troubled to inform other bodies involved in killing unwanted animals of the appalling cruelty of this method. If 200,000 animals were destroyed annually in the interval between my experiments at Islington in 1929 and those reported in the Veterinary Record in 1954, that would make five millions. "Where ignorance is bliss…!!! " And yet old ladies still leave their money to anti-vivisection societies and denounce physiologists.

213

(80) ASSASSINATION BY PRAYER

It is funny how one remembers such things, and the sort of things one remembers. Some time about 1912 several of the senior people in the Cambridge Physiological Laboratory received letters from a society which had been founded to pray for the deaths of people who held licences from the Home Office to perform experiments on animals. They were advised to give up this odious practice at once, because the prayers had already had one successful outcome. The victim was announced to be Dr F.W. Pavy, F.R.S. who had died aged 82 in 1911. Pavy was a pioneer in studies of carbohydrate metabolism in man and animals. He did not discover insulin, but his work must have been one of the pointers to what was done ten years after his death. H.K. Anderson, who showed me his letter, was rather annoyed about it. He died sixteen years later, much beloved by hundreds of Cambridge people, having worn himself out in the service of his colleagues and the university. I doubt if precatory assassination had much to do with his death. Joseph Barcroft, on the other hand, thought it was very good fun, and went on gaily for another thirty-four years. Langley must have been one of their targets, but he never bothered to mention it, and went on till 1925 when he died, after a short illness, at the age of 73. If I had received the warning I should have started an inquiry on whether the threat of precatory assassination would invalidate my notional life-insurance and if so what extra premium would be required to reinstate it; and then, who should pay. If the practice were widespread, as in Britain prayers are for the Royal Family, its results could be tested statistically. This was done by an American statistician for the Kings of England. He calculated for each, the number of prayers said by his loyal subjects on his behalf during his lifetime; and he studied the vital statistics of the Monarchy. He concluded that the effect, if any, was small, but mentioned the possibility that, without the prayers, their vital statistics (and their characters) might have been even worse than they were. It is difficult to devise a properly controlled experiment. I suppose it ought to be made on a large number of identical twins.

214

(80) HOW ANTI-VIVISECTION SOCIETIES LOST THEIR STATUS AS CHARITIES.

For many years anti-vivisection societies in Britain had been treated as "Charities". The status of a Charity has many advantages, particularly in the fact that income, for example from rents or investments, is not liable to tax. The definition of what is, or is not, a Charity is often a matter of great difficulty; but the advancement of religion, education, learning and research has traditionally been regarded as a charitable purpose, as also the relief of sickness or poverty, or the protection of children. Universities, Medical Schools and Hospitals have profited greatly from their status as Charities, but curiously enough certain other bodies whose aim was to frustrate one of the primary objects of these medical institutions (the improvement of biological and medical knowledge) also had that status. If it was, for example, a charitable purpose that led to the discovery of insulin for the treatment of diabetes, it was regarded also as a charitable purpose to try to prevent the experiments from being made by which that discovery was achieved! If it was a charitable purpose to discover the best procedure for standardizing drugs, by the only method usually available (biological testing), it was also charitable to try to prevent standardization. If it was charitable to try to find means of preventing dogs from dying of distemper, it was also charitable to hinder the experiments on dogs that made it possible. All this was obvious nonsense and would not nave been tolerated anywhere but in sentimental Britain. The object of the Research Defence Society, founded in 1908, was to make known the facts about experiments on animals and their immense importance for human and veterinary medicine. For many years Sir Leonard Rogers (1868 -1962) was Treasurer of the Society. Rogers had spent an active lifetime in research on diseases of the tropics, he knew what misery they cause, and he could not stand this nonsense. He had done another kind of research too, partly for fun, on the finances of anti-vivisection societies! From this resulted a pamphlet, Are anti-vivisection societies good charities?

During the war of 1939-45 the anti-vivisectionists were very active (as they had been in 1914-18) in trying to prevent soldiers from being immunized against the diseases they would meet on service. Also there was a strong move then to immunize children against diphtheria. - and they found another congenial activity in trying to prevent this too. So, being at that time a Member of Parliament, I pulled the triqger of the gun that Leonard Rogers had carefully loaded and asked a parliamentary question which ran something like this: Professor Hill to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer why anti-vivisection societies are regarded as Charities when their chief present activities are directed to preventing children from being immunized against diphtheria and soldiers against typhoid and tetanus. The Chancellor was Sir John Anderson* who himself, when young, was an accomplished chemist and had a wide acquaintance with science. The question never appeared on the Order Paper because, when Anderson saw it, he sent his Parliamentary Private Secretary to say that if I would withdraw it he would look carefully into the question - which he could not have done before a quick answer in the House. He did so with such 215 effect that the privilege of charitable status was withdrawn. After much argument an appeal to the House of Lords was not upheld, and the anti-vivisection societies became substantially poorer. They are still much too rich and can still do their parcel of mischief. But at least the status symbol of Charity has been withdrawn, and is not likely to be restored. The credit for this belongs to Leonard Rogers - and to a sensible and unsentimental Chancellor of the Exchequer. I merely happened to be in a position to pull the trigger - which I admit I gladly did. *Later Lord Waverley. Appropriately he was President of the Research Defence Society from 1954 to 1959.

216

(82) THE LAUGHTER THAT LIGHTENS LIFE.

That "humanitarians" and "liberals" sometimes keep company with imbeciles is illustrated by the following ridiculous story of a storm that broke over University College London in November 1926. I sent an account of it to the Nation and Athenaeum, where it appeared on 18 December. Forty five years may seem a very long time ago. But the same sort of idiotic people still exist and if they get a chance they do just the same silly things as in the 1920's; and they are still liable to be supported by "humanitarians" and "liberals". One of the chief culprits in this episode was C.P. Scot (1840-1982) the Editor of the Manchester Guardian. Scott was a great editor and a great liberal, but he allowed himself sometimes to be exploited to make nonsense respectable. The boundary between liberalism and stupidity is not always clearly defined; I am sorry because I would rather be a liberal than a socialist or a conservative but I don't like nonsense except when it is intended to be nonsense as in Alice in Wonderland. Anyhow here is what I wrote. ANTI-VIVISECTION A tradesman supplying animals and food to the Department of Physiology at University College was recently convicted at Bow Street of stealing two dogs which he stated (probably correctly) he was bringing to the laboratory for sale. In the course of his duties the Professor of Physiology at University College (as at other places) must obtain animals for demonstration and research work in his laboratory, and appreciating the ease with which dogs may be stolen he had insisted that with the dogs purchased there should be a certificate that the animals were the lawful property of their vendor. At the police court the magistrate (being, as the Home Secretary afterwards stated in the Commons, unaware of the facts) made various reflections on the alleged procedure at University College for the purchase of animals, which have served since as the text of a violent campaign of misrepresentation in the Press. The public was probably astonished to hear from the Manchester Guardian that "the University College School of Physiology is faced with the task of explaining how such a particularly odious trade comes to be practised in its precincts," and again, "the vivisectíon of household pets, stolen from the streets for that purpose, will be approved by no one"; the implication plainly being that those who carried out the experiments, or purchased the animals, also organized the thefts. Others, less practised in the skilful use of words, followed the lead of the Manchester Guardian. It was stated, or implied, that the convicted man had been "employed" by the College to steal the animals, and that in any time saved from this adventurous pursuit he looked after them in their cages; the truth being that he never was employed by the College, and that skilled attendants care for the animals, who live under admirable conditions, the laboratory being at all times liable to visits by an inspector appointed by the Home office. The authorities of two hospitals in London allowed it to be stated that in their laboratories no dogs are employed, thus admitting that research for which dogs are essential cannot be conducted there; to the cynical these statements may not seem unconnected with the financial needs of the hospitals in question. And then the great British Public began writing 217

anonymous and threatening letters to the Provost, to the Professor of Physiology, and later, to myself*. [ Footnote - Since this article was written another case of alleged dog-stealing has occurred, and a Professor of Pharmacology has been summoned for receiving a stolen dog "knowing it to be stolen". On this case no comment is made as it is still before the courts.]

My part in the matter was a small one. I am not responsible for the purchase of animals, nor do I employ dogs in my experiments. I am prepared, if the necessity arise, to use elephants, but in point of fact the only warm-blooded animals I have ever employed are myself and such of my colleagues and students as are ready to submit to rather strenuous treatment; my particular researches have not, as yet, required other warm-blooded animals. I ventured merely to write a letter to The Times (25 Nov., 1926) in which I pointed out that the present wanton destruction of fifty thousand stray dogs per annum (in London alone) is the chief cause of the shortage of animals for experimental work, and of the temptation to steal them to which livestock dealers are thus exposed. The law (Dog Act, 1906, chap. 32, sect. 3(5)) provides that "no dogs so seized (by the police) shall be given or sold for purpose of vivisection." The first consequence of this letter was a telephone call to my house which was answered by my son, aged eleven. The gentleman at the other end, who refused to give his name, after ascertaining that the voice came from my son, made various adverse comments on my character, and finished up by saying he was going to shoot me. David, although somewhat shaken by this communication, informed the gentleman at the other end that he was "a silly fool," and the incident ended; David being somewhat relieved to see me home an hour later. Next morning the flood of correspondence began. the writers seemed mostly (like the ex-Kaiser) to be on very familiar terms with the Almighty, and to be convinced of His disapproval of the methods of experimental research adopted since the days of Harvey, in the medical sciences. One apparently did not carry her anti-vivisection principles beyond the grave; she hoped and believed that in the next world I might be changed into a dog and that there I might be subjected.to all the excruciating torture which at present I wantonly inflict upon our dear dumb friends. "Perhaps you will enjoy it, you inhuman monster." Another stated that she would have gladly signed her name and given her address, only she had "a beloved dog" of her own which presumably she feared I might send my agent to steal. Another asked, if they could do without dogs at Guy's Hospital why could they not also do without them at University College, where "the students are inferior in every way." Three ladies wrote courteous and rational letters, to which I replied. The initial outburst terminated in a letter from Mr. Stephen Coleridge (1854-1936) to The Times implying, though not daring to assert what is notoriously untrue, that the insulin treatment of diabetes is ineffective. A similar but greater avalanche of correspondence descended on the Provost and on the Professor of Physiology. Much of this was insufficiently stamped, one way presumably of "taking it out of them." Again the writers seemed to possess special information about the opinion of the Creator " who never another" designed that one creature should profit at the expense of another" (presumably carnivora were a mistake); threats of violence were 218 frequent; so was abuse, "you dirty reptile," "you filthy swine," "torturer"; "are you a murderer as well as a thief ?" and so on. "If I lived in London I should call and thrash you"; to the Provost "those who treat animals so would not have the pluck to stand up in a boxing ring"; to the Professor "was it you who threw the dog from the roof of your college to see how it would die ?"; and "why not have a grand holocaust of stolen dogs and cats to celebrate your blooming centenary ?" "I would ask if no person can be found zealous enough to offer his body for these wonderful experiments" (but no offer made); a letter addressed to the "Professor of Brutality and Torture" - "Didn't John Bull show your cruel, filthy set up three weeks ago ?"; "If you possessed a loved dog that trusted you and loved you (she would be astonished if she saw "Joey" waiting for my return); "With all your hellish experiments you have found no cures for colds and measles"; on a cutting enclosed from The Times - "Thy name stinks"; on a postcard signed by J. Hall of Birmingham, "I shall arrive in London soon after this postcard: from that moment you will have tortured your last animal" (this stout fellow seems to have thought better of it); in a letter signed and addressed from a dear old lady-- "Whatsoever ye do to the least of my little ones, ye do it unto me" (not realizing that the little ones referred to were children and that countless children owe their lives and happiness to medical research); "many vivisectionists have died painful deaths" ..."I have the gift of second sight and when your time comes and you die of an agonizing form of cancer (AS YOU WILL) remember this letter; are you beginning to feel anything yet? I expect not, but look out for symptoms early in the New Year"; "instead of taking dumb creatures for your accursed experiments you had better have some of our criminals and lunatics" (?our); two other humanitarians raise the same question; "You cannot imagine our Lord in a laboratory" (or writing anonymous letters like these). One only, of charming simplicity, in reply to a letter of explanation of what we really do, "I feel I must write and thank you for your kindness and patience with me; and personally I do believe all you have told me about the cats." This article is not intended as a vindication of experiments on animals... My object is, first, to warn humane and rational people of the strange company they may find themselves in; and secondly, to point out that the prime cause of all 'the trouble is the anomalous state of the law. According to the law responsible persons, duly licensed by the Home Office are permitted to make these experiments on dogs; they are made under extreme precautions, and are subject to frequent inspection by the Home Office. Equally, according to the law, the work is hindered by the useless killing of unwanted animals, authorized - indeed required - by the sub-section of the Dog Act referred to. None of us would wish to experiment on stolen dogs; we deplore the possibility as much as anyone admitting, however, that the State wishes us to continue our experiments (as presumably it does), for the sake of animals as well as men (witness the recent work on dogs' distemper), why should it place this ridiculous obstacle in our path and allow us and our laboratory servants (who cannot so easily speak for themselves) to be subjected to abuse and persecution for carrying out a duty which is placed upon us by the terms of our appointments in universities or hospitals ? All this led to a cataract of abuse; it fell on my head as I had planned (in order to save my colleague who had received the two stolen dogs - he felt rather sore about it). Some of the abuse was reported in my article, some was unfit for publication; though I had 219 been tempted (but refrained) to test the Editor (H.D. Henderson) with a letter to the Provost of University College, Sir Gregory Foster. This began, not with the usual "Dear Sir", or even "Sir", but with "You bloody bastard"; which reminds me that, in a letter, another A.V. denounced me once in the words "you are worse than a prostitute's bastard" - and that in a lady's handwriting. Poor little bastards! But one item in this cataract of abuse I missed altogether, because I left England (for five months in America) on 15 January 1927, the very day when a letter to the Editor of The Nation and Athenaeum by A.A. Milne was published under the title Vivisection and the Expert. It was in 1926, the year of these strange happenings, that Milne's charming little book "Winnie the Pooh" had appeared. In his letter to the Nation, in a torrent of 900 completely irrelevant words (e.g. "we know that, regarded as a sport, the vivisection of dogs is cruel, barbarous, horrible") he professed to "rush in where Browning and Ruskin have already been trodden on". I am sorry I missed it for forty-five years; if only I had heard of it before he died in 1956 we might have laughed together In comparing the different kinds of invective used in this strange campaign. In the footnote above I referred to later court proceeding against Professor Verney for receiving a stolen dog “knowing it to be stolen". The charge of course was nonsense, but it provoked the same kind of abuse as the previous one. My son, David, referred to earlier, wrote in Sympathy to Verney the following letter which Dr Ruth Verney gave me in 1972. Jan. 7,1927 Dear Professor Verney:

I have just been reading some of the letters you recieved, one of them said why not try it on a human being (the experiment). Daddy does try them on me. I sent it a pity you did'nt go to prison then I could have bought some more sherbet. I have just been reading Oliver Twist and He went to Pentonville where you were going to With love from David Hill. P.S. Daddy is so afraid of these people that he tries the experiment on me instead. The letter was in an envelope which Dr. Ruth Verney also sent me. The writing is not the same as in the letter, but the description of Verney is obviously derived from the correspondence he received. David may have got his elder sister to write it. Prof. Verney Dog Thief Murderer Cutthroat Blood Sucker Wife Beater Drug Fiend Assassin Pharmacology Dept. U.C.L. One letter alone that I got was complimentary, it came from a doctor in Rotherhithe S.E. 16 on 5 February 1927 and was forwarded to me in America. Professor Hill is old enough to know that beliefs are seldom changed by argument. His article was a contribution to the laughter that lightens life - and indeed it brought 220

tears to my eyes. The humorous view is often the only mode of attack, or defence, for a sane man when he cannot find any informing principles". He too was old enough to know it, though ten years younger than me. Then, referring to typhus, he asked: "Why hasn't the Anti-Vivisection Society raised the "Save the Louse" slogan?". When I wrote to thank him, I told him that my mother and I both had that trouble with our eyes if we laughed too much…. And he replied that his statement was "strict scientific fact". He told me also, what I had multiple experience of myself, that after one of his letters to a paper he received 14 communications, 13 of them abusive, one very polite but inane: "One imaginative fellow-creature told me I ought to have my belly ploughed like the poor calf's and smallpox planted well in it and then I ought to be made to obey a "crawling order". Another hoped I would get small-pox all over "Like Job" (the diagnosis of Job's illness presented no difficulty). One discovered that I was a "filthy money grubbing slum doctor" and like all doctors “only believed in the half-crown that vaccinating brought me". Knowing Rotherhithe myself rather well, and some of the devoted people who worked in dockland, I felt that the "humanitarian" who thus elegantly described the Rotherhithe doctor needed at least a kick in the pants. I doubt if he got it. It is a pity that A.A. Milne cannot read

221

(221) ON PUNISHING NAZI CRIMINALS

The war in Europe ended officially on 9 May, 1945. I appear to have celebrated it by sending the following short article to The Spectator; it was published on 18 May.

One of the first legislative acts of the Third Reich was to issue an Animal Protection Law, dated November 24, 1933, and signed by Hitler himself. The following details of it supply an ironic comment on recent revelations of Nazi cruelty. Section I stated: 1. It shall be prohibited unnecessarily to torture or brutally ill-treat an animal.' 2. To torture an animal is to cause it prolonged or repeated pain or suffering; the pain inflicted is deemed unnecessary when it serves no reasonable justifiable purpose. 3. or brutally ill-treat an aninal. To torture an animal is to cause it prolonged or repeated pain or suffering the pain inflicted is deemed unnecessary when it serves no reasonably justifiable purpose. To ill-treat an animal means to cause it pain. Ill- treatment is deemed brutal when it is inspired by a lack of feeling. Among the prohibitions of Section II were the following - small-scale models perhaps of the Nazi treatment of Jews, poliitical opponents, foreign workers and prisoners-of-war: 1. By neglect, to inflict pain or injury in the maintenance, care or transport of animals. 2, To use an animal wantonly for the performance of work which is obviously beyond its strength or which, is calculated to cause it pain, or for which its condition renders it unfit. 3, To abandon one's own domestic animal with the object of getting rid of it. 4, To sharpen or test the keenness of dogs by using cats, foxcubs, or other animals for the purpose. In Section III Strict regulation was provided for the use of living animals for purposes of research. Goering was a lover of dogs and may have induced his master to lump scientific research and cruelty to animals together. In Section IV severe penalties of fine and imprisonment were prescribed for torturing or ill-treating an animal, or for performing experiments on living animals for purposes of research without the necessary license. One may recall that Al Capone was finally jailed in San Francisco Bay for failure to pay income tax. If, under German law, men may claim the same rights as animals, then tens of thousands of Nazi criminals could be severely punished under Hitler's own Animal Protection Law of 1933. Though the defence might argue that Section I prohibited only unnecessary torture or ill-treatment.

222

(84) THE EFFECT OF BODY TEMPERATURE ON ATHLETIC PERFORMANCE: IN TORTOISES AND MEN.

This note, in its original form, was written for the students of pre-clinical science at University College, London, in 1964. It was copied in the College for their private entertainment and instruction. For years I thought that the experiments suggested in it ought to be made. They never will be by me; but somebody might get a lot of fun out of them - which is the best reason for making experiments. I do not know - for certain - what the result would be; indeed there would be no purpose in making them if I did. And a possible snag exists which might, in the case of man, upset one’s calculations. But let us start with tortoises, where there is obviously no snag. Tortoises. Anyone who has ever been friendly with a tortoise will know that when cold he is extremely slow. His movements are normal and coordinate, but very sluggish. A hot tortoise, however, trots around quite merrily. I have never made experiments on the actual speed of tortoises and how it is affected by temperature, though they would be quite easy. All one needs is a stop watch, a lawn marked with two concentric circles, and of course a tortoise; and then some means of warming him up. It would be no good just having a straight track, since tortoises, like Fellows of the Royal Society, are strongly individualistic and go in whatever direction they please; nullius in verba could be their motto, as it is of the Royal Society* [* the full quotation translated from Horace, applies even better to tortoises than to F.R.S.s:”I am not bound by allegiance to any master; wherever the wind carries me I put into port and make myself at home".] The principle of the concentric circles has been well investigated at John Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, where an annual turtle race is held, in front of the children's ward. The turtles (who must be natives of Maryland) are all confined before the start inside a circular barrier (the inner circle); then, on the word "go", the barrier is lifted and the turtles start off, of course in as many directions as there are turtles, and the one who gets to the outer circle first, wins. Their owners (students, nurses and interns) may not touch them, but are allowed to encourage them in other ways; it is well known, for example, that tortoises enjoy brass bands, they listen to them in a most affecting way (see Gadow, subject Reptiles, in the Cambridge Natural History). Whether Maryland turtles do is not known, but their owners encourage them with bag-pipes, giving much pleasure in the children's ward. Whether the owmers ever cheat by warming their turtles up beforehand is not known for certain; taking the "rectal" temperature of a turtle is not that easy, even to a professor of medicine. All this suggests that a demonstration of this kind might be given on the College lawn at University College, London, by the Faculty of Medical Sciences at the next Assembly of Faculites in 1965* [it never was]. To make it more scientific, some of the tortoises could be warmed immediately before the race, others cooled, and the Q10 of tortoises could be determined. Unfortunately the College lawn is not within view of the children's ward at the Hospital. 223

It should be noted that what has been said about tortoises applies equally to other cold blooded animals. At zero centigrade a frog cannot produce enough velocity to get off the ground; at 25'C he can leap a long way. But unlike tortoises most cold blooded animals may not start off at once on the word "go". A toad might just sit thinking about it for five minutes. Hotting up human athletes. Now all this is to introduce the more serious part of the proposal, namely to warm up a human athlete and see how much faster he can run. So far as isolated muscles go, under a constant load they shorten about 2.5 times faster for a rise of temperature of 10oC: so 1oC would increase their speed about 10%. But in competitive athletics 10% is an awful lot. It would turn 10 secs. for 100 yards into a world record. Of course it is not really as simple as that, running at top speed is not the same as the shortening of a muscle under a constant load; it is an extremely complex affair, involving rapid alternating acceleration and retardation of the limbs. [ At this stage the argument became too complicated for a general article; but four sections of it may be of interest]. Heating the body. The only practical method is electrical, by means of induction heating or diathermy. Warming the body by conduction of heat from the surface inwards is far too slow, and would lead to sweating and other reactions. To warm the body of a man 70 kg by 2°C would require the absorption of 5 kilowatts for 100 sec. The resting ("basal") metabolism of a man of that size is not more than 100 watts, so his rate of heat loss also is 100 watts; it would not be much greater (apart from sweating) if his temperature were 2'C higher. So the temperature, which could be raised electrically quite quickly, would take a long time to fall again, and there would be no need to hurry unduly. Of course the details of the electrical equipment would have to be worked out, but the principle and methods of induction heating are well understood. It would be necessary to find out what rate of heating would be best, and whether, for example, heating of the head should be avoided (though the head would soon be heated by the blood). But there are plenty of people who know about these things; and it is difficult to imagine that there would not be lots of volunteers as subjects, at any rate among medical students who do not have hysterics at the thought of being experimented on! A possible snag. Running at top speed in a trained athlete is a highly skilful performance, involving the most exquisite timing and coordination of movements. It might be found that a rise of temperature of the whole body impaired this nervous control, reducing or reversing the effect of an increase of the intrinsic speed of the muscles. In cold blooded animals there is no sign of this, their performance is always improved by a rise of temperature. In a warm blooded animal, however, with its extremely powerful thermostatic control, even a small change of temperature might upset the nervous coordination of a highly complex movement. One could only find out by trying, starting with small rises of temperature and seeing what happens. It seems extremely unlikely that a rise of 0.5 C would have any deleterious effect on nervous coordination, and it could easily produce a 224 measureable effect on the maximum speed. If the result looked promising one could then go on to 1.6-or 2.oC - or more. Warning. One of the known hazards of athletics is that of mechanical damage to tendons and muscles. Alternating acceleration and retardation of the limbs during running at top speed are bound to produce considerable stresses; and if these were near the limit of safety when the muscles were at normal body temperature they might be too great for safety at the higher speeds and accelerations possible with a raised temperature. The probability of harm does not seem very great; but it would be better to avoid employing a subject while he was in training for an important race! Field Events. 1. In long jumping, where a good performance depends very largely on a high velocity at the take-off, there might be considerable advantage in warming up the body beforehand. 2. In throwing - shot, discus and javelin - the velocity with which the missile leaves the hand is very high. For world record performances a very rough calculation gave the following velocities: shot 40 ft/sec discus 8o ft/sec javelin 95 ft/sec. . These of course are accomplished by a complicated movement in which the momentum of the body is concentrated as far as possible in the hand at the critical moment (as in the tip of a whip, where the velocity may exceed that of sound). If the very accurate timing and coordination required were not affected by raising the body temperature, a considerable improvement in performance might be achieved. [There is one difficulty in heating the body up for Field Events, namely that these are liable in practice to go on for a long tine, so the body would cool down again. It is in such events as running 100 yards, in which the runner could go straight to the starting point from the induction heater, that the most interesting results would be obtained.]

225

(85) TORTOISES AND INTELLIGENCE

In 1948 a friend in "Intelligence", coming in for one of our occasional chats, asked what I was doing; I replied that I was looking for tortoises for some experiments I wanted to make on their slow and interesting muscles. Except when major wars disrupt communications these animals can easily be obtained from dealers; but in 1948 none were available. He said he would try to get some for me. So he wrote to the naval attaché in Athens and asked him to get six tortoises and forward them by air to London. The ways of the secret service are known to be peculiar, and a demand for tortoises apparently caused no comment. Its purpose might have been to confuse some potential enemy. The attaché went out with a bloodhound and obtained two tortoises, which duly arrived at my friend's office in London. They were called, I was later told, Xerxes and Thermistocles (sic). But all this had taken a lot of time, and when they turned up in Whitehall nobody knew what to do with them. My friend himself was hibernating in hospital after an emergency operation. His secretary rang up the hospital to find out, but he could not answer and she got on to his doctor. Then further confusion was caused by the fact that the doctor's name was Turtle; he found it difficult to believe that his leg was not being pulled. But that difficulty was sorted out and Xerxes and Thermistocles duly arrived at University College in a large Daimler. Thermistocles was very suitably named, and within a week or two his biceps cruris was doing its duty on a thermopile. Xerxes, however, was too large for my purpose and was renamed Ajax (he was really a Greek, not a Persian). He went later and lived with my daughter's family for some years until while he was hibernating (quite legally) under a pile of leaves, somebody lighted a bonfire on top of him. He used to pull a cart, and had his telephone number painted on his shell, which saved him several times from wandering too far. The naval attaché who conducted operation "Hamstring" asked if the other four armoured reptiles were required immediately, or whether he had a little time to catch up with them. Tortoises were hibernating (in January) and a special long- nosed hound would have to be obtained. I told him that if Agamemnon, Nestor, Achilles and Odysseus could come we should certainly find useful employment for them; "but we can wait, as we have already waited nearly ten years". I had just got an Import Licence from the Board of Trade, and was intending to call up armoured reinforcements from Belgium, as soon as possible. In February these arrived, and the naval attaché was told that he need not bother any more, but that Thermistocles had died a hero's death. Ajax welcomed the Belgians very warmly. We concluded that their religious or political affiliations were similar. Two years later the Naval Officer involved in "Hamstring" asked for, and received, a copy of the article in Nature describing the operation. Ajax at that time (March 1951) appeared to be rather grumpy when my grandchildren woke him up, so they let him go to sleep again till May. It. must have been two winters later that he perished under his funeral pyre. 226

(86) THE COMMUNISTS' NEW WEAPON – GERM WARFARE.

[The following Foreword was written in 1953 to a little pamphlet* by John Clews under this title. The purpose of the pamphlet was to examine a portentous document, circulated in the autumn of 1952, describing the findings of a so- called International Scientific Commission for the Investigation of the Facts concerning Bacterial Warfare in Korea and China. I received my copy anonymously from the Foreign Office. It is now in the Thane Library of University College, London. The alleged culprit of course was "American imperialism". It would be a pity if this strange episode were forgotten]

I remember once talking to Wilfred Trotter, neuro-surgeon, psychologist, and author of The Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War, about a strange meeting:(in about 1936) at which a scientific committee was told of a death-ray on a German airfield which could kill dogs a mile away and had the further advantage of being able to transmute base metals Into gold. I remarked that a little knowledge of physics could be helpful in assessing such devices (I had already used my physiology by asking the inventor the inconvenient question "What did the dogs die of?") Trotter retorted that a knowledge of physics was quite-unnecessary; anyone with sufficient experience of human behaviour could quickly recognize that pattern of imposter. I accepted his reproof. I know little of bacteriology or medical and nothing of biological warfare: but I am sure that Trotter would have insisted that such knowledge is superfluous in appraising the Report of the "International Scientific Commission" on biological warfare in Korea and China. My excuse for writing this Foreword is that, together with a fairly long experience of how scientific work is done, scientific papers are written and scientific judgements formed, I have a strong repugnance to the prostitution of Science for the purposes of propaganda or advertisement. If scientific people accept, without protest, the exploitation of science for such mean ends, its currency will be debased, its foundation of freedom and integrity will be undermined, and its traditional status as an object of frank and friendly international cooperation will be ruined. The authors of the Report, described as a group of "impartial and independent scientists," “conceived a deep respect" for the "scientific attainments and probity" of the Chinese colleagues who assisted them. This tribute, unusual in a scientific document, invites a reciprocal compliment. The scientific attainments and probity of the commissioners are not challenged, their credulity only is in question. Unfortunately, apart from Dr.N., I do not know them, but their antecedents are described by Mr. Clews in the following pages. Dr. N. I have always regarded as one of the most innocent people in the world, with a singular capacity for writing speedily and at length; this gift may have been of value to his colleagues while drafting the Report. I know my American scientific colleagues pretty well; apart from anything else, about twenty of them have worked with me for long periods in my laboratory. They are sensible, practical people; if they and their countrymen had decided to 227 try out methods of biological warfare they would scarcely have made such fatuous experiments as those described in the Report, experiments moreover of which they could never hope to learn the result. What useful effect could be achieved by dropping fleas on a remote countryside, except to give the enemy an excuse for propaganda? And if an enemy wanted that excuse, why should he not drop, or plant, the fleas himself? And could he not use the propaganda also to provide an emotional patriotic drive, badly enough needed, for public health precautions? As a Communist stunt it had much to commend it; as a deliberate act of war by the Americans it doesn't make sense. The report of the "International Scientific Commission" contains 665 pages, a full-page portrait of the authors, a smaller one of hundreds of Korean women wearing masks and picking up fleas with chopsticks, a formidable enlarged photograph of a flea "disseminated by an American plane," the tracks of aircraft, a picture of a lorry piled high with insecticides and one of the incineration and burial of the insects. All this, and much else, is convincing evidence, not of who dropped (or planted) the fleas, voles, clams, etc., but of the care with which the case submitted to the Commission was prepared. The investigation began in Peking at the end of June 1952, and the Report, drafted between 13 and 30 August, appeared - all 330,000 words and 2.5 lbs. of it - in September. As I wrote in October in a letter to The New York Times, whatever the scientific merits of this strange research may be, one thing must be conceded: in view of the vast extent of the material examined, the long and often "hazardous or arduous" travels of the Commission, the difficulties of language, and (above all) the fact that “the work was done in an atmosphere of calm and scientific objectivity," the time taken in the whole operation must be admitted a world's record. But let nobody imagine that this is the usual way in which impartial scientific judgments are reached, or scientific papers written. Laughter is the best detergent for nonsense. I was told recently that when Dr. N. invited a colleague to sign a manifesto denouncing the American use of germ warfare in Korea and China, the colleague replied that he would gladly do so if Dr. N. would sign his manifesto, protesting against the Russians sending all those flying saucers to America. No doubt the story is not true - but neither are the stories in the Report of the "International Commission".

228

(87) SPOOKS, FRAUDS, ECTOPLASM AND SELF-DELUSION

A. William Stirling, showman B. Spirit photographs C. Music by hypnotism D. The Piltdown skull in my cupboard E. Ectoplasm F. Dowsing, divining, triangulation G, Mitogenetic radiation in nerves A. William Stirling, showman From 1920 to 1923 I was professor of physiology at Manchester University. My predecessor was William Stirling (1851-1932), who had been on the staff at Edinburgh under William Rutherford and then professor of physiology at Aberdeen before coming to Manchester. He was elected a member of the Physiological Society when he was 26. His early experience at Leipzig under Ludwig, and at the College de France; his early training under W. Rutherford; his wide knowledge of physiology and physiologists of earlier days as shown in his book Some apostles of physiology; his excellence as a speaker and public lecturer, his commanding presence; all these could have led to his being one of the outstanding physiologists of his time. But something important was missing. He published four minor papers in the journal of Physiology in 1878, and one in 1901, and is not remembered for any significant contribution. His chief occupation seems in fact to have been in giving public lectures all, round Lancashire (and at the Royal Institution in London, where he was Fullerian Professor). By 1920 he had outlived his usefulness if any in the Medical School at Manchester, though they would have had to keep him till he died in 1932 but for a fortunate mischance. He was asked to represent the University at some celebration in Paris soon after the war ended; the reason for choosing him was his good presence, he looked - if he was not - very distinguished, and his excellent French. But while he was there he got drunk at some party and apparently insulted Madame Poincaré, the wife of the President of France. Strong representations were made to Manchester; and the Faculty threw their hats in the air, seized their chance, and he resigned. That was before the days when there is talk of "academic freedom" for every kind of bad manners. Anyhow, shortly after that, while I was working in my cellar at Cambridge, a big man with a hard hat on the back of his head blew in, unannounced, and said "are you Hill?" Then followed the question, "would you like to come to Manchester?", to which I replied "God forbid, why should I?". It was H.R. Dean, professor of pathology at Manchester (later at Cambridge),and he would not take "no" for an answer, in an argument lasting for some weeks. So I went to Manchester as Stirling's successor, but only after the University had agreed to find a large sum of money to re-equip the laboratory and provide a decent staff. 229

It became apparent then how grossly the place had been neglected. Although Stirling was a first-class public lecturer, his lectures in the medical school had the disadvantage that his students knew that his demonstrations and experiments were faked. The moral effect of this could be seen in some of the things to be described, in which the active agents were former pupils of his. And facilities for practical classes in anything but histology were almost totally absent. Exhibits, indeed, there were but these were mostly fantastic. One bottle contained a bit of dirty material labelled "flavouring matter in one bottle of whisky"; there were also twenty empty whisky bottles from which (perhaps)2the flavouring matter had been derived. There were small tents of various sizes to show how much air a man could breathe in a minute at various levels of exercise. Of one exhibit the best guess we could make of its function was "Apparatus for importing firearms into Ireland". It looked like the tooth of a mammoth, it opened with a hinge, and had a space inside about the size and shape of a revolver. And there were also fifty large printed cards, perhaps to encourage the students not to overwork, with the couplet: Deprived of rest all prematurely die, 'Tis this alone that does our strength supply. That, then, was the environment in which Stirling's pupils learnt their physiology [* I know one of them and she strongly confirms what I have written of him.] Anatomy was quite another matter; Elliott Smith had been professor of anatomy there from 1909 to 1919, before him was A.H. Young. Pharmacology (Materia Medica) was under R.B. Wild. In the University as a whole, of course, the highest standards prevailed — in scholarship, history, chemistry, physics, engineering and biology. In physiology the place had long been stone dead. And physiologists (genuine ones) are the least likely of all people to believe in spooks and nonsense; they know very wall how easily the senses are deceived and how readily people believe what they want to believe. Now consider (B, C and D) some examples of spooks and frauds which would never have materialized if (say) Earnest Starling had been professor of physiology at Manchester instead of William Stirling.

B. Spirit-photographs In 1922 my colleague John Stopford, Professor of anatomy, and I were invited to a demonstration of spirit photography. The spirits, we were told, would peer out from the eyes of a medium and make pictures on a photographic plate. To show that all was fair and no cheating the medium was to wear only his pyjamas; an unusual way of demonstrating one's integrity, suggesting indeed that he expected to be suspected. The picture to be projected was of the altar of a Catholic Church in Manchester and the priest was to be in attendance. 230

When we arrived we were shown into a room dimly lit by a red lamp, Holy music was played on a gramophone and incense was burnt. The company consisted of: (a) our host who must, as a student, have witnessed my predecessor's "experiments"; (b) the priest, a gullible old fellow as the sequel showed; (c) someone to assist with incense, holy music, and (later) wine; (d) the medium, a disreputable looking character according to the higher standards of those days, in his pyjamas; (e) a reporter of the Manchester Guardian who was very worked up about the wonders he expected to see; there was a history of "shell-shock" during the war; (f) a photographer from the Manchester Guardian, a very good chap who did not believe a word of it. In order, further, to show that there was no cheating I was entrusted with the task of putting a photographic plate from a fresh packet into a frame. Just as a precaution, I put two plates in, one behind the other, the second secretly for myself. Then the medium, began to go into a "trance". Groaning deeply, and clothed very lightly, he soon complained that he was bitterly cold. So, lying on a sofa, he was covered with heavy dark blankets. These I suspected had another function too. After prolonged groans, he said he was ready for the plate, so I pushed it under the blankets. Then for several minutes he groaned worse and worse and finally told us he was ready to expose the plate to the spirits. So he threw off the blankets, and glared at the plate for several seconds. Stopford, who was a very acute observer, noted that the frame with the plates was held vertically not horizontally. By then the priest and the Manchester Guardian reporter were shaking with excitement but the photographer whispered to me that nothing but light could make pictures on photographic plates — which was not strictly true, but near enough; I liked that photographer. Then I was permitted to take the plates and develop them. There, true enough, was the picture, alleged to be of the altar of the priest's church; and my private copy too. With this success the priest and the reporter were deeply moved, but the photographer was so indignant that I had difficulty in restraining him. Next wine was served, and the medium drank a lot of it; which sent him into another kind of trance. He put his arms around the priest's neck and insisted that he was jolly good fellow. Then he put on his clothes, and he and the priest went home in a taxi together to Stockport, the medium continuing to insist that the priest was a jolly good fellow. With them went the photographer, who told me all about it next day. The priest, being a very simple chap, took it in good part thinking it was due to the spirits (not the wine). Then, after mutual congratulations, Stopford and I went away with my secret copy of the plate. Stopford was pleased to see that the picture was horizontal, not vertical. The spirits had twisted it through a right angle. We 231

had been told that the picture would come from both eyes, and lacking complete control in a dim light the medium, or the spirits, might produce a double picture. They did. But the two pictures, on close examination, showed certain geometrical peculiarities which spirits would scarcely have thought of; and the medium (or the spirits) was squinting vertically not horizontally. But anything can happen with spirits in a dim red light. On consideration, however, a simpler explanation was possible. If you have ever tried to cut out a pointed bit of tin plate with a pair of scissors you may have noticed that it kinks over at the point in a completely characteristic way. The picture produced by the spirits had just such kinks. That gave it away. The answer was simple. Next day I got an electric pocket lamp and covered it with a small disc with two pinholes close together, to give the double picture. Then a template was cut out with scissors, to imitate the picture of the altar and attached in front of the pinholes. When a photographic plate was held before it in a dark room a passable imitation was made of the picture produced by the spooks. There was no need to lie under blankets, an ordinary darkroom was enough - and there was no incense or holy music. There could now be no doubt that the medium, groaning under the rugs with the plate in his possession, had just such a lamp with its template. The people who organized this stunt had hoped to publish the result; but the photographer told them that they had better look out, or else we should publish ours too. That ended it. C. Music by hypnotism At some time in 1922 or 1923 in Manchester I was invited to a public demonstration of hypnotism in the medical school. A large number of medicals and others attended. It was given by a former student of the famous professor. Two subjects were employed who, it was stated, had never learnt to play on the piano; but when hypnotized, they would play, without script, anything that a member of the audience could suggest. The demonstration was far too good to be true. The artists were "hypnotized", then various members of the audience told them what to play, which they did. Being no musician, I could not judge how well they played, but it seemed to me a highly professional performance, and there was loud applause. The experiment was entirely successful — with one proviso, that nobody was lying. After all, telling lies is very common, particularly if fame, or notoriety, or money, is to be gained, or patent sold. D. The Piltdown skull in my cupboard. In the Proceedings of the Royal Society, A, 1923, Vol. 102, p. 710, is a paper by J. Holker, M.D. Manchester, on "the periodic opacity of certain colloids in progressively- increasing concentrations of electrolytes". This paper is as fraudulent as the famous Piltdown skull; yet I communicated it, for publication, to the Royal Society in August 1922 and it was published in March 1923. But by August 1923 I had become fully convinced of the fraud. 232

Fortunately it was discovered much quicker than the fraud of the Piltdown skull (1912,1953). The experimental work, on which that paper was based, was done in the Department of Pathology at Manchester University; it was supported by a grant from the Medical Research Council (M.R.C.), starting1921, made initially on the application of Professor H.R. Dean. Four papers by Holker were published on the subject in two other journals, the Biochemical Journal and the Journal of Pathology and Bacteriology. For those, however, I had no responsibility. Many people were taken in by the fraud: Dean and his colleagues and I in Physiology, and the editors of three journals. The only person who did not believe the results claimed was Professor Otto Meyerhof, then of Kiel; he visited Manchester during the summer of 1922, heard about Halker's experiments, and was entirely sceptical. I have no memory of the grounds for his scepticism, but the results seemed to us in Manchester at that time to be entirely reasonable and well established and we saw no grounds for disbelieving them. Results like those of Fig,1, reproduced from Holker's paper; and apparently obtained repeatedly in a variety of ways, could not reasonably be attributed to experimental error. Either they had some basic of fact, or one had to assume fraud or madness. I had never come upon such things in a scientific colleague before; fortunately I have seldom done so since. Dean left Manchester for Cambridge in the autumn of 1922 and after that there was nobody left in the Pathology Department to supervise the work. I had never had any actual responsibility for it, though Holker used to come and talk to me about it sometimes. I noticed early in 1923 that his claims for it were becoming increasingly difficult to swallow. In March 1923 Walter Fletcher, the Secretary of the M.R.C., asked me about Holker's work and I replied: I think his work should be submitted to some Committee. Nobody is responsible for it, nobody can ensure that he isn't going off the rails. There seem to be points of great interest in it, but a lot of rubbish in what he says and thinks. He is a mixture of great experimental skill and insight with a quite amazing muddle-headedness. ...I could not recommend an indefinite continuance of your assistance on trust. As 1923 went on Holker's claims continued to become more picturesque and pretentious and I began seriously to doubt them. I asked him to let me watch some of the experiments being made, to which (apparently gladly) he agreed and a time was appointed. Then I found that the actual observations were always made by his two technicians on a plan which he had previously laid dawn; and in my presence no results of any significance were obtained. I became more and more sceptical, and other experiments were made while I, and two of my colleagues (W,F. Slater and A.D. Ritchie) were present. On no occasion were results obtained similar to those previously reported and published. The chief thing that puzzled me about the whole business was that Holker never showed any sign of resentment, or distress, or indignation, at what, by any ordinary man, would have been seen as a direct challenge to his integrity. 233

I should have continued my inquiry but I was moving in the summer to London. I arranged, however, that later experiments should be witnessed by Slater and Ritchie. In their presence the results claimed could never be repeated. The M.R.C. was informed and — with extraordinary forbearance — continued his grant for another year. But in December 1924 Holker told Fletcher, in a letter, in explanation of the failure to confirm his earlier results, that when the observations were made in the presence of a witness the observer was "liable to be disturbed by a psychological factor". That, as Fletcher replied, "is the claim commonly made by spiritualists". He told Holker that the M.R.C. grant must end. So Holker gave up his "research" and changed over to a private V.D. practice; for this he could claim a scientific basis in the fact that he had had much previous experience in Wasserman tests in Dean's laboratory. According to the Medical Register he remained in Manchester till some time in the 1930's. Later the only address given was that of a Bank in Paris. Had his V.D. practice led to affluence and retirement to some more amiable climate? Or had something happened which made it expedient to disappear? He died in 1955. Moral, if any? Naturally I blame myself for being taken in, looking now at the paper in P.R.S., one can see obvious defects, which I ought to have made the author correct, but there is nothing obviously wrong. I have consulted a colleague who has had long experience in adding salts to blood serum. He criticises the indiscriminate use of a mixture of sera from several human individuals, and thinks it possible that this may have led to various levels of instability in the mixture which could have given the impression of periodicity. Once Holker had got the idea, which he might have regarded as a great discovery that would make him famous, he and his assistants could have fudged the observations in order to obtain the desired results. Nobody will ever know. Obviously I ought to have insisted earlier on witnessing the actual experiments. But one does not naturally assume that a colleague is a liar or a lunatic, and I had never known a man of that kind before who was not an obvious charlatan. The interesting question, is what was Holker's state of mind? Was he deliberately cheating? Were his technicians leading him, too gladly, up the garden path? Was it a collaborative fraud by all of them? What were the original data on which were based those beautiful curves in the Royal Society Proceedings of 1923? The trend of his claimed observations, which led me in 1923 to challenge the experiments then being made, if unchecked, would probably have led to the production of a paper which was obvious nonsense. Anyhow they ended finally, so far as I ever knew, without any complaint, or regret, or self-exoneration, or apology by the chief actor. They just disappeared as though they had never been, Ought one to have let it be known publicly (in order to save other people's time) that the results were wrong or worse? That might have landed us in legal action and "damages". But judging from what happened since, or failed to happen, the experiments have been totally, forgotten. One thing that should be remembered is that Holker had learnt his physiology under the same famous professor at Manchester and had, for a time, actually been on the staff of his department. The nearest contact I have ever had with anything like this is the fraud of the Piltdown skull. The skull was "discovered" in 1912 and the hoax was shown up by the 234

staff of the Natural History Museum only in 1953. My sole connexion with it was that I was then a Trustee of the Museum - the development of the "show-up" was exciting. The motive is as difficult to understand as that of the Holker fraud. One needs probably to be an alienist for both. E. Ectoplasm In 1929 I was invited by the Marylebone Spiritualist Association to attend a seance in which a medium would produce ectoplasm in a good red light. The suggestion that I should be invited came, as I heard later, from my friend Richard Gregory, the Editor of Nature. Why? Gregory had been an astronomer and possibly like other physicists he was more partial to spooks and spirits than any physiologists are; perhaps he wanted to convert me. I did not know what ectoplasm was: the dictionary defined it as "the outer firm layer of the body of an Amoeba, or the like. ",' but that was not much help. In the Enclopaedia Britannica of 1929 which I had not seen then - is a description of the sort of ectoplasm that was clearly intended, written by no less a person than Sir Oliver Lodge F.R.S., a famous physicist (physiologists obstinately refuse to believe in this kind of ectoplasm). Lodge described it as exteriorized protoplasm, whatever that means; he stated that it lasts only a short time, and has to be he returned to the body whence it came; that it can exert "muscular force" and a "direct voice". He stated also that ectoplasmic formations have been photographed in ultraviolet light with a quartz lens. Not knowing any of this I asked why the ectoplasm required a red light; why not white light? This drew a reply indignant at my ignorance— didn't I know that white light was very dangerous to the owner of the ectoplasm? With that new information, I asked if I could be allowed to bring with me three of my friends, to help carry out the "scientific investigation" of the ectoplasmic phenomena as had been proposed. Smelling a rat, my correspondent asked who my friends were. I replied, (1) an amateur conjurer of my acquaintance,(2) a psychologist and (3) a pharmacologist; and added that I hoped the pharmacologist would be allowed to collect some of the ectoplasm for analysis. This was rather provocative, and the correspondence ended. It was a pity that they would not accept my conditions, for I should have enjoyed it as much as, seven years earlier, Stopford and I had enjoyed the spirit photographs. Possibly my three proposed assistants would have been able to throw light — maybe even white light — on the nature of the phenomena exhibited, with results as satisfactory as with the spirit photographs. And if my pharmacologist had injured the medium by attempting to take a sample of his ectoplasm, and been prosecuted for assault and battery, that might have led to legal action which could have been very entertaining, if expensive. E Dowsing divining, triangulation. In 1919, P.C. Bartlett invited E.D. Adrian and me to come to the Psychology Department at Cambridge to discuss with a man, who was a professional land agent, the powers of divination which he claimed to possess. He worked with a wire, not the more orthodox twig. He was a practised water diviner, but his power extended to various other useful purposes. He could detect the difference between bottles containing different chemicals, or the presence of metals, or the seat where one had sat while he was out of the room, or (best of 235 all) the camp where a prisoner of war was being held. The war was just over then, so there were no longer any prisoners to serve as subjects; but we tested some of his other claims. The claim about the prisoners, however, was the best. Being a land agent he was familiar with methods of surveying, and he used his wire instead of a theodolite. First he took the bearing of the prisoner with the wire and laid it out on a map. Then he followed the same procedure at a distant point. The intersection of the lines on the map gave the prisoner's position. Not unnaturally that often turned out to be Ruhleben, a notorious prison camp of the First War, which is just to the west of Berlin near Spandau. No statistics, however, were given of the accuracy of his findings. He was obviously quite sincere, but the claims he made were not convincing. They depended only on his word, and he was obviously very credulous. Then we tested him with a metal coin in one or other hand. This he got right in about half the tests. When right, it was due to his powers, when wrong he was quick and clever at finding a good reason for failure. For example, the window was open and that blew the "influence" away. Next he went out of the room and one of us sat on a chair, then got up before he returned to tell us which chair it was. He was often right, but just as often wrong; but always was ready with some naive reason when he was wrong. It was as simple as that. He was friendly and cooperative and not the least put out when he was wrong; some ready explanation of his failure was always forthcoming. He was so convinced of his powers that failure had no relevance to him. Psychologically he might have been interesting, because in all others respects he seemed completely sane. But, for his claims there was no evidenceat all. Which is a pity. What a boon divining could be nowadays in detecting hijackers of aircraft, bombs in luggage, kidnappers of persons, or even personal files of university students! Many exhaustive studies of divining,of course, have been made over the years. The most picturesque of recent findings were published in New Zealand; (in 1948).where five “health diviners" were tested on a healthy young man aged twenty-four years. Twelve different ailments were discovered in nine diagnoses. The most spectacular was that of varicose veins in a wooden leg. But the whole article is of great interest. [* By P.A. Ongley,N.Z. Journal Sci.. and Tech. B. General section, 30, No.1, 38 - 54. G Mitogenetic radiation in nerve. On 10 February, 1933, I gave a Friday Evening Discourse at the Royal Institution, London, on The Physical Nature of the Nerve Impulse. Present knowledge has gone far beyond most of what I said then: but the final section of my lecture (given below) dealt with alleged discoveries which were exciting considerable interest at the time, and it would be a pity if they were altogether forgotten. If there is a moral to be drawn from this fantastic story it is better that the reader should draw it for himself. What I said might be paraphrased, "how to be tactful though honest". The tact "paid off", for I was received with the greatest kindness two years later when I attended the International Congress of Physiologists in Leningrad and Moscow; and we heard nothing there about "mitogenetic radiation". Fortunately the ordinary Russian has a wonderful sense of fun. 236

...The facts described so far are reasonably certain, though their explanation is not. Some others will now be referred to, of great importance if they are confirmed, but for which the evidence is not yet convincing. During the last few years a number of papers have appeared from Moscow and Leningrad on the subject of so-called 'rnitogenetic radiation', The name implies that the radiation in question is able to cause mitosis ( cell division) in cells, and the approved method of detecting and measuring it was to determine the increase in the number of yeast cells in a suspension subjected to the radiation. Living organisms themselves are said to give out this radiation, particularly when active, and the analysis of the radiation is held to indicate the type of chemical reaction involved in the activity. The yeast cells, prepared in a special manner, are held in a suspension which is placed in two tubes, an experimental and a control. The experimental tube is exposed through its open end to the radiation in question, the control is kept without radiation. At the end of the exposure, samples are taken and incubated, and after three or four hours the cells are killed and counted; the excess of cells in the experimental suspension is expressed as a percentage of the control. The radiation stated to be given out by living cells is in the ultraviolet region, chiefly between 0.19 and 0.25 Its amount is so relatively large that it can be split up by a quartz spectrograph into bands 0.001 wide and each band examined separately for its effect in producing the division of yeast cells. This is not the occasion to deal with the general question of mitogenetic radiation, but a few months ago a series of papers appeared from a laboratory in Leningrad in which various results obtained from nerve are discussed. If it be true that excited nerve gives out a characteristic radiation which can be used to identify the chemical reactions involved in its activity, then indeed a new day has dawned in the very difficult problem of the physical nature of nerve activity. In a figure in a recent paper by Kalendaroff (Pflugers Arch., 231), successive spectra, analysed by a quartz spectrograph and the yeast cell indicator, refer to (1) a resting nerve, (2) ground-up nerve, (3) mechanical stimulus, radiation from the point of stimulation, (4) electrical stimulus, between the electrodes, (5) injury, radiation 20mm from the place of injury (6) electrical stimulus, radiation 20mm. away, (7) mechanical stimulus, 20mm. away. In the lower half of the figure there were spectra for (1) oxidation of pyrogallol in air, (2) glycolysis, (3) action of phosphatase, (4) splitting of creatine-phosphoric acid, (5) splitting off of ammonia from protein. When we remember that maximal continuous stimulation of nerve does not double its resting metabolism, the variety and strength of the radiation emitted from active nerve, under the comparatively mild stimuli administered to it, are rather astonishing. A vague suspicion that the results are too good to be true is a little increased by a subsequent paper by Schamarina which shows an evident misunderstanding of the nature of nerve activity. It is known, and it is an obvious consequence of the existence of a refractory period following the passage of an impulse, that when two nerve impulses start at opposite ends of a nerve and meet in the middle they are unable to pass one another and both are wiped out. When a single impulse traverses the nerve the whole of the nerve goes through a phase of activity. When two impulses start at opposite ends of the nerve they meet in the 237 middle and stop, but again the whole of the nerve has gone through the active phase. If radiation is given out as the result of nerve activity, its emission should occur equally in the two cases. Schamarina, however, expecting that because the two impulses destroy one another, therefore there should be no radiation from the point where they meet, has described experiments in support of her expectation. If the results are true, we need a new picture of the propagated disturbance in nerve. The suspicion is strengthened by a further paper by Braine: describing the use of the same technique for the study of human fatigue. At the beginning of this remarkable paper it is stated that modern methods for investigating the phenomena of fatigue in man leave much to be desired, and that the author therefore took up the method of mitogenetic radiation in order to find a new and more accurate means of describing the state of fatigue in a factory worker. One hundred girls working in an electrical factory were examined, samples of their blood being taken at eight in the morning, at three in the afternoon and at five in the afternoon. The blood was dried on filter paper, then dissolved in distilled water and finally allowed to give out its radiation, which was measured as usual by the yeast cells, At eight in the morning the mean value of the radiation coming from their blood was 28, as measured by the percentage increase, over the control, of the number of cells in the yeast suspension. After seven hours work the girls were apparently completely exhausted, for their blood gave out no radiation at all, except in a few isolated cases. After two hours rest the radiation had risen to 28 again. Of the social and industrial importance of these results, supposing them to be true, I need not speak, though I wonder if there are many British factory operatives who would be found completely exhausted, even of "radiation", after seven hours work. An even stranger result follows. Not only did haemolysed blood emit radiation which was abolished by seven hours work in a factory, but also the cornea and the conjunctiva did the same. The girls apparently had only to look at the yeast cells to set them dividing! At eight in the morning the radiation from the girls' eyes had a mean value of 24, after seven hours work it had a mean value of 4, after two hours recovery a mean value of 20. Finally — and most unromantically— it is stated that the spectrum analysis of the radiation given out by the girls' eyes showed that its only important component was that due to glycolysis! It is not easy, in the case of the paper describing the results of the two nerve impulses meeting one another, to avoid the feeling that the expectation of a certain result has something to do with its appearance; and it is difficult not to draw the same conclusion from the paper describing the new test for fatigue. The claims made are clearly most important if they can be verified, and one hopes that verification may soon be at hand. The difficulty in understanding nerve is largely that the changes in it are too small for ordinary chemical methods to detect. If the new methods elaborated by our Russian colleagues can throw real light on the subject, then we shall be deeply indeed in their debt. At present, however, one cannot stifle suspicion that the phenomena described may have more to do with the enthusiasm of those who describe them than with the physical nature of the nerve itself. [For a critical experimental examination of mitogenetic radiation see J.B. Bateman (1935),Biol. Rev. 10,42-71] . 238

239

(88) A GREAT FISH 1970

: Following is an extract from a letter written in the spring of 1970 to the Chairman-to- be of the Annual Dinner of the Old Boys of Blundell's School. E.G. Peirce who is mentioned in the letter came as a Master to the School in 1898 and continued in various capacities till he died in 1970. His hundredth birthday would have been in 1974. The dinner was to be held in a dining room of the House of Commons. In sending my apologies to the Chairman for not being able to turn up I wrote as follows

I began planning the speech I might have made had I been able to come. It started: I have never been swallowed up by a whale, and been in his belly for three days and three nights; though I was a Member of Parliament for five years. That is as far as I got because I thought I had better look up the book of Jonah before committing myself further. There I found that my memory was momentarily faulty, the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah, and after three days and three nights in the darkness and digestive juices Jonah prayed to the Lord and the Lord spoke to the great fish who vomited out Jonah upon dry land. Which must have been rather like being thrown out by one's constituents at a General Election. But a "great fish" was rather a flat start to the proposed speech; and I did not like to call the beast a whale (which sounds much more roomy and distinguished) because I learnt about a hundred years ago that a whale is a mammal, not a fish. This dilemma made me abandon the project and it may never be revived; though I will keep it in store for Mr Peirce's hundredth birthday party in 1974, which I propose to attend by borrowing a helicopter. Mr Peirce will be glad to hear about Jonah again. He used to know a lot of zoology at one time and must be well aware that a whale is not a fish, even a great fish. He must also of course have heard the story of Jonah many times, for it is appointed to be read in churches morning and evening every 5th and 6th October. And he was a diligent attender in the School Chapel, particularly early in the first, the autumn, term. It will be four years, I think, before I shall have an opportunity of making that speech; which gives me time to think further about it. Alas, our good friend died at the end of to the sorrow of hundreds of boys and old boys who knew and loved him during seventy two years. So I shall not need that helicopter in 1974. What a pity.

240

(89) GO UP YOU BALDHEAD!

In the book of Common Prayer, Chapter 2 of the 2nd book of Kings is appointed to be read in churches at morning service on 27 May. Various strange miracles are there reported; but the best story comes in the last three verses, in which Elisha, having miraculously improved the waterworks in Jerico, went to Bethel (Revised Standard Version,1952) : 'and while he was going up on the way, some small boys came out of the city and jeered at him, saying Go up you baldhead!. Go up you baldhead! And he turned around, and when he saw them, he cursed them in the name of the Lord. And two she-bears came out of the woods and tore forty-two of the boys. From thence he went on to Mount Carmel...' It seems to have been quite an everyday affair: improving the waterworks at Jerico, walk to Bethel, cheeky small boys on the way, and a revenge worthy of the I.R.A. It may be worth recalling that Mount Carmel was the place where Elijah (N.B. not Elisha) had killed 450 prophets ten years earlier (Bishop Usher's chronology). That story is appointed to be read at morning prayers on 24 May. Elijah himself had gone up in a whirlwind to heaven just before the tragedy of the cheeky little boys; so he had no responsibility for that except that his mantle had fallen on Elisha. His only later appearance was, with Moses, at Christ's transfiguration about a thousand years later (A.D.32, Usher). It is odd that such queer stories are appointed to be read (and listened to?) by otherwise sensible people. Whether they really are read one cannot be sure; I do not propose to go to morning prayer on 24 and 27 May to find out. The best cure for such nonsense is ridicule.

241

(90) TACT

In Delhi in 1943-4 my hospitable Indian friends were prone to press an unnecessary quantity of food on me. It is not easy, without embarrassment, to refuse gifts or hospitality from Indians. So I invented a simple little trick which produced laughter instead of vexation, and recited: A professor who visited Delhi Put too many things in his belhi; He lived on the best And his figure went west And shook like an immature jelhi

242

(91) ON WANGLING IN A GOOD CAUSE.

Early in 1916 I was trying to find suitable people to help with the problems of improving anti-aircraft gunnery, which I had been asked to tackle following Horace Darwin’s initiative. One extremely good man was available, R.H. Fowler, a mathematical Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, a lieutenant then in the Royal Marine Artillery. He had been in the Gallipoli campaign and seriously wounded, but was recovering. The Admiralty, however, intended to appoint him an Inspector of Steel, a subject of which he was totally ignorant: they resisted every attempt made from the Munitions Inventions Department to obtain his services, and we seemed to be completely stuck. I prefer, if possible, to avoid wangling but discussed it with Horace Darwin who decided that it was necessary to appeal to the highest authority, namely to A.J. Balfour, who was the First Lord of the Admiralty then. To my astonishment, perhaps not to Darwin’s, Fowler turned up for duty with my gang in two or three days. Darwin and A.J.B. were nearly contemporaries at Trinity College, Cambridge. Fowler was a Fellow of Trinity, so was I. This waving of the "club tie" was supremely effective, and was justified by the magnificent service which Fowler gave in the job which he undertook. If in those strenuous days he had been forced into a nice cushy job as an inspector of steel, he might well have reacted violently; at any rate I know from experience how obstreperous he could be when people were stupid. I repeated the process thirty years later in 1945. I was anxious to get a few first-rate men who had worked at radio and radar for the services, and turn them into biophysicists. I asked two friends)who were high up in the radar business if they could find suitable chaps for me. Three names were proposed who in the end were appointed. They were absolutely first-class, among my best investments. But one, who was a Captain in Signals, was refused permission because (as was said) there was a great shortage of officers at the time. I knew that he was not, in fact, working as an officer at all, but in a laboratory, so again I went to the highest authority. While I was in Parliament (1940-45) I was on friendly terms with J.J. (Jack) Lawson who was a Labour M.P. and had been in a coal mine from the age of 12. In the Labour Government, in 1945-46 he was Secretary of State for War: so I wrote and told him my need. Two days later my young friend arrived, nearly frozen, in a side-car from Christchurch which happened to be coming to London, in the foul weather of the winter of 1946. This time it was not Trinity but the House of Commons that did the "club tie" trick.

243

(92) FEEBLENESS OF MIND? OR MORAL OBLIQUITY? 1913

In the years before the First World War, among young intellectuals at Oxford and perhaps to a rather less degree at Cambridge, it was commonly regarded as a sign of feebleness of intellect to believe that war was conceivably possible; and certainly as a mark of moral obliquity to take any personal steps to meet the possible emergency. Fortunately a substantial minority, less intellectual but not a bit less intelligent, paid rather little attention to the mental or moral stigma; and the following account of a small group of them at Cambridge describes one of the earliest contributions of young scientific men in the universities to national preparedness for war. In 1908, under the Haldane scheme for the Territorial Army, the Officers Training Corps took the place of the earlier University Volunteers. In Cambridge, in addition to the previous battalion of infantry, units were established of cavalry, artillery, engineers and medicals. Two years later, under the imaginative leadership of F.J.M. Stratton (professor of at Cambridge 1928-1947), a Signal Company was started and before long a wireless telegraph section was formed as part of it. Encouraged by Bertram Hopkinson, professor of Engineering, who lent a room in his laboratory, the wireless section began to work on the design of sets for field work; and it drew in a remarkable group (as it proved) of young scientists for the task. It was not possible in those days to go and buy components from dealers, and radio valves did not exist. Everything had to be built up in workshop, laboratory, or tent by members of the section itself. Since sets had to be portable a generator was designed to be fitted to a bicycle, and during "operations" a member of the section pedalled steadily, if wearily, to provide power for transmission.

When communication failed, for example between Farnborough Common and Elmore Hill, it was re-established by flag and/or bicycle. The apparatus was a novelty, and when Lt. Colonel C.T. Heycock, F.R.S., the metallurgist, commanding the infantry battalion, listened to it first (luckily communication had not failed) he summed up common opinion in the phrase "a damned funny thing". A photo exists showing the ten members of the wireless section in 1912, together with Captain Stratton (commanding the Signal Company) and a portable wireless set complete with antenna. In it, among others, are Lance Corporal Henry Thirkill, Lance Corporal T.L. Eckersley and Private , later Astronomer Royal. Those were early days. By 1914, the wireless section had expanded considerably, and since no reserve of regular W/T officers existed when the war broke out, it was natural that members of the section should be drawn into field wireless. In fact the section provided senior wireless officers for four armies. After the war the Signal Company was more generously treated by the War Office, and a special research group was formed inside the wireless section. Professor (alias Lt. Colonel) Stratton later recalled that among members of his Signal Company, the following could be counted; several who went into industry, one of whom was scientific adviser to Marconi's for 27 years; four Vice-Chancellors and five Masters of Cambridge colleges; nine professors, nine F.R.S.s and three Nobel laureates; one Director 244 of Scientific Research Admiralty, one Chief Engineer of Posts and Telegraphs India, one secretary of the World Meteorological Organization, three successive secretaries-general of the International Council of Scientific Unions, one Astronomer Royal, two major-generals, one D.S.O., one Bishop, one Colonial Chief Justice, one M.P. and one Olympic Gold Medallist. This list, as its author admitted, was rather a fraud, since on the average each person in it occurred twice. Nevertheless it is rather impressive, particularly since two-thirds of the people listed served in the Company during its initial years 1910-1914. The story as told above refers to some of the younger men at Cambridge in the years before the Kaiser's war. On 6 January 1913 a letter appeared in The Times signed by ten distinguished senior members of Cambridge University (average age about 60) suggesting that candidates for degrees at universities, or for places in the Civil Service, the Police Force, and the railways, or for some other kinds of employment, should be required to pass a simple military test. The letter was headed "Enlistment Without Compulsion" (but that was probably done by the Editor). It was a naive and not very practical plan, and I can imagine the howls of pain and anguish that would have arisen from the Left if any attempt had been made to apply it. The cruel losses of partially trained soldiers in an actual war were needed before people were ready to face realities. This letter to The Times, however, led to the following entertaining parody, published in the Cambridge Review on 23 January,1913, describing a supposed invasion of East Anglia by the Germans. This is of interest historically because it shows how the youthful intelligentsia of Cambridge University in 1913 (typified by A.D. Knox, then a young Fellow of King's), derided the possibility of what actually started in Belgium eighteen months later. The naivety of its youthful author was certainly not less than that of the ten senior men; but it was good fun. Knox later served in Intelligence during the actual war. The names of the writers of the letter were : Arthur Gray. Master of Jesus College, Classical Scholar. A.E. Shipley. Master of Christ's, zoologist. W.R. Sorley. Philosopher. James Ward. Philosopher. William Cunningham, Archdeacon and economic historian. J.H. Gray. Classical Scholar. C.T. Haycock. Goldsmith's Reader in Metallurgy. T.F.C. Huddleston. Classical scholar and administrator. J.E. Wardale. Classical scholar. G. . Mathematician.

ENLISTMENT WITHOUT COMPULSION There were ten young men said "Where should us be (All along ditch, along dyke, along lode)

Should th’Imperor sail 'crost the German Sea"? 245

They were J. Gray, and A. Gray, Jack Wardale, Hal Wilson, Bill Cunningham, Fred Huddleston, Arthur Shipley, Jimmy Ward, the Goldsmith's Reader in Metallurgy, old Uncle Bill Sorley and all.

Now the very next year did th’Imperor choose . (All along, etc.) For to sail with his men of war up the Ouse, 'Spite of J. Gray, etc. Now come up my merry lads, and give him what for' (All along, etc.) But none would come up gin’ the Imperor: Except J. Gray, etc. They had nobbut got unto Flatbridge Farm (All along, etc.) When said J. Gray to A. Gray, ‘I'm going home': Here’s to J. Gray etc Old Bill Sorley fell in wi’ some men at Knobbs (All along, etc.) And started a-talking of ould Tom Hobbs: Here's to J. Gray, etc. e At Popham's Eau, in full career, Said Wardale to Wilson, ‘There’s riots in Clare’ Jimmy Ward he fell out by Euximoor Fen And the thingumbob trundled him home again Fred Huddleston fell into Denver Sluice And Bill Cunningham followed him off to the D----- And now, as is open for all to see, Arthur Shipley is th' Imp’ror of Germanee: While the Imperor is Master of Christ's With Herr Grob, and Herr Gau, and the Graf von Geist 'Stead of J. Gray, and A. Gray, Jack Wardale, Hal Wilson, Bill Cunningham, Fred Huddleston, Arthur Shipley, Jimmy Ward, Der Goldschmiedmetallurgisch vorleser, Herr Onkel Bill Sorley and all. A.D.K.

246

(93) THE SOCIETY OF BRIGANDS.

The origin of "The Brigands" is described elsewhere. When the war came suddenly to an end on 11 November, 1918, we could not immediately down tools and go home. There were many important investigations in progress, which had to be completed. But we ceased to be so serious and indeed, some of us enjoyed ourselves by being silly. My form of silliness was to found and enrol a Society of Brigands, in which all who had worked with us, or helped us, or aided and abetted us, were enrolled. To each of these was given a LICENCE to practice as a brigand: and there were various orders of precedence in the Society, starting with One of His Majesty's Principal Brigands and continuing: Deputy Principal Brigand Assistant Deputy Principal Brigand Acting Assistant Deputy Principal Brigand Plenipotentiary Extraordinary at Rochford Deputy Plenipotentiary at Rochford Assistant Deputy Plenipotentiary at Rochford Arch Spinner sla Controller of High Rotational Speeds Controller of Slag-production and washer blow-out Envoy Extraordinary at Stokes Bay Principal Pickpocket Deputy Principal Pickpocket Principal Boy Brigand de Paris Controller of Brick Production Then to Unprincipled Brigands (13 of) Unprincipled Pickpockets (9 of) S.M. Hanks (with top hat and point of destruction 247

R.F. P. Maton Chief Noise Producer (30) V.L. Bowring Friend and Counsellor L. Bolton Chronicler in Chief A.E. Moore Paymaster-Major Nondescripts (5 of) Note. This License is valid between the hours of 7 a.m. and midnight on week-days and Sundays alike; except at the Sister University where it is valid only from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m. on week days and not on Sundays. N.B. The Licensee is warned that he may not delegate his authority to any other person to perform or prepare in whole or in part the experiments, calculations. adjustments or reports covered by this license. Warning This License will not authorize the holder to rectify or adjust mirror or window records or times of flight, for the performance of which rectifications or adjustments special certificates are required‚ unless he also holds the necessary certificates: otherwise it covers all rectifications or adjustments that may from time to tine be necessary in order to secure agreement between "calculated" and "observed'. The certificate was a triple hybrid between (a) The Certificate of an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (O.B.E.) (b) A certificate from the Home Office entitling the holder to carry out experiments on living animals, commonly called a vivisection licence; (c) A certificate, signed by H.M. The King, issued to holders of a Commission in the Army. The "Trusty and Well-beloved" in lines 3 and 4 of the certificate was taken from (c). The warning near the end was cribbed from (b). What was contributed by (a) I am now (after 53 years) unable to say; something I am sure. The total number of people appointed (active or honoris causa) to The Most Excellent Order of Brigands was exactly 100. With the certificate was presented a drawing representing the state of anti-aircraft gunnery as it was in 1916, when the first Brigand (later H.M. Principal Brigand) was chosen by Horace Darwin. With the Certificate, to each member of the Order was issued a large drawing made in the War Office and printed by the Ordnance Committee at Woolwich on their private press. A small copy of the drawing is shown elsewhere. Finally was a copy of the "Ballistic Faith" referred to elsewhere.

248

(94) THE ROYAL NAVY CLUB

[In February1954 I dined with the Royal Navy Club, as the guest of Vice Admiral G.B. Middleton. The speech I made then is included here, not for any merit of its own but because it describes events and origins, not otherwise recorded, during the First World War. Those may have had some influence before or during the Second War.]

When you invited me, Sir, to be your guest this evening, with the usual penalty of a speech, I answered that I would rather make a speech to the Royal Navy than to anyone else; partly because of many friendships with naval officers; partly because, as you said, I am supposed to know something about the limits of human endurance and the silent service could not endure a long speech; partly because sailors and scientists alike have to be able sometimes to detect what is beyond the visible horizon; and partly because, long- long ago, I lived with the Navy for three years and it is a happy thing to renew old acquaintance. Thirty years since, at some celebrations in Stockholm, I was introduced to a prince. Not having had much practice in conversation with princes I drew a bow at venture and asked him if he had ever been in the Navy. When he answered, "How on earth did you know?" I replied that I didn't, but (truthfully enough) that he looked like it. This moved him so deeply that he instantly asked, "Do you like whiskey?" I didn’t really, but he persuaded me to say yes and we adjourned to his Club to continue the inquiry. There he told me his private opinion of an Irish poet (W.B. Yeats) who had recently offended Swedish hospitality and good taste by referring in public speeches to England as "The Enemy". His literary criticism that evening was unorthodox; but the night was late and his memories of the Navy were affectionate. My own acquaintance with the Royal Navy started in 1916, during the First World War, when Admiral Percy Scott and Commander Gilbert (Barmy Gilbert was his familiar name, you will find barmy in the Oxford Dictionary) were defending London from Zeppelins with a 6 pdr gun on the Admiralty roof. I was then a captain in the infantry with no knowledge of ballistics beyond that of the 303 bullet: but I had been put in charge of a strange party in the Ministry of Munitions to investigate anti-aircraft gunnery. It contained a lieutenant in the Royal Marine Artillery who was also a Fellow of Trinity (some of you will remember R.H. Fowler in the Second War); a distinguished elderly don (H.W Richmond, FRS) and a young lieutenant in the Army Service Corps, (T L Wren) both addicted to the purest of pure geometry; a lecturer in engineering (W. Hartree) dressed up like a telephone linesman; and three undergraduates from Cambridge, two of them later very eminent. (E.A. Milne, F.R.S. and D.R. Hartree, F.R.S ) Now Gilbert had a peculiar sort of anti-aircraft gunsight, mounted on a 6-inch gun in a monitor at Great Yarmouth. It sounded better than his 6 pdr, if only its projectiles would burst in the right place, and he wanted this tried. Being barmy he rather admired my odd collection of strange birds, and we all went down to Yarmouth to try his gun. There we wasted about three weeks, because the only day when the sky could be seen was a Sunday: and the Captain of the monitor, being a brother of the 249 headmaster of Eton, refused to let off his gun on a Sunday for a cause so trivial as ours. In the interval my lecturer in engineering was driven to writing poetry - very bad poetry - on the subject: but in the end we had a clear day and fired our trial. The result was so devastating for the official range table, on which the sight was based, that Gilbert introduced me to Whale Island to see what more devastation he could cause. That's the kind of chap he was. At Whale Island we concocted another trial (this had to be kept secret, not against the enemy but against the Admiralty). Nominally it was the trial of the mounting of a high- angle 3-inch 20 cwt. gun. But some strange and fortunate things happened: by an odd bit of luck my party was standing about in the neighbourhood during the trial - with their instruments it happened also that fuzed shell, instead of solid shot, were used, and the fuze settings and angles were all carefully noted; and of course it was nobody's business to stop us from observing what happened. All strictly against Jockey Club Rules, but the Navy didn't seem to mind (they reckoned there was a war on) and we didn't either. That was how one had to make experiments in 1916. The results were even more devastating than at Yarmouth, and showed that existing gunsights were hopelessly wrong. Which was so obviously important that we confessed our crime and asked, not for forgiveness but for more ammunition. We got quite a lot. From that light-hearted experiment arose three years of hard work and good fellowship at Whale Island; not to mention a Textbook (1100 pages) on Anti-Aircraft Gunnery, a classical paper on ballistics which can be found in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (1919), the first operational research group that ever operated (it travelled round the Armies in the field), and a clock which some of you may know in the ante-room at Whale Island.

My party grew. Other elderly dons turned up including two Senior Wranglers and when the army tried to recruit one of my undergraduates (later a famous astronomer E A Milne), whose short sight unfitted him anyhow for general service, the Captain of H.M.S. Excellent instructed the sentry on the bridge to arrest the Army recruiting sergeant if he dared to come near. Then, as swiftly as possible, we slipped my future astronomer into the uniform of a lieutenant R.N.V.R. In our earlier days the Navy did not know how to describe us - a thing that hasn't got a name doesn't exist. So they called us "Hill's brigands," which became "Brigands" for short, and the name stuck. We got on very well together, particularly one of my Senior Wranglers with a young lieutenant, a future Director of Naval Ordnance. (Vice Admiral O. Bevir) One of the functions of a Brigand was to produce vintage port from the cellars of Cambridge Colleges. I remember well the reverence with which the Commander, V.L. Bowring, first received my tribute to the Mess of a dozen bottles of 1887 port - which cost me 2/6 a bottle. (Henry Tizard does not believe this; he says he paid 5/- for the same port, for a similar purpose, from the cellars of Oriel.) I remember too the disputes that occurred between Bowring and our particular friend R. F .P. Maton, the proof officer, about the alleged effects of Maton's guns upon Bowring's hens. It had to be an article of faith, a condition indeed for remaining a Brigand, that hens' eggs can be addled by firing guns before breakfast. 250

The well-known and mutual affection of the Royal Navy for professors prompts me to tell you two true stories. Many years ago I spent a long day with a young naval officer in some job I have forgotten. Towards the end of it he made what was evidently an extraordinary discovery and blurted it out: "Surely," he said, "you aren't a professor"; which I preferred to take as a compliment though it could be interpreted otherwise. Many years later a son of mine who had left Cambridge in 1939, at the end of his first year, to work on anti- submarine and anti-mine devices in the naval scientific service, had to call on an Admiral to persuade him to try some of his gadgets in operations at sea. I think the Admiral must have known my name and mixed the boy - who looked rather old - with me. He might even have been the same young officer who once made that famous remark! Anyhow he addressed my son, then aged twenty-three, respectfully as "professor" and paid unexpected attention to what he said. Possibly like Tim Pile, the war-time Commander in Chief of Anti- Aircraft Command, he believed in magic, or at least in magicians.

The Royal Navy Club, or one of its constituents, was founded in 1765: most of you, according to the life tables, will be able to attend the bicentenary. I belong to another institution called The Club, one year older than yours, founded in 1764 by Joshua Reynolds and Samuel Johnson. I was reading recently a charming and sympathetic account of The Club by an American author. Since much of what he says applies equally to your Club you may like to hear how he finishes: "The Club has never had any serious mission to perform, or any ulterior purpose. It has always been a perfectly useless institution. After the good stories have been told and a piece of business discussed the meeting dissolves without having budged the world an inch from its place. You may think that in these practical days The Club has lost its intimate character, that it has far outlived its natural life. But it is difficult to sustain these points, for The Club claims to have no use and sets no defence. There is nothing then to do about it except to join in its toast, Esto Perpetua - may it last for ever!" Your Club too needs, and claims, no defence. You meet together not because it is useful but because it is amusing and enjoyable. As your guest this evening I have no serious mission to perform, no message to give, no ulterior purpose, and I offer no defence for a perfectly useless speech: only gratitude for good fellowship.

251

(95) IF

In 1918 a little book of twenty poems by Rudyard Kipling came on the bookstalls. The verses were not new, probably he had chosen them from earlier writings to suit the temper and circumstances of the time. Of these poems the most memorable (to me) was IF This appeared originally in Rewards and Fairies, 1910. There were twelve "ifs" in it and several more implied. The effect was deeply moving - until one got to the last two lines, where Kipling gave the banal, indeed dreadful, answer to his apparent questions: Yours is the earth and everything that's in it, And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son.

This was too like the Kipling of the "lesser breeds without the Law" and quite unsuited to the mood of the earlier lines. I was going on some duty or other to France, and stayed near the railway terminus in London. I had the little book with me and during a rather sleepless night I tried to concoct a better last two lines and wrote the result in pencil at the bottom. It was a dismal failure. I tried again at long intervals over the years, always with the same result. Finally in 1972 I called for help; and thus for the last four lines emerged: If you can hope when all the world's despairing, If you can laugh when everything looks blue, If you can share and take delight in sharing Then you'll have done what very few can do.

My partner in this enterprise thought of the first line while she was driving alone in the country; it provided the clue to the rest. The second line is mine. For the last two, the credit or blame can be shared; at least they are not so dreadful as Kipling’s.

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(96) He blew with his wings and they were scattered

(The title is taken from the Armada memorial on Plymouth Hoe. It was probably derived from the Armada medal of 1588 which bears the inscription Flavit et dissipati Sunt.)

On the afternoon of 19 0ctober, 1917, my friends and I were carrying out a gun trial at Portsmouth, bursting shells at various heights up to 25,000 ft.. When a shell explodes at any height in a clear sky the velocity of the wind there can be measured by tracking the smoke with instrument on the ground. On this occasion, with only a low wind velocity near the ground and up to 10,000 ft., the velocity of a northerly wind increased rapidly upwards until at the greatest heights it reached 150 miles per hour. Air raids at night by Zeppelin airships had begun early in September 1917, and I remember remarking to my colleague R.H. Fowler on 19 October "There won't be an air-raid tonight". I supposed that the Germans would have means of measuring the wind velocity at the heights at which their airships were to fly; but they had not. Eleven of their airships assembled in the evening of 19 October off the Yorkshire Coast, in order to attack the industrial centres of the Midlands. Our fighters went after them, and to avoid these the airships rose to 16,000 ft. and above. The efficiency of their crews was much impaired by height sickness and intense cold; and they did not realise that they were being carried southward at an enormous speed by the wind. One airship, altogether lost, let off a few bombs on London, one of these hitting Austin Reeds in Piccadilly Circus. The rest of the airships were scattered, only one returned to Germany in the usual way, many were destroyed in the south of France. The total number of people killed by Zeppelins in Britain during the war was about 530, of wounded 1150, less than 0.1% of our military casualties abroad. But the number would have been far greater had there been no defence by guns and aircraft. Zeppelins were pretty easy prey, and cost the enemy far more, in lives and highly skilled technology, than their military and moral effect was worth. Of course our defence, by guns and fighters, cost us a lot too.

There was no general panic about air raids during the first war. Before, and during the early stages of the second war panic was deliberately fostered by communists and pacifists.

253

(97) EVEN LITTLEWOOD COULD NOT MAKE BALLISTICS RESPECTABLE

That pronouncement is on p. 80 of G.E. Hardy's book, A Mathematician's Apology, Cambridge University Press, 1940. For four years during the Kaiser's war Littlewood served in the Royal Artillery, working for the Ordnance Committee at Woolwich. I doubt if his purpose was to make anything or anybody respectable; probably, like a lot of others including the Good Samaritan, he was unwilling to pass by on the other side (Luke 10, vv. 31, 32) But he certainly helped to improve methods of calculating gun trajectories, as can be verified from the index of the Text Book of Anti-Aircraft Gunnery' (H.M.S.O 1925, vol. 1). I too had various adventures in ballistics during that period. Whether these made the subject any more respectable has never been seriously debated. Long ago a man was buried in a Cornish Churchyard whose epitaph records that "during his lifetime he knew several respectable persons". I knew quite a lot of them myself during those years: to name only three of the youngest, R.H. Fowler, E.A. Milne and D.R. Hartree. One of those adventures in ballistics gave me as keen intellectual and aesthetic pleasure as anything I have ever done: which is one of the ingredients of the respectability that Hardy had in mind. Early in 1916, with various of my friends, I embarked at Whale Island, Portsmouth, on research in an urgent practical problem, namely anti-aircraft gunnery. This was required, not only for defence against aerial bombing but also for interfering with air reconnaissance by the enemy over our armies in the field. The latter really mattered much more then. The problem had many facets. The one to be discussed now is the behaviour of the time-fuze, a device intended to explode a shell at the right moment after it is fired from a gun. There was no significant chance of a direct hit, "proximity” fuzes were not developed till late in the second war and "homing" missiles not till recently. The only chance of inflicting vital damage in 1914-18 was to burst an ordinary shell close enough to the target; for which to the first requirement (there were lots of others) was that the behaviour of the time- fuze should be consistent and accurately known. All this is very old fashioned now, but the motives and ideas of scientific research change only slowly. The only fuzes available then contained a ring of compressed gunpowder, the burning of which was started by the acceleration of the projectile in the gun-barrel; this exploded the shell when the burning surface reached a preset point. These fuzes had been used for many years by field artillery, firing on "the flat", and their accuracy was good. But when the shells were fired to the considerable heights at which aircraft had to be attacked they became very unreliable; indeed at the greater heights many of the shells failed to explode at all and fell about in an unseemly and dangerous manner. During an extensive trial, in which many hundreds of rounds were fired from a variety of 3-inch guns with different muzzle velocities, it was found that the rate of burning of the fuze powder depended : (a) on the muzzle velocity, i.e. the velocity of the shell as it left the gun. (b) at any moment on the height of the shell at that moment.

254

Of these, (b) was probably to be attributed to the variation of atmospheric pressure with height. The fuze powder, however, contained its own oxygen in the form of potassium nitrate, its rate of burning did not depend on external oxygen. Presumably the variation with height was simply a mechanical effect of diminished external pressure, allowing the gas produced by combustion to expand more and so disintegrate the burning surface faster. This effect, once observed and measured, could be allowed for. But then a curious anomaly remained of which we gradually became aware. As a shell moves along any trajectory, starting (say) at 50°, its velocity initially (say) 2500 ft/sec, .drops to (say) 1000 ft/sec at the end of its useful path. But the rate of burning of the fuse at any moment, after allowing for the effect of pressure, was found NOT to depend on the velocity of the shell at that moment. How on earth could the rate depend on the initial (the muzzle) velocity — and yet not on the actual velocity along the trajectory. It did not seem sensible. We had spent much time and a lot of ammunition on this trial and improvements were urgently wanted, We racked our brains about it, how could the burning of the fuze powder depend on the velocity with which the shell left the barrel, and yet not on the rapidly varying velocity along the trajectory. We had grown up, so to speak, with the problem, it was just one of those things one had to put up with. BUT could the answer possibly be that the rate of burning depended, not on the linear velocity, but on the angular velocity of the shell? It seemed a ridiculous suggestion but however ridiculous one had to try to sort it out. In order to obtain the stability necessary for accuracy, projectiles whether for small- arms or larger guns have to be made to rotate. The barrel therefore is "rifled", i.e. spiral grooves are cut in it, and a "driving band" of copper on the shell constrains it to rotate as it moves along the grooves. The usual "pitch" of the rifling was one turn in 30 “calibres”, so with a 3-inch shell the rifling does one complete turn in 90 inches of the barrel. This, with a muzzle velocity of 2500 ft/sec., would give a rotational speed of 333 revs/sec. or 20,000 revs/min. Now let us suppose, quite unreasonably at first, that the rate of burning of the fuze depends not on the muzzle velocity as such but on the angular velocity of the shell at the moment. Consider what happens along any given trajectory. The linear velocity falls from 2500 ft/sec to 1000 ft./sec; that is due to air resistance, mainly inertial, the shell has to push the air out of the way. But the angular motion about the axis of the shell does not encounter any serious inertial resistance, only a minor amount of frictional (viscous) resistance One would not expect the angular velocity to fall off in the ratio 2500/1000, only perhaps in the ratio 2500/2300: so if the rate of burning of the fuze depends on the angular velocity, it should vary only little along the trajectory. The matter was extremely important; in the best high-velocity gun then available (the 3 inch 20 cwt) the anomalies of the fuzes were awful. It was worth while putting any possible effort into finding out if the high angular velocity of the shell was really the cause of the unreliability of the fuse. A direct method was used, namely to get three exactly similar guns constructed, but with different pitches to their rifling, and compare them using the same batch of fuzes. We asked the Ordnance Committee to do this, and we chose pitches of' (if I remember right) 1 turn in 20 calibres, 1 in 30 and 1 in 45. They agreed at once — they were good chaps! and after much less delay than one might have expected the three guns turned up and were mounted on the firing grid at Eastney, side by side, for trial. At this stage I was forced to retire to bed at Whale Island with influenza, so missed 255 the actual trial. But my friends come hurrying back to tell me the result. It was evident in a few minutes. The behaviour of the fuzes fired in the 1/20 gun was awful, at great heights they were all "blind". That of the fuzes fired in the 1/45 gun was excellent. In the 1/30 gun the behaviour was intermediate as we had found before; so logic was vindicated. Now we knew where we were, and could follow up the results in the laboratory by firing fuzes on a turbine at rotational speeds and see what happened to them. That and many other things were done, and the reason for the effect of speed of rotation on the rate of burning of a fuze was discovered – what had seemed at first to be magic was found to be quite simple. But the result which gave me the greatest intellectual thrill was that of the trial of the three sister guns. I cannot bear to contemplate what I should have felt like if that experiment had failed, if the three sisters had all behaved alike, with my faith in logic shattered and influenza as well! In fact my logic was just as respectable as Hardy's, and its results helped me to recover from the influenza.

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(98) THE POINT OF DESTRUCTION

Invent a name - like "telepathy" - and it is liable to acquire a specious reality of its own. The hero of this farce invented a "point of destruction" at which a Zeppelin, and a shell met, with favourable results: and he sold it to a lot of people with no knowledge of geometry, arithmetic or guns. The climax was reached in the spring of 1918, when the German breakthrough in France was in full flood; but once set going the comedy had to run its course in spite of the tragedy across the Channel. In 1915 a Mr Hanks, an ex-sergeant major in the Royal Artillery, filed a patent specification for an improved angle indicator to be used in gun laying. What started him on it was the discovery that one minute of angle is not quite the same as the angle subtended by one inch at a distance of 100 yards, as is assumed for convenience in rifle-shooting; in fact it is about 5% greater. Therefore the minute was an inaccurate angle, and a fortiori, the degree was 60 times as inaccurate; so he invented a new and more accurate unit, which the irreverent called a "hank" His instruments were graduated in hanks. But what set him on fire was that, when he submitted his ideas to the Munitions Inventions Department, the man who discussed it, Major W.E.D. Clark (before the war he was an Examiner in the Patent office) proved to have been, in his spare time, a quartermaster Sergeant in the Artists’ Rifles, an Officers Training Corps. That was too much for a retired Sergeant Major in the Royal Artillery; what did a damned quartermaster sergeant in the infantry know about gunnery? It hung over him throughout his career as an inventor, until in 1928 his final appeal for compensation for infringement was dismissed with costs, unanimously by three Justices. Moreover the authorities in the War Office and the Ministry of Munitions appeared to be in collusion with the quartermaster sergeant, in spite of Hank’s claim that his device would bring down any Zeppelin first shot, if only they would lend him a good 3-inch gun. Their rejection of Hanks’s invention occurred in spite of the fact that when he called on any of them he always wore a frock coat and a top hat; as Mark Twain, in Tramps Abroad, said he did when he set out on his climb up the Matterhorn. He wore then also when he visited the firing ranges at Shoeburyness; and particularly during the famous gun-trial that followed. Getting no satisfaction from the soldiers and bureaucrats he started a prolonged correspondence (about 200 Letters) with famous, or less famous people - including Lloyd George, Lord Derby, Queen Alexandra, the Lord Mayor of London and the President of the French Republic, The correspondence, of which he sent copies to the Ministry of Munitions, denounced the War Office and the Ministry for allowing Zeppelins to fly unscathed over London. Without any further evidence the reader will have arrived by now at the correct hypothesis, that the ex-sergeant major was crackers. Why not stop there? The trouble was that one couldn't stop there; the newspapers and the politicians (and their lady friends) had got hold of it. One newspaper in particular, The United Services Gazette, whose Editor, Mr F.A. Wickhart, was a pal of Hanks, took it up strongly and ' demanded that a proper trial should be carried out with a new gun - and no cheating please. This publicity could 257 not possibly give away important secrets to the enemy, even if the principles and methods had been fully disclosed; so no legal action could be taken to suppress it. It would in fact have been a good thing if the Germans could have been persuaded to use Mr Hanks's invention!

.PRINCIPLES AND METHODS. 1. Two guns, with scales of elevation and azimuth, were to be placed half a mile apart and used as theodolites. Mr Hanks had not heard of theodolites. The guns were trained on the enemy. 2. Angles were to be read simultaneously on telephoned signals and communicated to a central plotting station P where a third gun was sited. 3. When an enemy approached, the first two guns were trained on him but not fired. 4. At a moment of time A (chosen by the officer in charge) angles were read, transmitted to P and plotted. 5. At moment (A+half a minute) process 4 was repeated. 6. Then on the plotting boards the position of the enemy was extrapolated linearly to a moment (A + 1minute) This was the point of destruction (p.o.d) 7. The information in 6 was communicated at once to the third gun, the fuze was set and the gun was fired. 8. The shell and the enemy arrived simultaneously at the p.o.d.

The reader who has even minimal acquaintance with such matters will not be much surprised at the results obtained by an independent team of observers at the trial; the only trial after weeks of preparation, of denunciation by M Hanks, and of charges of sabotage to his equipment. ..

RESULTS OF TRIAL. Weapon and conditions. A 3-inch 20 cwt gun: clear sky with moderate wind. Target. Smoke from a shell-burst moving on a straight horizontal course with the wind (20 miles/hour).

18 targets, successively at intervals as ordered by Mr .Hanks. Shots fired. Eight in all at the 18 targets: the other ten targets were out of range before Mr Hanks's merry man had finished their arithmetic. Average error. Shell burst to target, 0.8 mile: height difference, 0.6 mile. Success claimed by inventor. All the eight shots passed through the target. Comment by independent observers. All the eight bursts ware "short': Comment by a "high naval officer" present, reported by Mr Wickhart: it was "a world's record shoot in gunnery". After the trial was completed it was proclaimed as a great success and the Editor of the United Services Gazette wrote to the Director General of Munitions Design (Lieutenant General Sir Francis Bingham) asking him (the General) to call on him (the Editor) at his (the Editor's) office to discuss further plans. He (the Editor) advised that, in order to avoid difficulties and possible unpleasantness the General should come in plain clothes and 258 give the name of Mr Smith. By a stroke of good luck I was in the General's office when the letter arrived; I had never before heard a Lieutenant General, 75% older than me and six ranks senior, calling himself a B.F. etc., etc. for what he had allowed to be done. Eight months later, in the General Election of December 1918, after the war was over, the editor of the Gazette stood for Parliament as an "Anti-Aircraft Candidate", the only time I think this has happened. He lost his deposit. Lest it be thought that my memorv, after fifty-four years is too good to be true, I allow myself in self-defence to record: (1) That in the Archives of the Library at Churchill Cambridge are the following papers of mine:- 1/6 an official account of a gun - trial carried out in 1918 to test Hanks’s invention; 1/7 official photos of Mr Hanks with the his gun crew and the top hat; 1/8 the patent specification and subsequent lawsuit; (2) that I have verified from Who Was Who that some of the senior officers who were involved in this fracas really existed and in the jobs I remember; and (3) that I recently (1969) exchanged memories of the affair with the officer who carried out the trial, Chrls Mayes, later a master at Eton. He reminded me that in his report he emphasised; that "Mr Hanks repeatedly expressed his bitterest dislike and contempt for Captain Hill, whom he regarded as an ignorant and unscientific fellow'. Hanks probably knew that I too was properly speaking, an infantry officer, not a gunner. One untoward incident occurred during the argument as to whether Hanks should be allowed to have a new gun for his trial. It would have made no difference, the guns at Shoeburyness were perfectly good, and one of them had shot down a German aeroplane recently. Naturally the school of gunnery was very fed up with the waste of time and effort in these farcical proceedings; and the Commandant was so provoked that he wrote to his friend John Byron, Director of Artillery at the War Office, a letter which contained the sentence: "For God's sake Johnny don't let this b------have a new gun." This letter fell into the hands of the enemy (i.e. the Editor of the United Services Gazette): he probably had his agents in the War Office. All kinds of trouble and threats followed, and the phrase "For God's sake Johnny" became (for a time) a familiar pass-word among gunnery Officers. But a new gun was made available for the trial after all! Finally, one precaution taken by Mr Hanks is worthy of mention. To avoid cheating he insisted on appointing his own gun-crew, also the thirty or so others who read the scales, telephoned the information, plotted it on enormous blackboards and did the arithmetic. Nobody else, he insisted, could be trusted. Several of these men were called Hanks, which can surely have been due to chance. All these men, not only the Hankses, were given extra pay for the job. They were sorry when it was over.

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(99) ON SHOOTING DOWN A ZEPPELIN (HONORIS CAUSA).

In 1915 I was Musketry officer to a Brigade of the East Anglian Division. My boss, the Divisional Musketry officer was Major Talbot Smith; in real life he was an artist, and many of his pictures appeared in Punch. In January 1916 I was transferred to another job, for investigating the new science (or art) of anti-aircraft gunnery. As we said goodbye Talbot Smith wished me good luck and said that if I ever chanced to shoot down a Zeppelin he would give me the original of one of his Punch pictures. This contingency was rather unlikely unless a Zeppelin deliberately got in the way when we were carrying out one of our gun trials, and there was in fact no occasion for claiming the prize. In 1941, 25 years later, at the beginning of the Blitz, I was collecting scientists to help Anti-Aircraft Command; they were very good chaps and General Pile, the C. in C., admired them very much (several of them later became famous in their own proper fields). One day I told Pile, laughing, of Talbot Smith’s promise of 1916, and being an Irishman, he offered at once to give me a certificate to the effect that, morally speaking, I had shot down a Zeppelin. I kept this in mind till 1946 when the war was over, then I wrote to Talbot Smith and told him of Pile’s offer. Without demanding to see any such certificate he generously admitted liability and invited me to go to a show room where his pictures were and choose any one I liked. I chose an elegant one of a squad of women soldiers on parade (A.T.S. Auxiliary Territorial Service), entitled "Volunteers, Volunteers?"; with the sergeant addressing them "Now I want four volunteers for a perfectly filthy dirty job - you, you, you, you." The picture showed the unfortunate four "volunteers" looking very glum, the rest grinning in a most un-military way. In 1944 many of these girls were "manning" Anti-Aircraft batteries, men were employed only for heavy jobs like loading cartridges. The girls were much more alert and intelligent than any man available by that time. They were a triumphant success. One morning I had the good fortune to be conducting a number of Indian scientists round some of their batteries, after they had shot down during the previous night, with proximity fuses, about thirty flying bombs. I wish Talbot Smith could have been there to see them: a gun- crew of female artillerists each looking like a dog with nine tails would have made an appealing picture for Punch. I might even have come into his picture myself, an M.P. of 53 formally kissing their commanding officer of 29, as a sign of public and parliamentary approval. But it is too late now. If such a picture were drawn for Punch today those nice girls (and I too) would have to be provided with large bulbous noses and made to look like nothing on earth. Sic transit gloria Punchii. I told this story of the lady artillerists to a very eminent woman scientist, who had a strong conscientious objection to anything warlike. She knew quite well that these flying bombs were unmanned, and that if they had been allowed to go on their way they would have killed or injured a number of English people. I asked for her opinion of the morality 260 of shooting them down by gunfire; but her reply was evasive. If I had pressed her she would probably have replied that the lady artillerists would have shot then down just the same as if they had been manned. They certainly would have. But I did not like to tease her too much; she was a very nice person, though her scruples were odd. (The flying bombs are referred to on pp. 179-81 of the Double Cross System by J.C Masterman, 1972, Yale University Press)

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(100) WHO IS YOUR COMMANDING OFFICER?

In 1919, after the war was over and I was soon returning to Cambridge, I discussed with naval gunnery officers whether it would be useful to set up a Naval Anti-Aircraft Gunnery Committee. The Navy had had very little experience of firing at fast flying targets (likely to become much faster), from a moving platform, pitching, rolling and turning; this was a very different affair from "Ack-Ack" on land as known to the Army. It was agreed that such a committee might be useful and I was asked informally to join. But then, without consulting me, Admiralty officials fell to discussing “who was my commanding officer”. Obviously (to them) it would be quite improper to ask me directly to serve, my commanding officer must be approached. So they decided they would write to the Provost of King's (of which I was then a Fellow). The Provost, Walter Durnford, was a wise old bird and he did not see how he could properly assent, or otherwise, to my joining the committee; so he waited till he saw me in the court and asked me if I wanted to join. I told him that I had, in fact, already been serving on the committee for some weeks, so he said he would reply that he "had no objection" to my serving. (He did not add that it would not matter a bit if he did have).That set the minds of the Admiralty at rest. A year later a similar dilemma troubled the Director of Artillery at the War office, The Ordnance Committee at Woolwich had planned, in consultation with R.H. Fowler and me, a Ballistic Air Resistance Committee (B.A.R.C.). It wanted the work to be done at Cambridge, with two Cambridge professors as Associate Members of the Committee. How should these professors be approached? Who was their commanding Officer? Apparently the Director of Artillery had heard of the miraculous outcome of the Admiralty's approach to the Provost of King's, and supposed that the Provost was a sort of Universal commanding officer at Cambridge; so he decided to use the same method. A copy of the D. of A.'s letter to the Provost somehow reached the External Ballistics Officer of the Ordnance Committee, and he hurriedly wrote me the following pathetic letter:- Re - B.A.R.C. I find that D. of A. has written to the Provost of King's with reference to the appointment of Jones and Inglis (B.M. Jones, professor of aeronautical engineering. C.E. Inglis, professor of mechanical sciences) to the B.A.R.C. Copy of letter enclosed. I have just rung up Gregson to find out why. I gather the idea was that they should be approached through their "Commanding 'Officer"! Is this necessary; if so, is not the Vice Chancellor the proper channel? Would you be a brick and do what you can to divert the letter, and use your tact to gloss over the mistake! Exactly what I did I have forgotten but my impulse, as of today, would have been to advise the Provost to tear up the letter when I would myself quickly inform the D. of A. that the only people he needed to invite were Jones and Inglis. Whatever I did, it worked quite nicely. Returning now to the Naval Anti-Aircraft Gunnery Committee, anxiety was expressed later by the Secretary of the Admiralty when he discovered that (as he supposed) a medical attendant was present at all the meetings of the committee; it was not obvious to him why this was necessary. The explanation of the strange anomaly was that in 1920 I had 262 been awarded the degree of Doctor of Science at Cambridge University, so I appeared on the list of those attending as Dr Hill; before that I had been called Major Hill, my previous rank in the army. The Secretary of the Committee, a bright young lieutenant in the Navy, not knowing one science from another, replied to the Secretary of the Admiralty that Doctor Hill was not a Professor of Medicine but of Physiology. This silenced the Secretary who, not unnaturally, did not know what physiology was, and did not wish to expose his ignorance. Anyhow we were not further troubled. Whether the Committee did any good I doubt. Anything like the traditional gunnery methods of the navy could not possibly have coped with the problem; its solution had to wait until proximity fuses and homing missiles became available many years later.

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(101) FRUITS OF PROVOCATION

Si_natura negat, facit indignation versum. Juvenal’s Satires, 1, 79. (If nature denies you a facility in versifying, indignation may provide.) [The provocations that led to the verses, in A., B., and C. will be obvious to the reader. For D., the provocation was just as strong but its result took another form. From E.D. 1960 pp.269, 301, 129, 272.]

A. AIR DEFENCE

[The following poem, in the style of the Earl of Derby’s translation of the Iliad (1864), purports to represent the minutes of a meeting of a Committee of the Air Ministry on 3 July 1936, together with a summons to the next one. These meetings were SECRET and even in 1960 considerations of propriety, if not of security, seems to require that pseudonyms should be used; this may explain how a Norse deity and a Geheimrat somehow got mixed up with a lot of Greek characters on a Trojan Committee. In 1972 neither consideration applies, and the Key is given at the end.)

Attending there on ancient Sigma sat The Elders of the City: Omega and Theta and von Alpha-plus and Phi. All these wore gathered at Adastral House, By age exempt from war, but in discourses Abundant as the cricket that on high From topmost bough of forest tree sends forth His music: so they sent their Minutes forth, And all men wondered, even Odin wept With tears of joy that Ilium was safe.

Von Alpha-plus arose and thus began "Oh ancient Sigma eminent in war And in the council wise: thy present words No Trojan can gainsay, and yet the end Thou hast not reached, the object of debate. This city cannot be immune from war Until a hail of parachuting mines Descend unceasing at its eastern gate. So shall the long-haired Greeks remain at home Nor lay their infernal eggs upon our streets."

Thus angrily, and round his body flung His cloak, and on his head a billycock, Then passing cocked a snook at Lambda-Mu, 264

Last called his shiny Rolls of eighty steeds And soon without the tent of Odin stood. Him, from his godlike sleep, he sought to rouse Loud shouting: soon his voice his senses reached: Forth in his slumber-suit bearlike he came And spoke to deep designing Alpha-plus, "What cause so urgent leads you through the camp, In the dark night to wander thus alone?" To whom von Alpha-plus of deep design replied, "Oh, Odin, godlike son of destiny, awake: For ancient Sigma’s professorial crew, With Hermes of the glancing wings and Rho who keeps the minutes but who wastes the hours, will not be happy till the long-haired Greeks Upon this city lay their infernal eggs. They have no mind to fill the sky with mines Attached to parachutes: and precious days they wante In vain experiments with R.D.F. If, godlike son of destiny, we two In place of Hopskip jump and Sigma were The sky would rain with parachuting mines Unceasing, and the land be safe." So spake Von Alpha-plus of deep and bold design. Him answering Odin, son of destiny, replied, "Many indeed, and fierce, the bombs I’ve dropped, But never 2-oz mines attached by wires To parachutes, by day and night alike, In billions at our eastern gate. The like Has never been before. We two will take The tidings to the Minister of State. With Odin Lord Almighty of land and sky and sea And Alpha-plus to help him, how happy all will be!" So ancient Sigma and his stag-eyed crew, Theta with bright ideas, Phi with none, Rho with the Minutes, weary Omega, 265

Sat long and silent in the deepening gloom, While Lambda-Mu went out and hanged himself, Snook-cocked by Alpha-plus of deep design, At last with downcast visage Sigma spoke: The game is up. Without von Alpha-plus, Of wily counsel and of deep design, Who speaks with politicians and the Press, And soon may be M.P. for Oxenbridge, All hope is gone and many-murdering Death Will hunt his victims in our streets." To which Theta of bright ideas, Phi of none, Rho of the Minutes, weary Omega, Had nothing printable to add. But set A day to meet Geheimrat Alpha plus And pray for mercy from his mighty friends, From Odin godlike son or destiny, And from himself, the man of deep design. Then ancient Sigma and his stag-eyed crew Will make submission to von Alpha-plus, (Except for Lambda-Mu who hanged himself). Your presence is requested at 11: The number of the room is 008.

The Committee in fact never met again but was re-appointed in the autumn, with Lindemann replaced by Appleton; R.D.F was renamed radar. KEY Sigma...... Tizard (d. 1959) Omega...... Wimperis (d. 1960) Theta...... Blackett von Alpha-plus...... Lindemann (Lord Cherwell, d.1957) Phi…………………………………………Hill Odin...... Winston Churchill (d 1965) Lambda-Mu ...... Roxbee Cox (Lord Kings Norton) Hermes ………………………………...... Joubert (Air Chief Marshal,d.1965) Rho...... Rowe 266

Hopskip jump...... Inskip (Viscount Caldecote,d.1947)

In his "official” biography of Lord Cherwell (The Prof. in Two Worlds, Collins, London, 1961) the Earl of Birkenhead, with my permission, included these verses with the Key. But Phi was referred to as Prof. A.V. Hill. Was this a pet name, or worse, by the Prof.? Or just a happy accident?

B. WHAT KIND OF PEOPLE DOES HE THINK WE ARE?*

[On 13 June 1945 a party was given, in the rooms of the Royal Society, for twenty-nine British Scientists who were going next day to Moscow to attend the 220th Anniversay of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. Shortly before the party met, eight out of the twenty-nine were informed, without warning and contrary to previous arrangements, that H.M. Government would not permit them to travel. The next day, 14 June (the last day of the old Parliament), the Prime Minister (Mr Winston Churchill) was asked a private notice question on the subject and replied that H.M. Government had found, on consideration, that it was impossible "to spare these eight from the United Kingdom at this stage of the war against Japan." In reply to a supplementary question, he said that the decision was taken not on grounds of security but because it was necessary to get work done for the purposes of the Japanese War. In fact it was probably dictated by General L.R. Groves, head of the American Atomic Bomb Project. Those of us who knew how much these particular eight (apart possibly from one) were doing "for the purposes of the Japanese War" found the peremptory treatment of our colleagues intolerable, and the reason given for it incredible; and I was driven in exasperation to write the following "poem". –

O THOU, who didst with vodka and with gin Beset the road they were to wander in, Ask not that Bernal, Darwin, Blackett, Mott Shall spill the atomic beans in alcoholic sin.

Security? Oh no! our Russian friends Will realize how very much depends In war against a formidable foe On all the instant help that Science always lends.

Requirements of the conflict with Japan, And no intent to scramble man with man, Demand that eight shall linger at the start: For them, alas! no glory of the also ran.

267

The Ball no question makes of Ayes and Noos, But Here or There as strikes the Leader goes: Add others, Norrish, Rideal, Milne, Dirac, If any dares to question say, he knows, HE knows.

So jumble up the guests of Uncle Jo And say they're much too valuable to go: But lest there be a row in Parliament Delay their prohibition by the gestapo.

This time the trouble will not lie with Gough1, This time it were no fair to blame the Prof.2 The Boss himself, not Attlee's G.P.U, 3 Decrees that those and these shall not take off.

* cf."What kind of people do they [the Japanese] think we are?" Speech by Churchill to U.S. Congress, 24 Dec. 1941. # Hansard, 14 June 1945, Col.1781. 1. H.J. Gough; a good chap but sometimes tactless. 2 A pet name for Lindemann (Lord Cherwell). 3 An election campaign was raging at the time and the phrase "Attlee’s G.P.U." refers to an election broadcast given by Mr Churchill on 4 June in which he declared that no socialist system could be established without a political police: a charge which was ridiculed in a broadcast by Mr Atlee on 5 June and seriously damaged the Conservative cause

C. THE PURE POLITICIAN [This is included by special request; am rather ashamed of it myself.]

Five years in Parliament, particularly in those heroic days (1940-45), cured me - if I needed curing - of any vulgar prejudice against politicians. In fact, for most of my colleagues there I conceived a sincere regard and affection, not only (if I may say so humbly) for their fundamental humanity but also for their devotion to the institutions of Parliament and their sagacious realization that politics is the art and science of practical government. At intervals, however, during 1944-45, a few provoked me, even to the limits of versification, while I was debating with myself whether or not to be a candidate at the coming general election. For that purpose a "pure politician" (P.P.) was defined as an individual who, having no idea in his head except politics, is ready to give his opinion about everything. In this, mutatis mutandis, he is not really unlike some scientists. When I challenged Lord Brabazon to complete the verse beginning "If plans are to come to fruition For sending us all to perdition,” he retorted with "In spite of defiance Its all due to science 268

Not THIS time the P.P."

That may justify the inclusion of these trivial verses here.

If your engine is weak in ignition, And you're rather a poor electrician, Don't think ‘twould be nice To get expert advice; Just send for a P.P.

In matters of food and nutrition Avoid the expert dietician And all of his type: Just swallow the tripe That's talked by the P.P.,

Inquiry is mere inquisition And knowledge creates inhibition; The worst ignoramus Can still become famous Enrolled as a P.P.

If your family waits an addition Don't send for a nurse or physician; Advising the nation About population is the job of the P.P.

If plans are to come to fruition For mending the country's condition Don't make people weary with facts or with theory: But call in a P.P.

If you've got no particular mission, And lack any talent or vision, But cherish ambition For fame and position, Or self-exhibition : Engage as a P.P. (101) THE CREED OF SAINT RIBBENTROP: FRUITS OF PROVOCATION

[A new version of the Athanasian Creed, written in 1939 after the joint attack on Poland by Germany and the U.S.S.R. The Athanasian Creed is not as well known today as it was when I was a boy, but it can still be found in the Book of Common Prayer. I first saw it used 269 for a similar purpose in the office of the Ordnance Committee at Woolwich about 1917 referring to the Trinity of the Horse Artillery, the Field Artillery and the Garrison Artillery. "And yet there are not three Artilleries but only one Artillery. "]

Whosoever will be saved: before all things it is necessary that he hold the Communist Faith, Which Faith .except everyone do keep whole and undefiled: without doubt he shall perish everlastingly. And the Communist Faith is this: That we worship one Hitler in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; Neither confounding the Persons: though sometimes (as in Poland) dividing the substance. For there is one Person of Bolshevism, one of Fascism, and another of National Socialism: the Glory equal, the Lebensraum co—eternal. Such as Bolshevism is, such is Fascism: and such is National Socialism: Bolshevism incomprehensible Fascism incomprehensible: and National Socialism incomprehensible. And yet there are not three incomprehensibles but only one incomprehensible. So likewise Bolshevism makes an end of the axis, Fascism makes and end of the axis: and National Socialism makes an end of the axis. And yet there are not three ends to the axis: but only one end to the axis. And on this axis none revolves faster than another: none is encircled afore or after another. This is the Communist Faith: which except a man believe faithfully he cannot be saved. Glory be to Bolshevism, Glory be to Fascism, Glory be to National Socialism: As it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be, axis with only one end Heil Hitler

For the benefit of those who do not remember Ribbentrop: born in 1893, he was rich, successful, suave and unscrupulous. He joined the National Socialist Party in 1932 and became Hitler's adviser on foreign affairs. In 1936 he was appointed German Ambassador in London and in 1938 foreign minister of Germany. His influence in London with a number of highly placed Tories, who imagined that Hitler was saving the world from Bolshevism, is a sorry commentary on influential British opinion then. In February 1938 Eden resigned from the Foreign Secretaryship rather than go along with these people (and Ribbentrop). In 1939 Ribbentrop was largely responsible for the German-Italian pact in May and the German-Soviet pact in August. From 1940 on, his influence receded though he remained foreign minister. After the war he was sentenced to death by the International Court in Nuremberg and executed in October 1946. As german Ambassador in London he completed an entry in Who’s Who which continued till 1946. It is entertaining to see how he described his activities; e.g. “Affiliation of Austria, March 1938” and “Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia established March 1939.”

270

(102) AN UNTIMELY PRAYER

In 1943 or 1944 my attention was called to a beautiful Elizabethan Prayer for our Enemies which was being used in a College Chapel at Cambridge.

Most merciful and loving Father We beseech thee most humbly, even with all our hearts, To pour down upon our enemies with bountiful hands, Whatsoever things thou knowest may do them good.

It was a beautiful prayer; but the bombing offensive of Germany was then at its height, and the last eight words seemed to invite irreverence. I sent it indeed to the C. in C. of Bomber Command.

271

(103) A MESSAGE FROM ANOTHER WORLD.

On 22 June 1941 Germany attacked Russia. A few days afterwards Peter Kapitza, the Russian physicist who had spent about ten years at Cambridge and had many English friends, broadcast to England. The B.B.C. asked me to reply. Whether anyone heard me in Russia I never learnt, but I was heard in South West France, which is about 90o off course. I was to speak to Russian scientific friends, making play of course with the name of Pavlov and sending my love to his wife (he had died in 1938). Several weeks later I received a postcard with a Spanish postmark, no address, no name or date, only a handwriting that, though disguised, I recognized. The message I deduced from it was that listening on their clandestine radio two friends of mine and their families, suddenly and without warning, heard a friend's voice. They would, I was sure, be deeply involved in the resistance movement, almost totally cut off from the outside world. It was three years and more before I heard from them again. When I met my friend Louis Bugnard in 1945, after the Liberation, the first thing we talked about was that message. I had interpreted it rightly. In a letter written years later Louis confirmed my memory of it: Votre lettre me ramene a de nombreuses annees en arriere: c’est certainement dans le courant de l’annee 1941, au moment oü nous etions occupes par los troupes allemandes, que j’etais arrive, clandestinement, ecouter la radIo et que j'avais eu la grande joie d'entendre par le plus grands des hazards une communication du professeur A.V. Hill. Nous en avions ete tellement heureux que j’etais arrive a vous faire parvenir une carte par un des courriers de la resistance qui arrivaient a franchir la frontiere espagnole. En cas d’arre'tdu courrier il etait bien recommande de ne joinder aucune signature qui aurait pu reveler son origine en cas d'arrestation par le controle allemand de la frontiere.. Vous ne pouvez imaginer le bien que cela nous avait fait de vous entendre.

272

(104) THE REAL REASON WAS HIGHLY DISCREDITABLE.

In October 1942 the following letter of mine was published in The Times. Its purpose was to call the attention of public and parliament to an absurd anomaly which not only was unjust to women but also was depriving the fighting services of 500 young men. The majority of the Medical Schools in London had traditionally refused to accept women students; in this they were almost unique throughout the world. Two years later the report of the Interdepartmental Committee on Medical Schools recommended that payment to any school of an Exchequer Grant, in aid of medical education, should be conditional on acceptance of a reasonable proportion of women students. Nothing less would have changed the reactionary minds of the wealthy consultants who dominated policy in the London Medical Schools; for men students sent them, after qualifying, more and wealthier patients than women students did. Sir, During the academic year 1940-41, of the 5,265 students of medicine and dentistry in the 11.7 per cent were women; three-fifths of the women were at the Royal Free Medical School; of the 4,890 students in the other schools only 5 per cent were women. In the remaining universities of Great Britain, of 7,687 students of medicine and dentistry 21.4 per cent were women. The total number of students of medicine and dentistry has only slightly diminished during the war, from 13,636 in 1936-39 to 12,952 in 1940-41, and the number of women has only slightly increased, from 2,013 to 2,261. Medicine and dentistry are professions particularly suitable for women; especially in the important developments to be foreseen connected with the public health services, maternity and child welfare, school medical and dental services, the Women's Services, etc., and a large number of women are anxious to enter them. Very many, however, particularly in London, are being rejected as students, not for lack of qualifications by education, character, or desire for public service, but solely because they are women. The majority of London Medical Schools refuse to accept them at all; the reasons given for retaining this privilege - if so it can be called! - contrary to the public interest, would apply equally to nearly every medical school in the world. The real reason for all this is highly discreditable. If London University, as a whole, had taken the same proportion (21.4 per cent) of women medical students as the remaining universities of Great Britain, there would now be about 500 more of them in the London Medical Schools than there are. The recently formed British Medical Students Association• resolved, at its inaugural meeting last June, to approve the principle of the admission of women to all medical schools on equal terms with men. In spite, however, of the present shortage of man-power, the London Medical Schools have made no change in their admissions; they have again taken a large number of young men, who had better now be in the fighting services - in order to exclude women from the medical profession. In reply to a Parliamentary question on this subject on August 6, the Minister of Labour* said: "No one regrets more than I do the rigidity of the medical trade union rules." (*. They were not really "medical trade union rules", but that is how, not unnaturally, Bevin thought of them.) Is it not time that he refused to reserve any more men to begin the study of medicine in schools which do not accept women? House of Commons. A.V. Hill. 273

(105) SCIENCE IN THE WAR. 1941 (COOPERATION WITH CANADA AND THE UNITED STATES)

[In May 1941 I was asked by the Cambridge Review to write an article about my mission (to Canada and the United States) between February and June 1940. This was rather curious because details of my mission might still have been regarded at least as confidential. Its real purpose, in Henry Tizard's words, had been to get American scientists into the war before their country. Probably, however, complete frankness was regarded by then as politically preferable, except for details of weapons and the like. In June 1941 I was asked to write a similar article The Times. The May article was, in fact, rather longer and more explicit and is given here as it was written in 1941, with a few unimportant changes]

In March 1940 I went on an errand to America. Very early in the War my colleague Professor A.C. Egerton and I, (Egerton and I were, at that time, the joint secretaries of the Royal Society.) among others, had realized that a dangerous lack of liaison existed between the scientific organizations (particularly the National Research Council) in Canada and those in this country. The same, no doubt, was the case in respect of the other Dominions; but Canada was particularly important since Canadian scientists had close and familiar contact with their colleagues in the States; and those of us who knew American scientists intimately were aware that the sympathy of nearly all of them was eagerly on our side, and that, through Canada or directly, their help might be readily available. They had early formed the same opinion as ourselves of Nazi methods; they realized that if intellectual integrity, free institutions and discussion, tolerance, and international co- operation were to become impossible, scientific progress and companionship as we knew them - apart from anything else - would end. This scientific liaison with our Dominions should have been an integral part of Empire co-operation, particularly in defence. Steps should have been taken years before to institute it. We made representations, therefore, at the offices of the War Cabinet and of the Canadian High Commissioner; Dr R.W. Boyle, of the Canadian National Research Council, was in London and encouraged us warmly in our efforts; nothing, however, resulted, and the matter lapsed till April 1940, when I took it up again in Ottawa. In November 1939, Sir Henry Tizard, then scientific adviser to the Air Ministry, whom we had consulted about scientific liaison with Canada, spoke to me about a plan to send a scientific adviser to work with the Air Attache in Washington, and asked whether I would go. Nominally the purpose was to help the Air Attache with the many scientific problems and inventions with which he might have to deal. It was obvious, however, that this would give the opportunity also for taking up again on the other side the plan for proper scientific cooperation with Canada, and of obtaining scientific help from the United States. It was evident that certain scientific developments might play a major part in determining the issue of the war; and that, if official approval could be secured, the vast resources of American science – particularly in the research laboratories of the large corporations which are closely linked with their organizations for development and production - could help to keep us ahead of the enemy in supply as well as research. 274

It was clear, moreover, that air bombardment might seriously interfere here both with longer-range projects of research, and with the orderly development of equipment on which the fundamental research had been completed but which had to go through its teething troubles in production and in operational trials. Canada, being out of range of effective air attack from Germany, and being in close scientific and industrial contact with the United States, would be an ideal site for some of this development work, and part of the longer- range research (necessary in what would probably be a long war) could be undertaken there, and - if possible- in the United States. It took some time to arrange, for the Air Ministry proposed sending me as an Air Attaché, and they could not make out what rank I should hold. My own feeling was that I had better go as myself. Then they had to decide what to pay me, while I insisted that my employers, the Royal Society, would willingly lend me, if wanted, since my laboratory was closed and I could not do my proper job anyhow. Finally Cambridge University introduced another complication by electing me to Parliament. Incidentally, when I reached America, being by then an M.P., I was regarded in some circles with grave suspicion; not only because of the suspicion which naturally attaches to such people, but because of the difficulty of explaining that being an M.P. had nothing whatever to do with my business there. At the Embassy every possible help was given by the Air Attaché in spite of his initial alarm at having not only an M.P. but a Professor as his assistant. Lord Lothian did all he could to forward the less ostensible, but more important object of my errand; and, as one expected, the American scientific people were ready to do anything they could to help. Very soon, however, it became clear that restrictions of secrecy imposed by the Navy and War Departments would prevent any but minor help from reaching us, unless some special plan could be made to get over them. I remember well, at a party, how a Navy officer took my arm, pulled me aside and said, "Why can't we people co-operate: you know perfectly well we aren't on the other side?" I knew it all right, but how to "put it across" to the people at home, who didn't? In conversation with scientific friends, connected with Service developments, the cat looked blandly cut of the bag of secrecy, from which we could not let it escape. I was soon convinced that the only thing to do was for the British Government to offer a complete interchange of scientific and technical information with the United States; and was assured on high authority (Particularly Felix Frankfurter, associate Justice of the Supreme Court who had discussed it with the President (added1972) that the President would surely' agree to this if the offer were made. All the scientific and technical resources of the United States would then be open to us. Lord Lothian was sure on general political grounds, as we on technical ones, of the value of such collaboration. He cabled to the Foreign Office asking permission to approach the President: the Air Attaché and I cabled and wrote to the Air Ministry; the British purchasing Commission also took it up. No reply, however, was received and it was evident after seven weeks that nothing would be done unless one returned to England to make oneself a nuisance. (One's nuisance value can be much greater if one is an M.P.) I had gone in April to Ottawa and had found in the National Research Council even better facilities and an even stronger feeling of frustration than we had expected at the lack of adequate information from the "old country". It was evident at once in discussions with Dean Mackenzie, the acting President of the National Research Council, Sir Gerald 275

Campbell, the British High Commissioner, and others, that the best possible man must be sent from England, as soon as possible, to act as liaison officer with the N.R.C. and to keep them supplied with up-to-date information as to needs and progress at home in scientific developments in our war effort. The High Commissioner cabled to the Dominions Office explaining the need and asking for Professor R.H. Fowler to be sent, and I cabled and wrote to the Air Ministry and the Royal Society suggesting further details of the proposed arrangement. As usual, however, nothing appeared to result (though I believe civil servants wrote minutes about it, and I know that Professor Egerton applied what pressure he could) and it became clear towards the end of May that in this matter also one's nuisance value at home would have to be exploited. In a later visit to Ottawa, just before returning, the two plans were discussed jointly, for it was evident Canada must come into any scheme involving scientific interchange and cooperation with the United States. By the beginning of June Americans had become gravely concerned about their own defences. They had suddenly realized that for a hundred years the Royal Navy, and not some law of Nature, had made their traditional isolation possible. The National Defence Research Committee (N.D.R.C) was set up by the President under Dr V. Bush, the President of the Carnegie Institution of Washington and Chairman of the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics. The N.D.R.C. has considerable funds and full executive powers, in close contact with the Navy and Army, to forward the application of scientific research to American re-armament. One's knowledge that Dr Bush himself, and other members of the Committee, felt very strongly the advantage to both sides of collaboration with ourselves, assured one that an advance from us would be cordially received and generously interpreted. They would have much to gain from our operational experience with new equipment, and from the fact that we had been applying a considerable scientific effort to research into Service problems for some time; we should gain by being given an entry to the great scientific resources of America, particularly in the research laboratories of their great corporations and of some of their university and technical Institutions now engaged in work for the United States Services. On returning to England, I found, as expected, that both plans were held up, the Canadian plan for no good reason at all, the American plan by tedious arguments about secrecy and by a lack of understanding that our American friends really did intend to help us if they could. The good offices of Sir Edward Appleton, Secretary of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, soon resolved the petty obstructions about Canada, and Professor R.H. Fowler, lent by Cambridge University to the D.S.I.R., went to Ottawa. Nothing could have been better. The American plan gave much more trouble; high political personages were involved. The Service Departments were glad enough to take part; they realized that the information passed to America would be carefully guarded, and that even if slight extra leakage occurred, it was more important to be a year ahead of the enemy than to insure against his knowing what we were doing six months back; anyhow, serving officers are inclined to believe that the commonest causes of leakage are politicians and their lady friends. Finally, in spite of all, Lord Lothian was asked to approach the President; the President agreed and invited the British Government to send over a mission to make the necessary arrangements. 276

After more delay and obstruction, difficult to overcome, Sir Henry Tizard was invited to lead the mission, among whom were Professor J.D. Cockcroft and some service people. They went first to Canada, to ensure that Canada was brought straight into the picture, and then to Washington. Proposals were worked out in detail with the Service people and the N.D.R.C., and Tizard returned in the autumn to confirm them here. Already certain developments were taking place very satisfactorily in America and Canada. Then further delay and obstruction occurred: (added 1972: I have no direct evidence of who was responsible for this obstruction; but the pattern of it is recognisably the same as that of Lindeman’s influence with Churchill and his jealousy of Tizard.) Finally, however, all proved well, and it was decided to set up permanently in London and Washington offices for the exchange of information, to which visiting scientists from the other side could be attached. For all of which, among many other things, the country is greatly indebted to Sir Henry Tizard. It is public knowledge that Dr J.B. Conant, the President of Harvard and a member of the Bush Committee, recently came to this country with two of his colleagues to inaugurate the office at the American Embassy here. He has now returned, but Dr F.L. Hovde remains in charge or the office, and various experts sent by the N.D.R.C. make it their headquarters. To Washington we have sent Dr C.G. Darwin, the Director of the National Physical Laboratory, and Dr W.L. Webster, a Canadian recently in the , to take charge of the Central Scientific office of the British Supply Council. Before their arrival, Professor R.H. Fowler had been taking charge both in Washington and in Ottawa. He will shortly return and Sir W.L. Bragg has already arrived in Canada to replace him. These appointments should not last too long - in six months of the present war one's knowledge may be out of date - but if the Canadians reluctantly let Professor Fowler go now I am sure they will hope to get him back later on. The present liaison with Canada and the United States applies to weapons of war, but one hopes that it may carry over into times of peace. There were many young American and Canadian scientific workers in our laboratories before 1939, not a few of ours in theirs; may this interchange continue and expand. The problems of reconstruction will be, to an important extent, scientific ones; and it will be necessary to start up again, one day, all the international scientific organizations which have been destroyed by the war. In this I am sure that the present co-operation can be maintained; for it rests ultimately, not on any particular emergency, but on community of outlook, interest and feeling.

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(106) THREE LETTERS FROM AMERICA, MARCH TO MAY 1940

During the two and half months of my attachment to the British Embassy in Washington in 1940, I wrote frequently to my family in England; but few of my letters have survived. That is a pity because if they were like those I wrote to Tizard (see for example, p.253 of Ronald Clark's book (1) they would have been good reading. The only three now worth mentioning are as follows. (1) 26 March, 1940. I can't give you yet, any political impressions; except that certainly America won't came into the war, or do anything very positive, until after the Presidential Election is over (November 1940). If anybody or any party does anything positive there are immediate and violent misrepresentations. America is now in the funny indeterminate state of mind that we had been in for many years until the aftermath of Munich roused us. They are as ready as we were to let the Dictators gain one point after another by slow attrition, and never making up their minds. The publicists are frequently blaming us for things we have done in the last 50 years, as a salve to their consciences for not joining us in what they really all know is their cause. Democracy is rather a slow tool in competition with dictators. (2) 25 April, 1940, in the train, Schnectady-Rochester, N.Y. I attended the National Academy of Sciences and did some rather useful work which resulted in two long cables to the Air Ministry and a cable by Lothian to the Foreign Office. I hope it will be useful but I fear our people will be too thick headed (2). I have been asked, and have agreed, to give the commencement Address at Pasadena on 7th June to Cal. Tech. R.A. Millikan invited me. Lothian gave it last year. It is a great opportunity, I am told, to put one's ideas across; half hour address, 2000 audience, a public occasion at which (Millikan says) one can speak to the West Coast. (4) 10 May 1940, Wardman Park Hotel, Washington Dearest Marg. & Co., What a day! This morning gave the news that the Huns have marched and dropped and flown into Belgium, Luxembourg and Holland; and then that Chamberlain has resigned and given place to Winston. I am glad that C. has gone and I hope to goodness that Simon (4) and Sam Hoare (5) stay out of the new Government. I tried to listen to the English broadcast tonight but couldn’t get it; but heard Chamberlain's speech. It was difficult to work today waiting for, and getting rather little, news. The people I was dining with - one is the secretary of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, another (his brother) the head of the Brookings Institution (Economics) of Washington - were all for America coming into the war soon. One of them believed they would do so within a few months. The other did not - nor do I. But neutrality will be greatly relaxed in our favour [At this moment (9.30 pm.) Det (6) rang up from Philadelphia to ask me what he could do about it all - and would I find him a job. Glenn (7) is coming to see me tomorrow here, so I said I would drive Glenn back with me and come and spend the night with Det to tell him what to do! Though I can't easily think of anything) (after this one sheet is missing, the next sheet continues as follows) 278

.... to continue - and to open up the war. The war can't be won without fighting; and, without winning, civilization in Europe is at an end. So large-scale fighting in which the Germans use up all their oil and petrol is probably to our advantage; and in attacking they will lose more than we do. I hope this is not "wishful thinking". I suppose London will be bombed soon - please keep out of the way. I am sorry I am not there, but for the moment I am probably more useful here. It will have a very good moral effect in America it Chamberlain Hoare and Simon all go. They connect Chamberlain with the farce of non-intervention in Spain and with being hoodwinked for years by a damned gangster, They (8) haven't much to boast about themselves I know, but that is how they regard him. Hoare is connected with the weakness about Abyssinia; and Simon is the sign of the original weakness and failure to cooperate with a willing America about Manchuria (You should hear Det on the telephone about the "damned shame" of America not joining in tomorrow). As a matter of fact the labour leaders in England are tarred with a similar and no more respectable brush, of not permitting us to rearm. Churchill is popular here, and a decent cabinet, if he can make one, will give a better chance of cooperation and "unneutrality" if not "non-belligerancy". You will be sorry indeed about those tulips all ablaze in Holland now. Best love to you all and keep out of the way of the Blitzkrieg. P.S. Mrs. Frankfurter (9) thanks Janet for the Lancet. Notes (1) to (9) inserted in 1972 (1) Tizard (1945) Methuen & Co., London (2) One had to say it hundreds of times before the Tizard Mission started on 14 August. See P.249 ste. of Figard, note(1) (3) In fact I did not give it in person, I had urgently to return to England, but it was read for me instead. (4) Sir John Simon, later Viscount Simon (as compensation). (5) Sir Samuel Hoare, later Viscount Templewood (ditto). (6) Detlev Wulf Bronk (7) Glenn Allan Millikan (son of R.A.M.) (8) The Americans (9) Wife of Felix Frankfurter

279

(107) THE WORLD OF TOMORROW.

In April, 1940, when I was in the United States, Dr R.A. Millikan, President of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, invited me to give the 'Commencement Address' at the graduation ceremony on 7 June. Events in Europe made me return earlier than intended and I was unable to be present. The following address, however, had been prepared, and was sent to Dr Millikan and was read at the meeting. It’s interest, if it has any, is that it reflects the feelings of an English scientist in America in May, 1940, trying to think of the future during the horrible disasters which were occurring in Europe day by day. Though it may have an application to events thirty years and more later.

When Dr Millikan invited me to give this Commencement Address he told me that I should speak primarily to young people looking forward. Older people find it easier to look back. In middle age it is hard not to look chiefly at the present; particularly hard when: as today, the future, is so difficult to discern and the present so pregnant with cruelty, suffering and disaster. The character of a man depends largely upon inheritance, derived through his parents from all his ancestors. It may however, be greatly affected by his upbringing. So the future, in human affairs, depends upon inheritance from the past; but it may be greatly altered, for better or worse, by the influence of the present. We cannot change our ancestry - - but that would be a foolish argument against education; we cannot alter the present – but that is no excuse for failing to provide, by effort and sacrifice in the present, far decent upbringing for the future. The most certain of all scientific rules is that contained in the Second Law of Thermodynamics. In any material system the most probable condition is one of chaos. In a system once chaotic order can be set up only by the expenditure of energy from without. Left to itself an ordered system gradually reverts to chaos. So it is in human affairs; it is only by the continual expenditure of effort that disorder can be avoided. For many years it was the fashion - based as little upon fact and reason as most other fashions are - to write and speak, and finally to think and act, as though progress was inevitable. Those who doubted this creed were thought to be stupid and reactionary. Such baseless optimism has done inestimable damage. It may have been due in part to a reaction from the hard idea of sacrifice inherent in Christianity. It found bogus scientific authority from the theory of evolution. The bitter fact was disregarded that, just as a house of cards carefully erected can be blown down in a second, so decency and orderly freedom, art: knowledge and beauty, the simple and kindly customs which men have slowly and laboriously built up, can be quickly and easily destroyed. Such destruction was long regarded, is still regarded by many, as unthinkable. It is not unthinkable, it is just what is happening now to many millions of people in various parts of the world, it is what may happen everywhere if mankind goes on worshipping a false god. It is too easy, I know, to get used to things happening to other people, and to sey selfishly and complacently 'Oh no, these things never happen to us’. In 280 recent years there was the persecution of the Jews and their relations in Germany, but of course they rather deserved it. There were the massacres by Japanese in China: but of course there were brigands in China, and anyhow the Japanese were saving the Chinese from Bolshevism; so we went on selling war material to the Japanese. The Ethiopians were gassed and bombed and slaughtered: but they were scarcely human, and the higher civilization of Italy needed to expand. In Spain too the people were saved from Bolshevism, this time by Germany and Italy trying out their new instruments of war, but after all, the Spaniards had always been cruel themselves, and rich and comfortable people in other countries might lose their property if Communism won. Austria was annexed and Czechoslovakia was dismembered and finally absorbed, but a minority in each had been in favour of what happened, and anyhow this would be the last act of violence, for there was no earthly excuse left for any more. Then Poland was attacked, its struggling civilization was destroyed and its people massacred or enslaved; but it seemed more important in America that Britain interfered with Air Mails at Bermuda, and anyhow Europe had been perpetually struggling for thousands of years. Then Norway, Denmark, Holland and Belgium were overrun without any excuse at all; it was more difficult to swallow that and if Britain and France do not stem the tide - why aren't they better prepared? - it may happen in America. You, the young people, graduates today, to whom particularly I am speaking, are looking forward. To what? To inevitable progress? To a world uniformly becoming wiser and better, or richer and more comfortable? To one in which justice, kindness and mercy, tolerance and freedom, health and happiness are steadily expanding? Yes, many will still say, with the ups and downs of course that always attend a journey anywhere. They are making an unwarrantable assumption. Many civilisations have perished before, many races of animals have become extinct. Because - in pseudo-scientific jargon - of the survival of the fittest? The only evidence for that is the fact that they did not survive. Can we be sure that man and his present civilization are fitted to survive? or mercy, tolerance and honesty for that matter ? Or may we rather look forward, not to extinction, but to a completely orderly arrangement like that of an anthill or a hive, in which freedom is impossible, spiritual things are forbidden. and unrealities like kindness, mercy and tolerance are eliminated ? Such questions may sound like bitter cynicism, as a farewell to young men going out gallantly and hopefully into the world. A false god, some will say, may be better than none. Not always. False gods take people, and their unfortunate neighbours, to strange destinies sometimes, as we see in Europe and Asia today, as we may very well see in other continents before long. Why not look for an alternative to the illusion of inevitable progress which has let us down so badly? For there is one - but it is harder to accept. The idea of progress is a generous one. It has moved high minds and warm hearts to do many of the things worth doing. It is not that the idea of progress itself is false. The mistake has been to suppose that progress is inevitable: whereas, in fact, even what we have of decency, and orderly freedom can be held only by continual effort, continual sacrifice, continual vigilance. No system which man can create will even maintain the very moderate estate he has achieved, far less advance beyond it, without the conscious and willing service and the co-ordinated effort of the majority of the people. 281

One is warned daily in America now to pay no heed to propaganda. The second stage, rather, has now been reached, in which fear of propaganda is skilfully exploited to prevent one from knowing the truth. Do you suppose that the daily exhortation to avoid being influenced by propaganda in relation to the war has been based all through on a generous idealism? Was it not really skilful propaganda contrived to prevent America from getting ready, put out by one party in the conflict? Indeed the only safe thing now is to ignore, not merely propaganda but propaganda against propaganda; to trust to the decent and simple motives and the honest judgments of evident fact which alone can make orderly freedom possible. I have often engaged in argument with scientific colleagues on the question of whether scientific men, as such, are better qualified than other educated persons to lay down the law on political, social, or economic questions. I am sure they are not, except as far as their special knowledge is involved. The idea that their training in experimental or theoretical science equips them specially to apply the so called 'scientific method' to the study of such things is an impudent myth. Scientific people do not, any more than others, base their conduct or conclusions on pure reason; indeed they would be intolerable prigs if they did - and I doubt if there is such a thing anyhow. If they imagine that they do they are being deluded by an affectation which they affect to despise. No more than other men can scientific people avoid being led by their feelings, guided sometimes by (and often enough guiding) their intellectual processes. You must free your minds from nonsense about this before allowing a scientific man to discuss political, moral or economic questions; he must try to free his own mind from nonsense before giving a Commencement Address! It is true that the modern world, for good and ill, has been greatly affected by scientific discovery and invention; and in discussing the impact of science on society the scientist, if he also knows something about the many-sided organisation of society, has a special part to play. Much of modern business, much of the machinery of government, de pends upon scientific discovery and development; as, alas, does much of modern war; and in such things scientific men can rightly claim a place as equal partners in deciding policy. If I may presume to give advice to young colleagues going out into the world, insist as scientific men on your right to equal partnership with other people but do not suppose that scientific knowledge as such gives you a special claim to speak on other matters than science. You may prove to be great executives, great lawyers, great soldiers, great statesmen, even great saints, as well as accomplished scientists: but if so, that is because you have other qualities and experience as well as those required for scientific work. With this prelude and apology I propose to talk to you for a few minutes about politics, not about party politics but of matters of such moment that they are in the minds and hearts of all of us today. You can remember that I speak as an Englishman, as one who is proud to be an Englishman in spite of anything that is said or threatened against England, and you can discount what I say if you wish. I am going to speak of the present disgusting return to barbarism, the present horror which rages over Europe. These were foreseen to some extent by many scientific people as long as seven years ago, when Hitler began his persecution of our colleagues on grounds of race, religion or opinion. This foresight was not due to any special wisdom on our part, for we scientific people can be just 282 as easily bamboozled as others, but to two simple facts : first, the conviction that science is essentially international in its outlook, that race, religion and opinions have nothing whatever to la with the validity of scientific invention and discovery : and second the feeling that science and learning are things precious in themselves, that a man who would destroy them would destroy anything, that their destruction strikes at the basis of all civilised behaviour. To those of us who know the misery, the bitterness, the injustice, the cruelty to which friends and colleagues were subjected; who realised the destruction in Germany of all the things we hoped and worked for in our own universities; who saw our hopes shattered of international friendship based on a common appreciation of the decencies and beauties of intellectual achievement ; who realized the preposterous nature of the racial claims on which such cruelty was perpetuated and such ruin let loose; to us, the danger of a vast conflict for and against the maintenance of a liberal civilization already seemed to be impending. In our little way we tried in Britain and France, in the smaller countries of Northern Europe, in North America, to alleviate suffering and to save for civilization the talents, knowledge and experience of these who were persecuted and exiled. In so doing, however, we learnt what manner of system was growing up, and the nature of the tyranny which was being prepared for mankind. In another way too, as scientific people, we saw a thing which dismayed us; the cult of successful and intentional fraud. When Hitler, or one of his accomplices, makes a premise or a statement, the world has painfully realized that the only question to ask is, why does he make it? In commerce, honesty is commonly held to be the best policy; if it ceased to be, trade would become impossible. In science, if a large scale attempt were made successfully by able and unscrupulous men to lie and fake and pervert, all genuine scientific work would come for a time to an end. So it is in ordinary civilized intercourse. If treachery and disaffection, hatred and untruth are steadily fostered, if lies are spread for base ends over a large part of the world, the whole of civilized life is corrupted. The trust of man for man is undermined, the sanctity of promise or contract is lost, the precious currency of honesty is debased, and many years of effort may be needed to eliminate the disease. We in the democracies have worshipped a false god, we have supposed that progress is inevitable and too often, alas, such progress has been regarded only as greater material comfort, greater security, more leisure and more complacency. Too many of us have forgotten the idea of sacrifice, have scorned the soldierly qualities of discipline and devotion to a common end. We have esteemed a flimsy smartness as more virtuous than constancy and courage. We may, indeed, be going down, one after another, before a fanatical barbarism in which those soldierly qualities, good in themselves, have been exaggerated to the exclusion of all the common decencies of civilization. Why? Because so many would not believe that civilization was really threatened; they regarded its continuance and upward trend as inevitable. What then of the world of tomorrow? It is not my business, as an Englishman in America, to comment on the first great step towards the present disaster when the League of Nations was emasculated by its parent soon after its birth. It can give no one any satisfaction, and it does no good, to say to one's own countrymen, 'I told you so', when errors in foreign policy, or of domestic bickering, or of sectional selfishness, bear their fruit. 283

Least good of all does it do to blame one's neighbours and one's friends for their share in the tragedy. But if civilization is to perish elsewhere for a century, in America you still have a chance; I hope and believe you will take it. Let me speak as a scientist. Yours are now the only scientific laboratories in the world, of any great significance, in which disinterested scientific work can still be carried on. I see it with envy - and with fear. Yours are at present the only universities where study can be pursued free from the threat of impending, calamity, or from which the young men have not to go out to fight. This is not due to any peculiar virtue of America, your virtues and your vices are very much the same as that of all the other democracies; but space and time are - for the moment - on your side. Remember that your liberties too and your decencies, can be maintained only by continual effort and by continual readiness for sacrifice and discipline in a common cause. Some years ago, a good and beloved Englishman who has spent his later and some of his most fruitful years at Harvard said to me that, whatever befell England in the future, he was glad to think that so many of the good things we had worked for and dreamt about have found a permanent home in the United States. We did not invent them, they are not our special possession, in many ways and forms they are to be found in most communities of men; but we have helped to give them, in our institutions and traditions, a corporate expression and it is that corporate expression of human decencies and liberties which Whitehead felt you would carry on. I am not downhearted about the ultimate outcome of the struggle in Europe; but I may be wrong. If I am, it can still be within your power here, if you have the will, the resolution and the readiness for discipline and sacrifice, to see that the tragedy of the rest of the world is not repeated in North America. That surely does not mean isolation, or shutting yourselves of from the common destinies of man. But it does mean that you must drop the complacency of a comfortable and false religion, and see that the decencies and liberties which you and your fathers have built up, or inherited from others, are not overthrown. I realise the strength of your dogma of neutrality. I do not expect, and I should be too proud to ask, that America should intervene directly in the present struggle on the side of the democracies. I have faith in ultimate victory, but I realise we have to achieve it alone and at bitter cost. If we succeed we may be exhausted, and many of us saddened and embittered, for a generation. If we fail, the light of civilization is put out in Europe and in most of the rest of the world. What I do expect, and what I am not too proud to ask, is that you, in North America, will tend and cherish here the corporate ideals of freedom, of honesty, of mercy, of justice, of friendly and reasonable dealing, which - for all our faults, and they are just the same as yours - have helped increasingly to guide the behaviour of the democracies of Northern and Western Europe for so many years. Do not suppose that the task will be easy. It will require wisdom, courage and fortitude; it will need more than a formal assent to a generous sentiment; it will not be achieved by any comfortable faith that progress and decency are self-perpetuating. The common, cheap and selfish affectation that politics is a dirty game, and only fit for dishonest men, is one which brings its own fatal reward in the corruption of public life. The false reproach that public service is a form of self-advertisement may sometimes deter sensitive people undertaking it. A mystical belief in laissez faire and the defence of gross inequalities of wealth and opportunity can only lead to violent revolution. A sentimental illusion that the 284 lazy and incompetent, whether rich or poor, can be made comfortable and secure by the efforts of others, is certain to lead to weakness and degeneracy. One must be stern as well as kind, just no less than generous. One must have scepticism as well as faith; one must see facts as well as dream dreams; one must be ready, if needs be, to sacrifice at least a part - and sometimes all - of one's personal advantage in the service of the community. At this time, then, you young men who are going out into the world of tomorrow may be, in a very special sense, the trustees of civilization. Such trusteeship will require not only that you yourselves be civilized, but that you show the very old fashioned qualities of wisdom, constancy and courage. Civilization will not perpetuate itself. It will continue only so long as its trustees are prepared at any time to make effort and sacrifice in its cause. There is no simple formula for virtue, and 'safety first', good though it be on the highways, is a disastrous guide to life. As trustees of civilization you must be ready to defend it by accepting hazard and discomfort - recalling, what so often is forgotten, that virtue originally meant manliness and valour. Had days been different you would have expected me to talk to you of scientific matters, of the progress of science, of the benefits of science to mankind, of the relations of science to society; or - more selfishly but perhaps more eloquently - of the adventures in which, as a scientist, I have spent a large (and the happiest) part of my life. But you will understand that to talk of such things now would be an affectation. Civilization depends upon science - that is true enough - but science depends even more upon civilization; and since civilization at the moment is in the greater peril I have chosen to talk to you of civilization in the world of tomorrow, and of some of the deeper things than science on which civilization and science itself depend.

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Chapter 6 Grave or Gay

(108) MAGIC OR CHANCE? (1926)

Nearly everything that actually happens is, a priori, extremely unlikely. But most things that happen do not have any simple regularity, which the mind, or the eye, picks out as odd. For example any specified "hand" at bridge is just as unlikely as a hand consisting entirely of hearts. But the first may look quite ordinary, the second looks very unlikely. Following is an example of the second kind. The story that follows is an exact copy of what I wrote down, immediately after the event described, on 18 April 1926. The paper is well preserved, the writing easily legible, there is nothing to suggest that it is not an accurate record. My family was away at the time, probably completing a holiday at West Runton.

This evening Sunday April 18, 1926, being alone at home and having spent the day cleaning the engine of my car, I did what I cannot remember doing before, I picked up a copy of the New Testament to read at supper. I opened it purely by chance at the 21st chapter of St. Luke and finding interest in re-reading the story of the crucifixion I read on. Supper finished in a few minutes, I went into my study and picked up the head-phones of my crystal set to "listen". The bells of St. Botolph's, Bishopsgate, were just beginning to ring, and – this suiting my mood - I sat down in front of the fire, with the telephones on my head and the New Testament in my hand. Of the prayers, lesson and anthem I remember nothing, for I was reading, now in the 24th chapter of St. Luke, the story of the two disciples going down to Emmaus. Then the preacher took his text for the sermon, from the 21st verse of the 24th chapter (I was paying little attention and none to the numbers) of the gospel according to-at this moment I was confident what the next words would be - St. Luke; "but we hoped that it was he who should redeem Israel". To my amazement words which I had read perhaps thirty seconds earlier. I vaguely remembered the number 21 in the preacher's announcement; and looking hurriedly back I checked my memory of having read the words immediately before. I was in a reasonably wakeful and not particularly devout mood; I remember, shortly before, having calculated that the walk of "three score furlongs" from Jerusalem to Emmaus was 7 or 8 miles, and my mind wandered momentarily to such walks I have made myself. The chance of my picking up a New Testament to read at supper, if not negligible, is small; say 1/2,000. The chance of my listening in to the broadcast service on Sunday evening is fairly large, say 1/3. The chance of the preacher choosing a text from the passage I am actually reading is very small; my eyes were actually within half a column of the text when he gave it out; I should estimate the chance as about 1/10,000. From these we may calculate the total probability as I in 60 millions. "Thought-reading" on my part? - but I did not know the preacher and I opened the book purely accidentally at the end of St. Luke;. (Note 1971. A young woman theologian to whom I showed this was not surprised; it happens to her almost daily she said, she calls it providence.)

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287

(109) MAGIC OR CHANCE? (1951)

In February and April 1934 an exchange of letters appeared in Nature between (1) and me. Stark, a notorious Nazi, was condoning the persecution of liberals and Jews in Germany, or even denying its existence. The correspondence (2) gave much • pleasure to soma of my colleagues in Germany and, incidentally, led (5) to come from Leipzig to University College, London; which was a good thing. In June 1934 (3), as good a man as Stark was bad, wrote me referring to this correspondence and sending a copy of a speech by Stark in September 1933; in September 1934 he wrote again, sending a letter from Stark to him, which he asked me to keep for him against a possible change of climate later (Nach einem Witterung- sumschlag konnte er für mich einmal wertvol werden. Zur Zeit liegt er wohl besser bei Ihnen.) On another occasion, sending details of a relative of the physicist Heinrich Hertz, who had been driven from Germany, he asked me not to acknowledge his letter - that would be safer for him. These letters lay in my files, untouched and almost forgotten, for 17 years. In May 1951 an American surgeon came to see me, by previous arrangement, to talk about Ernest Starling (4) of whom he was writing a biography. In preparation, just before he came, I had taken out of my file letters and papers about Starling. Alphabetically Stark came immediately before Starling, and I noticed in the file the papers which Laue had sent me in 1934. Just as my visitor was coming in, the morning letters were laid or the table and there on the top was a letter from Laue: in Berlin, with his name on the back of the envelope, the first I had had from him since before the War. It was left unopened till my visitor went; then I found a request from Laue to return the papers which I had noticed half an hour before (‘da nun der Witterungschlag da ist’). The only connection between Stark and Starling, so far as I know, was the alphabetical one ; apart from the certainty that Starling would have disliked Stark as much as I did, but that was not uncommon. A would-be believer, of course, would proclaim this a magnificent example of "telepathy"; at any rate the timing was very accurate!

(1) Nobel Prize, 1919, physics (the "Stark Effect"). (2) Some of this correspondence is in E.D. (3) Nobel Prize, 1914 physics. Foreign Member of the Royal Society 1949. (4) Professor of Physiology UCL 1899-1923. (5) My successor as professor of biophysics at UCL, Nobel Prize, Physiology and Medicine, 1970.

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(110) THE XIII INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF PHYSIOLOGISTS, BOSTON, MASS., 1929

[This was the first such Congress to be held in America and at the dinner on 22 August I spoke as follows.]

During the last Congress, at Stockholm in 1926, Ernest Starling addressed us at the banquet. It was one of the most moving speeches that this Congress of physiologists has heard; he spoke of his own conviction, and convinced us, that physiology is "the greatest game in the world". He will be vividly remembered by all who heard him then; we knew he was a sick man, he died six months later. That is three years ago; let us go back now three hundred years, almost to the day. On 26 August 1629, in Cambridge, England, John Winthrop, the Lord of the Manor of Groton, Suffolk, and eleven of his friends signed an agreement to sail with their families and settle in what is now New England. He was chosen to be the first governor of the settlement. Four ships started from Southampton in 1630 to come to that first Congress here. After sixty six days, Winthrop arrived at Salem. He preferred not to remain there, and selected Charlestown as the site of his settlement; but lack of water caused him to move to the present Boston. The first Congress of physiologists was held forty years ago in Basel, and John Winthrop, if he could know, would be glad to be reminded that Michael Foster, a member of his College at Cambridge, was the chief agent in starting off these Congresses. This meeting, with its obvious and overwhelming success, must have given the greatest joy to all who worked so hard to make it so. At Stockholm, in 1926, doubts were expressed, at a meeting of the International Committee, of how many would really turn up from Europe. I estimated 150 to 200. Others, less aware of the intense interest, among younger people, in this vast and hospitable country, said no, perhaps not even fifty. They shook their heads and feared the experiment would fail. It has been a gigantic success. In fact about 650 have come from Europe, which is more than 3.5 times my estimate, 13 times that of the pessimists! What is the cause of this extraordinary occurrence? Many have come, doubtless, to see friends again whom they have met in Europe. Others have come from loyalty to the Congress; there is a sentiment about these gatherings and their traditions which draws us together every three years, a sentiment which makes physiology, the science of life, a part also of the art and science of living. Some, doubtless, have come out of curiosity, others because they realize the enormous advantage of making and renewing valuable acquaintance. The chief motive, however, is a vast appreciation of what America, including Canada, has done recently for science in general and our science in particular. The centre of gravity of world science is already beginning to move out from the shores of Europe; that is what some who have not been here before have come to verify. Professor Walter Cannon has asked me to give you a quick impression of the Congress we had together in the s.s. Minnekahda. Let us start with the ladies. Eight women physiologists, chosen from twenty-two nations, in a tug-of-war conducted in the middle of the Atlantic, pulled over a team of six of the most weighty English men physiologists. The 289 secretary of the Royal Society, who.is also the Chairman of the Committee of the Physiological Society, nearly won the deck tennis competition; and who knows how many hearts were won by the Secretary of the Medical Research Council, the spiritual father of lactic acid in muscle. It is rumoured that at the next Congress (in Rome) an official international tug-of-war will be staged in the Forum. I am proud to remember that on the Minnekahda I was elected an honorary Swede, an honorary Spaniard and an honorary German, in each case to fill a vacancy in some sort of team; while was elected an honorary Englishman and Gretl Magnus an honorary Englishwoman, just for love. We saw a whale and some people said they saw an iceberg; while certain Irishmen detected the coast of Ireland and the villages of their childhood as we passed the Lizard. Flying fishes, porpoises and a certain degree of scientific conversation kept our minds active; and we shall look back to the days we spent in that cheerful company as an essential part of the Congress. I hope that meets Professor Cannon's request. You of the Federation of Biological Societies of America, who are our hosts, do not need to be told of our admiration for what you have done for us. You have heard it already on all sides. But if you are not careful at the next Congress in America there might be, not 650 from Europe but 6500. I hope not, for everything has an optimum size, and I think we have hit it this time in Boston - first shot.

[This speech was followed by two others, from Frank (Germany) and Gley (France). Gley's was delightful and amusing, with quotations from French and English poetry; it lasted for three-quarters of an hour. Speeches like animals and Congresses have an optimum size.]

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(111) THE ABSURDITY OF ANTI-SEMITISM.

This was a contribution to Gentile and Jew, a Symposium edited by Chaim Newman; Alliance Press Ltd., London (1945) pp. 130-134.

To write this contribution to the Symposium properly would require special knowledge of history and politics, of psychology and psychiatry, of propaganda and advertisement, and even of lunacy and criminology. Having little knowledge of such subjects, and only an amateur interest in certain peculiarities of human behaviour, combined with a vulgar preference for fair play, one is pretty certain to put one’s foot in it somewhere. No matter - abuse from anti-vivisectionists, anti-feminists, anti-war scientists, anti-evolutionists, anti-God and flat earth merchants, dowsers, fire-walkers, and an assorted mixture of disappointed authors and inventors, has made one's skin pretty thick! Moreover to provoke abuse from angry antisemites may draw their fire away from one’s friends, and induce in others the precious and cleansing reaction of laughter; and will add at least to one's amateur collection of peculiarities. To exhibit only the tragedy of antisemitism in a world filled with tragedy has little effect; comedy, much rarer, is a far better disinfectant. So much, then, for apology - and provocation! Instead of answering preposterous falsehood or misstatement by denial – for a certain amount of mud is sure to stick, however innocent the victim - one should enquire into the motives and mentality of those who make them. Antisemitism has a long history and bibliography, as can be seen in nine columns of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1929). In Germany the recent motive of antisemitism has been clear, namely, to find scapegoats for past failure and to induce a present state of nationalist and racial exaltation without which Nazi ambitions could not be realised. Hitler and his advertising agents have put their stuff across very well - first to Italy, where there had previously been no antisemitism at all, and then to the rest of the world. Their credulous dupes in other countries have been taught that Mussolini and Hitler saved the world from "Bolshevism" - and the Jews; and many of those in their hearts still believe it! In England it is being argued nowadays that the influx of refugee Jews from Germany and occupied Europe since 1933, and not Nazi propaganda, has been the cause of the recent growth of antisemitism. Before 1933 there were about 400,000 Jews in Great Britain. Since then 68,000 to 70,000 Jewish refugees have been admitted, of whom 10,000 to 20,000 came as children. The Jewish population, therefore, has been increased by about one-sixth. Our society would have to be pretty unstable if an addition of 60,000 adult Jews to a population of 48,000,000, i.e. 1 in 800, were so upsetting! We know perfectly well that it isn't. But Hitler is not the only person who can put ideas across. In 1835 an Anti-Rail- Road Journal was founded. Its editor claimed that he was "fighting only on the side of truth", and an interesting list was given of those who subscribed to a pamphlet Rail-Road Impositions Detected; it was headed by the Provost and Fellows of Eton, followed by fifteen canal companies, three steam wagon companies, several public-houses, and Messrs. Pickford, carriers. Antisemites are not all nit-wits, but - like the Provost and Fellows of Eton in 1635 - some of them are not very careful about the company they keep! 291

There is no thesis so ridiculous, no cause so unworthy, but that some body of zealots will be ready, in season and out of season, to support it. Cults and movements, rooted in superstition and credulity, persist. There is no self-styled prophet, no soothsayer or fortune-teller, no magic-monger, no food faddist or purveyor of health or rejuvenation, who cannot, given a little plausibility, secure a following. On the whole we are right to bear with these camp followers of our freedom. They may do a little harm, but not so much as shutting them up would do, and they may even give a little innocent pleasure. On the average, in an educated society, false prophets can be trusted to cut each other's throats, and there are more amusing things to do than to waste reason on illusions which people prefer to retain. The case is different however, when a lunatic ceases to be relatively harmless, and tries to interfere with other people's liberties. Then the interests of truth become of more importance than one's contempt for fools. We are told by the Nazi experts in Rassenhygiene, and many credulous people believe, that there is some essential difference of inheritance between the Jews and the rest of us. Jews are in fact well-mixed, as the English, Americans and other peoples are. There were many European converts to Judaism in the past; and not all Jewish women were virtuous. No theory of a pure Jewish race can explain why Italian, Hungarian, Russian and German Jews bear often so obvious a likeness to other Italians, Hungarians, Russians and Germans respectively. One need not deny that differences do exist between Jews and Gentiles; they are not, however, in the main of genetical origin, but due to environment, education and tradition. They are quantitative differences, not differences of kind. Far from being a pure race, Jews are less homogeneous than most of us. To lump them all together is about as sensible as to plan for that hypothetical being the average man, without allowing for differences of temperament, physique and intellect; only a little more sensible than saying that the average time is seven o'clock, or that no nation but our own can see a joke! The truth is that among Jews we find all kinds, from saint to gangster, from genius to moron, from athlete to monstrosity, from hero to coward, from people of the highest sensibility and appreciation to persistent nuisances, from the most agreeable companions to damned bores. Whenever a Jew is mentioned, some people begin talking about the "Black Market"; it has become a conditioned reflex. For two reasons black market offences are most frequently associated with Jews; first, because Jews are traditionally occupied in trades in which black market operations at present are possible; second, because a Jewish black marketeer is "news", a Gentile isn't. The fraction, however, of Jews who are involved in such operations is anyhow so small that to think of Jews, as a class, as potential operators in the black market is about as sensible and decent as to regard all young women as potential prostitutes. The Jews are said to get into comfortable sobs and let other people fight for them. This libel has no basis whatever, as can be shown by detailed statistics of those serving in the forces or decorated for valour. The Jews are said to own and control the Press. Apart from the London Daily Herald, which is controlled by the Trades Union Congress, not one of the daily papers in Great Britain is owned or even edited by Jews. The Jews are supposed to be cleverer than the rest of us! Of the thirty British Nobel prize winners to-day in science, medicine and literature, not one - to the best of my knowledge - is a Jew. Of the Fellows of the Royal Society only about 4 per cent are Jews, which is more indeed than corresponds to their proportion of the English population as a whole, but for 292 many years a high proportion of Jewish immigrants have come from the intellectual classes. Of German Nobel prize-winners it is true that a good many are Jews; but the British record shows that this is not due to any intellectual superiority of the Jews - except over Germans. , People frequently ask what we ought to do about "this Jewish problem". A Member of Parliament said to me recently "what on earth can we do with the 40,000 Jewish refugee doctors in England?" The answer to that one was simple - "divide them by fifty" - there are in fact about 800! Many other answers can be of that kind. For the rest, the chief answer to "this Jewish problem" is to stop talking about it and to turn the mind to something more healthy. When it ceases - like sex - to be an obsession, it ceases largely to be a problem at all. Another answer is to remark, "So Goebbels has put it across on you tool", which is almost certainly true. Indeed, one of the greatest reasons for optimism as to the future is that, although the life blood of truth has been poisoned so effectively during the last years, the majority of men are still so decent and sane. When the gangsters have been shot, the patient will recover pretty quickly from the infections they have been injecting for so long, and may prove indeed to have acquired an immunity for the future against that kind of stuff.

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(112) RETROSPECTIVE SYMPATHETIC AFFECTION 1966

In 1966 the Physiological Society held a scientific meeting followed by a dinner to celebrate my eightieth birthday. After that I might reasonably have been forgotten for a bit, but thought otherwise. He decided that another party was necessary before the year ended; possibly (though he did not mention it) to celebrate the twenty-first anniversary of Hitler’s death which occurred in 1945. It was also one third of a century since the foundation of the Academic Assistance Council (A.A.C.) in 1933 which followed the publication of a Memorandum and Appeal over the names of forty-three scholars and scientists. Only two of the signatories were alive in 1966; and since, as one of them, I had been rather active in aid to refugees from the Nazi Fury, Feldberg wanted me to represent the others for an expression of gratitude. So he asked Bernard Katz to find out whether I agreed with his plan, and if so where the party might be held. I happened to be a member of the English Speaking Union (E.S.U.) and suggested that, with such a group, it would be rather fun to hold the dinner there. About seventy came, and Feldberg in an almost Churchillian phrase claimed that "never before, in the history of the English Speaking Union, have so many people sat down together who spoke English in so many different dialects". The result of this unexpected remark was presented in a photograph. Then, of course, I had to make a speech. I had been very touched, I said, not only by Feldberg’s kindness in arranging the party, but particularly for his invitation to eight of my own family to come and learn some ancient history from people who had helped to make it and had experienced some of its rigours. I went on :

“I know I may regard the kind feelings which this party expresses as directed towards all those who are (or were) proud to have had a part in meeting the difficulties which emerged in 1933 , reached a climax between 1936 and 1941, and have not yet disappeared. Proudest of all is (or should be) , who was assistant secretary of the Academic Assistance Council in its earliest days and still manages what is left of it. Her friends and admirers are glad to see her here this evening. She can be described as the Supreme Partisan of Refugees, or S.P.R.; Esther Simpson, S.P.R., 0.B.E., sounds very well. "As to gratitude, which is the prime motive of this party, I know that personally I deserve only a small part of it; but someone has to be spokesman for those who deserve the rest. I have found in a dictionary a pleasant definition of gratitude: "retrospective sympathetic affection". I like it very much. It does not suggest any sense of obligation, and it can be mutual between the parties involved. One can have a strong retrospective affection for a person whom one has had the honour and joy of helping in time of need. Indeed, in this case, it is mixed with admiration for the courage and good humour with which they met their difficulties, so making ours easier. °During the First World War Briand said to Lloyd George: “War is much too serious a thing to be left to military men.” And the Nazi Fury which broke out in 1933 was far too serious a matter to be treated only seriously; one had to laugh at it, and with its victims. Perhaps their retrospective affection 294 now may be partly due to this, the laughter may have made them feel better. A son of my friend, Otto Meyerhof, was a student in England then and he gave me a little statue of Hitler, Nazi salute and all; this stood for years on a plasticine pedestal in my laboratory. When refugees came in to see me, at first they were puzzled, they had not supposed I was that sort of chap; but they understood when they learnt that it was to show my gratitude (No! not in this case sympathetic affection!) to the Fuhrer, for the excellent people he •was sending to work with.us. And my assistant Parkinson kept on the wall a portrait of Hitler, moustache and all, and bought a toy gun; it was currently said that when one of the refugees arrived and asked to see me (as happened often), Parkinson gravely gave him the gun, showed him the target and said "now shoot". If his practice was good enough, or even if he showed little skill but sufficient enthusiasm, he was allowed to come in. “Then, with the encouragement of Richard Gregory, its Editor, I entered into a controversy in Nature with Professor Doctor Johannes Stark. He started it, and was such a portentous ass that he provided excellent opportunities for derision. This gave much pleasure to refugees here, or potential refugees in Germany and their friends, and produced a handsome gift to the A.A.C. from an unknown American sympathizer (I mentioned it in my last letter to Nature, after that the correspondence ceased.). Stark, however, wrote to Rutherford about it, complaining, and asked him to stop me; he cannot have known that Rutherford was one of the founding fathers of the A.A.C. It is typical also of Stark's authoritarian stupidity that he supposed that in England one could be stopped just like that. “After five years of this, getting worse all the time, the War broke out, and I became a Member of Parliament for another five years. This gave rather special opportunities to be a public nuisance in a good cause, particularly in the summer of 1940 when the stupid indiscriminate internment of all so-called enemy aliens took place. When that happened, it had been laid down that if they could do work of national importance they might be released; so, encouraged by Eleanor Rathbone, M.P., I asked an innocent looking Parliamentary Question "whether science and learning can be considered as of national importance". John Anderson, then Home Secretary, who replied, had been a good chemist in younger days, and he had not been responsible for the indiscriminate mass internment. He realized the import of the question and replied shortly, with a trace of a smile, 'Yes, Sir". “After that the Home Office, under its wise and generous permanent secretary Alexander Maxwell, was extremely helpful; we set up a special committee at the Royal Society, with others as well, and with Esther Simpson's help bombarded the Home Office with well documented claims for release. After the war was over I was at lunch once with a party in which, by a strange chance, were several ex-internees. They told me, laughing, that I had got them out of gaol. I forget who they were, but some of them may be here this evening. Anyhow from their warmth then, I expect that, if ever get into gaol myself - who knows? – they will try to get me out. But let it not be imagined that I did all this myself. Our friends owe it largely to Alexander Maxwell (who always hated the monstrous business of indiscriminate internment) and to Esther Simpson, William Bragg then President of the Royal Society, Will Beveridge and a host of others. . “When you, Bernard, told me of Feldberg's plan to have this party, you'll remember I suggested the English Speaking Union as its place. Even at eighty, one gets occasional bright ideas! Its choice, in fact, is symbolic of the quick and cheerful acceptance by all of you of a new life here, and of your adjustment to our funny ways. You may know the lines: 295

For Allah created the English mad The maddest of all mankind.

“You may have noticed it and may even have been infected with a quantum of the madness yourselves. So this is a good place to celebrate it.

“But all the kind things that have been said at these two birthday parties, have made me recall two warning passages in the Bible. The first is:

Woe unto you when all men speak well of you, for so did their fathers of the false prophets. The second is: Beware lest any man spoil you through vain deceit.

‘'My friends have been trying to spoil me at both celebrations; not by deceit, indeed, only by exaggeration; and in such company and context it is hard not to be spoilt. “Well, that's enough, but let me say again; thank you all for what I shall warmly recall as your retrospective sympathetic affection”.

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(113) INDIA – SCIENTIFIC DEVELOPMENT OR DISASTER

[The substance of an address to the East India Association in London in July 1944. Published in full in The Asiatic Review, October 1944, 351-6; and slightly abbreviated as a pamphlet by the India-Burma Association,1944]

Many of you have had a long connection with India; I was there only for five months, and that for a special purpose which kept me so busy that many important aspects of Indian life, and most of the places best worth visiting, are still unknown to me. If I dare to speak emphatically about Indian problems that is for two reasons: first, that I was given very special facilities during those five months for judging what the vital needs of India really are, and how slender still are the resources to meet them; and, second, that I have become convinced of the extreme urgency of a new approach to Indian problems, here and in India itself. This is a time for greatness in Indian affairs: if prejudice, short-sightedness, and faction are allowed to take the place of wisdom, forethought, and collaboration, then I can see little but misery or disaster ahead - not in the distant future but within twenty-five years. India cannot remain as she is in a rapidly changing world: either she must go forward along the path of modern progress, or else she will certainly go back. All who have been in India, even for a few months, know something of the grace and loyalty of Indian friendship - from poor and rich alike. One would be failing in friendship oneself not to make the danger as one sees it abundantly clear. It is literally true of India that where there is no vision the people perish; vision and courage are needed in full measure if misery and calamity are to be averted and happiness and prosperity achieved. The title of this lecture - "Scientific Development or Disaster" - is deliberately provocative; but I hope to convince you that it is not exaggerated and that those are, in fact, the alternatives; if so we had better be aware of them. There are over 400 million people in India to-day - more than eight times the population of great Britain; and they are increasing now by 15 per thousand annually, about six millions every year. The mortality is very high; at every age up to 55 it is four to eight times ours. The crude death-rate it is true is only twice ours, but that is because, owing to the high mortality, the population of India is so much younger than ours; and - other things being equal - young people have a lower mortality than older ones. Only half the people born reach the age of 22, with us two-thirds reach 60. of Indian girl babies born, only 57 per cent reach childbearing age, compared with 88 per cent of ours: and although in India only about half the girls who reach that age survive to the end of the normal child bearing period, as compared with 89 per cent in England, they nevertheless produce on the average twice as many babies as Englishwomen do. As public health measures and nutrition improve, the mortality will diminish and the population will increase still faster. ILL-HEALTH AND MALNUTRITION Far more important, however, than the mortality itself, from the point of view of efficiency and prosperity, is the fact which causes the high mortality- namely, that ill- 297 health and malnutrition are widespread. Between 100 and 200 million people suffer from malaria every year, and more than half the deaths in India are attributed to "fevers". Tuberculosis, cholera, smallpox, plague, guinea-worm and filarial infection, yaws, kala-azar, and many other infectious diseases take their continued toll of life and health. Deficiency diseases due to malnutrition, which can be seen in England to-day only in experimental animals, are common: indeed according to any reasonable modern standards, a large part of the population is underfed, in quality of food even worse than quantity; and chronic malnutrition acts with disease in a vicious circle, producing poverty, misery and inefficiency. The great influenza epidemic of 1918-19, working on a population chronically undernourished, killed very many millions, far more than any famine known to history. All this is no new thing in India, and it does no good blaming it on anyone; indeed, the present rapid increase of population is a sign that conditions have substantially improved in recent years; for there is no reason at all to attribute the present upward trend to an increase in fertility or a greater urge to reproduction. In the last two centuries India has slowly been adopting the methods and ideas of modern western civilization, and improvements in public health, agriculture, transport, industry, and all the machinery of administration and control have had this effect. Some people may hold that to have started India on this path at all was a mistake. But in the "good old days" to which they fondly look back, the reproductive impulse was no weaker than it is now; and if the population then was only a third of what it is to-day, that is merely a sign that mortality was even higher and malnutrition and disease even worse than now. Others, taking the contrary view, may argue that these methods of western civilization should already have been applied in India with far greater vigour than they have been yet. That may be, but there is little use now in disputing about the past. One thing is certain, that having started on this path there is no going back without terrible misery and disaster; the only thing is to go on - but to do so with one's eyes open, knowing where one is going and realizing the dangers that lie on either hand. A VICIOUS CIRCLE If time were on India's side she might hope to let events take their "natural" course - though nature is pretty bloodthirsty at times; but, in fact, the need is acute. The first of all India's requirements, if she is to be happy, efficient, and prosperous, is better health, and that implies beyond everything more and better food. But the immediate consequence of better health and better food is a lowering of mortality, which means a further increase of population and - as regards food, at any rate - we are soon back where we were. In quality and calories together India needs at once at least 50 per cent more food than she now has: give her that and her population will increase not by 15 thousand per annum but by 20 or 25 - it is already 20 in the Punjab. Then in thirty years or so the food supply will have to be doubled again, to be three times what it is now. Which is asking rather a lot; as a dog might say chasing his own tail. Wishful thinkers say that the Indians have only to raise the standard of life and the birth-rate will automatically come down. By how much shall we have to raise the standard of life before the supposed result will be obtained? And will not the first effect be the other way round? In the Punjab, which is one of the most prosperous regions of India, the birth-rate is 20 per cent higher than in India as a whole, 40 per cent more than in relatively 298 impoverished Bengal. And how can the standard of life be raised against the pressure of this overwhelming impulse to reproduction? Others, almost equally wishful in their thinking, put their trust in industrialization; but throughout the nineteenth century, the age of industrialization, the population of England and Wales steadily increased, in spite of emigration, by 12 to 18 per cent every ten years. Others look to education, particularly the education of women, of whom at present only about 5 per cent are literate in their own language, less than 1 per cent in English; but that is bound to take a long time, and birth- control has to encounter the fiercest prejudice of religion and custom before it is a commonly accepted, INDIA A NATURAL UNIT Most of us in England look forward to the day when India will be an independent nation, a proud and self-respecting member of the Commonwealth. Can self-government be achieved without the splitting up of India;' without disorganization and strife? Nobody knows, but the experiment has to be made. India is a natural geographic and economic unit; it must have a unified defence against warlike aggressions it can only be prosperous, efficient, and secure if a good deal of co-operation, of give and take, exists between the different regions and communities. Artificial boundaries, restrictions, enmities, and interferences will make the development of India far slower, will hinder the growth of a sense of national purpose, will defer for many years the attainment of health, welfare, prosperity, and security as the birthright of every Indian. If political discord were to lead to actual disorder, all the public services would suffer, and epidemics like that of influenza in 1918-19 would be given a wonderful opportunity of attacking a population enfeebled by want, under-nourishment, and misery. Many tens of millions of people might then die from famine and disease, and Indian progress would be put back for many years. It is easy for enthusiasts to shout "Quit India," and to suppose that all will then be well; but the solution of India's problems is not really as simple as that! THE SURVEY OF HEALTH The first of all needs in India is for better health: that affects the happiness and prosperity of everyone. Some people may say, "But what is the good of saving people from disease to allow them to die of famine?" A wise old friend of mine wrote me recently, "You can't keep cats without drowning the kittens"; put in terms of homo sapiens instead of felis cattus this means, "You can't have a higher standard of life without limiting reproduction." Whatever we may think about a high mortality for preventing population from outstripping food supplies there are no advantages in widespread illness and inefficiency. In British India as a whole there is only one public health inspector to more than one hundred thousand people; while according to our standards there ought to be seven times as many doctors, twenty times as many midwives, seventy times as many health visitors, and one hundred times and as many nurses as there are - even taking no account of the fact that ill-health is several times as common and births are two and a half times as frequent as in England. It is clear then that public health measures in India and the medical services and their auxiliaries must be greatly strengthened, and, in fact, the Government of India have set up a very powerful and experienced Committee under Sir Joseph Bhore as chairman (the Health Survey and Development Committee), to look into the whole business and 299 report. Their report when it comes will probably be a pretty drastic one; but whatever is recommended will take many years to achieve, because of the present lack of teachers, accommodation, and equipment, and the unwillingness of women, as yet, to join the nursing and midwives services. Like education, health can only be achieved gradually on a long- range plan; but health and education are the fundamental necessities of a better life for India. If time were on her side India could plan a balanced development in all those things on which human betterment depends: education, health, agriculture, industry, engineering, transport, and so on. She still must do so; but her need, in fact, is acute, and side by side with long-range planning must be plans for meeting the current emergency. If disaster can be staved off for thirty years, education, public health, and public opinion together may by then have produced a new outlook on the reproductive impulse, and so the situation may come under reasonable control. It depends very largely on the women of India that this should occur; then the plans of longer range for raising the standard of life all round can hope to bear fruit. FOOD: A THREEFOLD INCREASE NEEDED Let us see what this means. Let us assume that under the influence of gradually improving nutrition and better health the present rate of increase of population of 15 per cent per ten years rises in successive decades to 18 per cent, 22 per cent, and 25 per cent. Then in thirty years there will be 730 million people in India.1 II, by then, the food available per person is [The combined population of India and Pakistan in 1972, i.e. 28 years after, is about 700 millions.] 50 per cent more than at present (in value, i.e. in quantity and quality) the annual food production after thirty years will need to be 2.7 times as great as at present. Allowing a little for safety, plans must be made at once for increasing the food production of India threefold in thirty years. "A Plan of Economic Development for India" assumes a multiplier of 2.3 for agricultural output after fifteen years of operating the Plan. That is rather better than I have calculated but not really too much. In order to increase threefold - in thirty years - the annual food production of India, and to raise it by 50 percent as soon as possible, a very great national effort will be required: in bringing new land into cultivation, requiring great engineering works and the new provision of electric power for irrigation; in land maintenance and averting land erosion; in building roads, railways, bridges, and transport to open up the countryside; in research to improve the breeds of plants and animals, and to overcome the diseases of both; in developing chemical industries to supply fertilizers, and chemicals for pest control; in designing and constructing farm machinery of all kinds; in providing fuel for peasant homes, to avoid the wasteful use of cow-dung as firing; in the scientific study of soils, in developing alternative uses for waste agricultural products - for example, by converting molasses (together with ammonium sulphate) into food yeast; by progress in meteorology, to enable forecasts to be given to farmers; and above all, in technical and agricultural education and training. 300

One of the greatest things for Indian agriculturists - when it comes - will be broadcasting. All-India Radio has not yet the equipment, the staff, the electric power, or the experience to do more than touch the fringe of the vast potential listening public of India. But it is doing a good job under wise direction and gaining most valuable experience which will be wanted when radio sets and electric power, for transmission and receiving, become generally available. At present only a very small part of India is within reach of electric power, and there is practically no electrical or radio industry in India, Food processing (such as dehydration), refrigeration, the development of marine and freshwater fisheries, pest control; all such things and many others, based on modern scientific knowledge and research and requiring modern industrial methods for their application, are essential if more and better food is to reach the people who need it. Those are the technical factors; but social, legislative, administrative, and religious changes also are needed to allow farming to be undertaken in units of sufficient size unburdened by debt to moneylenders, and to prevent the keeping of millions of useless farm animals. Strong administrative action also will be required to control shortages and prices. All this can be and must be done, but the task is tremendous; it can only be achieved by universal co-operation throughout India and the fullest use of modern scientific knowledge and methods. ESSENTIALS OF STABLE PROGRESS The next thirty years will be critical for India, and the first duty of all sensible, decent people is to see that everything is done to avert disaster, to maintain order, and to provide the essentials for stable progress. A friend or mine, an Indian boy of fourteen years, invited me recently to tea in Delhi to meet a dozen of his schoolfellows. We had a fine time at first, but then they began arguing about politics. Most of them hotly contended, first, that they were slaves of the English - "in shackles" was their romantic phrase - to which I could only reply that they did not look a bit like slaves and that shackles were not apparent; and second that India's freedom, self-respect, and prosperity would only be obtained by bloodshed and revolution. It was evident that these children's ideas were derived from some common source, probably from a schoolmaster. If he and his friends had their way an appalling penalty would follow in disorganization, famine, and disease; the factor of safety in India is far too low for luxuries like bloody revolutions, or monkeying about with machinery already groaning under a heavy overload. Grown-up people who talk like that, whether here or in India, are doing the gravest disservice to hundreds of millions of their fellow men. There is quite enough dumb misery already without adding to it by folly. Let us assume, however, that no such disaster happens, that education, health, and food steadily improve and the reproductive impulse comes gradually under reasonable control, so that the kittens need not be drowned. Nothing that is humanly possible must be left undone to secure these foundations of a stable society in India; and the effort to lay these foundations firmly will take, for a good many years to come, a large part of all the effort that India can exert. Any that is left over can be spent in improving standards of living and amenities of life in a great variety of ways; most of which will require goods made by Indian industry or imported in exchange for Indian products. Indian industry, therefore, must serve two ends: first and foremost that of providing the means of laying the firm foundations of a stable society, by providing the necessities of 301 education, health, and food, and then of supplying all those things which civilized people want for a better life. It is realized very clearly in India that a progressive industry will require far more science and technology than today as its basis, both in respect of tools, machinery, and equipment, and also in the education and training of those who direct and operate it. India can produce excellent scientists technologists, engineers, and workmen - given education, training, experience, and opportunity; indeed, those who have seen the way in which Indian youths training for technical branches of the army have recently got on have been astonished and delighted at their progress; the talent is there if only the opportunity and incentive are given. Somehow a sense of national purpose must be created which will give the drive and initiative required. PLANNING A great deal has been going on behind the scenes in India lately in planning future developments: on the one hand, inside the Government departments, on the other, by various groups outside. There is also a great ferment in thoughtful people’s minds, many of whom see the fruitlessness of political wrangling and are increasingly concerned about the welfare of their country.... A good start has been made, and if things go according to plan not only will disaster be averted tut happier and more prosperous days will be in store for the people of India. a sense of national purpose must be created to which all men of wisdom and goodwill can subscribe; and, even so, there will no easy way to the goal - only hard thought, hard work, and a resolute use of scientific methods, together with co-operation at home and abroad and a wide conviction that strife and discord will lead quickly to ruin. In this we in Britain can help: first, by refusing to be drawn into futile recriminations about the past, or to take sides in current political controversy in India; second, by offering to receive a number of able young Indians for higher training or industrial experience into colleges, universities, medical schools and industrial works in this country; third, by being ready to co-operate with Indian industry on terms of reasonable equality and give-and-take; and fourth, by being prepared to send for a period, when they are available, experts of various kinds to help India to get her projects started. We need not be too sensitive to abuse from a minority and answering back does no good; the vast majority of Indians still have a great friendliness towards us and will be proud and happy to see their country a member of the Commonwealth. A self-governing India, strong and contented within the Commonwealth, would add greatly to the prosperity and security of the Empire as a whole; and we need not imagine that we shall lose in the end by showing patience, confidence, and generosity. But we must all realize, here and in India, that success or failure depends on the plans which are now in the making and on what is done about them in the next few years. We must understand that for India it really is a question of "Scientific Development or Disaster."

302

(114) OBSCENITY, ANCIENT AND MODERN At University College, London, in October 1965, in the students' weekly newspaper PI, were two pages of up-to-date (if boring) obscenity, with pictures of naked girls. Some of this had been ventilated previously in Panorama (T.V.); and Archbishop Fisher, having heard the broadcast, had written some comments which were printed in PI. He asked three questions which were answered in the journal by the editor in an Apologia for Lechery. This led me to write the following letter to PI which was published there soon after; the Editor’s answers to the Archbishop are in italics. Dear Sir, - In 1908 I attended a three-weeks course at the School of Musketry at Hythe. It proved also to be a course in the traditional linguistics of obscenity, conducted day and night by some of my fellow sergeants. These honest fellows, of course, were not intellectuals; but they could have expressed in fewer and simpler words the general sense of ‘Ed’s’ reply to the letter of Archbishop Fisher (PI, 28 October): One Irish sergeant in the Militia, I remember, had a particular gift this way. He can scarcely be alive today, he drank too much beer: but I should love to have his rendering of the following: Our test of desirability, therefore, is whether or not the sexual encounter provides a constructive experience for both parties. We believe in a rational, humanistic and responsible sexual ethic. No pornographer has ever exploited sex as blatantly (or successfully) as the Church. As a Catholic he might have spread himself on the last one. But even today, somewhere perhaps in the London Docks, some equally gifted linguist might be found who could turn Apologia for Lechery into more traditional English. Please, could PI try to find him, and publish the result? Yours faithfully, A.V. Hill. The Editors dared not comply with the request in my last paragraph, they feared what the Law might do to them. But the following P.S., which I did not send at the time because I wanted to keep the letter short, adds a bit of pertinent history. P.S. In that Musketry Course six of us were sergeants from University Officers Training Corps. One of the six, from Oxford, took a special interest in the eloquence of the Irishman (let us call him Mulvaney). This Oxford man was the son of an army Colonel and was intending to be a parson. That was not exactly how he expressed it; actually he said he was "going to be a bloody bishop", which may have been what his father called it. We tried to encourage Mulvaney to express himself freely; we thought it would be a good training for the future bishop. One evening in the Sergeant's Mess we told the barman to take to Mulvaney, at our expense, a fresh pint of beer whenever his thirst seemed to require it. He absorbed them all without asking indiscreet questions. But after ten pints we stopped. We expected then to 303 hear a grand explosion; but he may have been too far gone to notice. That part or the experiment, therefore, was a failure. What did, however, produce the best torrent of language during those memorable three weeks occurred next morning in the barrack room; still rather fuddled, Mulvaney found that he could not get into his trousers. They seemed somehow to have got sown up. This time his linguistic gift would have knocked the bright young would-be fornicators at University College clean out of the ring. It is a pity they cannot meet him: though perhaps they will one day if they qualify (it will not be easy) for his particular Valhalla. Written six years later. All this may sound very old fashioned in 1972, when unrestrained obscenity is reported as being a favoured pastime of children of both sexes; though Mulvaney could go on without repeating himself, and I doubt if these children can.

(115) ON RE-INVENTING MILK

The Imperial Agricultural Research Institute was founded at Pusa in Bihar in 1905 and transferred to Delhi in 1936. The institute had a number of valuable pedigree cows and it was thought better to send them in a special train, which pottered slowly across India; they were taken out to be fed, and milked evening and morning, a sensible and humane procedure. But when the Finance Department in Delhi heard of it, a flood of telegrams started to the officer in charge of the operation inquiring how the milk would be accounted for. This continued during the journey. So it was decided that when the milk had been taken from the cows it was given back to them to drink, and entered into the account as re- invested. Then everyone was happy. The only moral of this story is that when one has to deal with officials it is better to use their jargon.

304

(116) m IF EVER YOU RIDE WITHOUT A LIGHT

I am quite sure of the fact, and of the exact place where I met the policeman (at my front door in Highgate, London): but I cannot provide a date within +/-10 years. The policeman came to my house and asked to see Professor Hill. I told him that was my name. Then he said I was to be charged with riding a bicycle without a light in Holloway on such and such a date. To this I replied that: 1. I had no bicycle. 2. I had not ridden one for years. 3. If I needed a conveyance I had a motor-car. 4. Then my brain suddenly called up a "poem" I had written when I was a youngster. It was not at all a good poem but it seemed to be pertinent: so I recited it to him: If e'er you ride without a light Keep at your finger ends at night The name of someone else afar To tell the bobby that you are.

He laughingly admitted that this might be the explanation. I was not further troubled.

305

(117) BEWARE! RIVER RUNNING UP-HILL.

On September 27 1909, a few days before Mother moved house to Cambridge, I went to pay a last visit (pro tem.) to Dartmoor. With me went a good friend, Alexander St. Clair ("Ally"), a Scotsman about twice my age. It must have been a strenuous excursion for him. We started off early from Tiverton and rode our bicycles to Whiddon Down on the Exeter-Okehampton Rd; thence rode or pushed our bicycles to the nearest available point to Cranmere Pool. This totalled about 35 miles. The bicycles were left (I think) at Chagford to which the road was not so steep as to other places. From there we aimed at Cranmere Pool, a very tough walk over the moor going up-down-up-down-up finishing at about 2000 ft. We found it without difficulty, triumphantly. Then we decided to go back by what we thought was a better route, keeping more to the north. We walked and walked and never seemed to come on anything we recognized. We found a little brook which, to ordinary sight, was evidently running up hill. This was ominous, but we decided we’d better go on. Then happily (as we thought) we saw a farm, to which we went hoping to be able to ask the way. But there was not a soul in the place. A fire was there with a kettle boiling, and other signs that somebody had been about. We shouted without effect, so decided to move on as best we could. Judging from the present 1" map this must have been East Okement Farm. As we walked on briskly we passed another chap, going more slowly. We thought he must have been a tramp. We asked him where we were and he said he didn't know; but added that he had started out from Okehampton that morning. The sun sets at about 6 p.m. (GMT) on 27 September and it was going to be dark soon, so we hurried on, for another hour, by then it was dark and we could see we were coming to a town. But, when we got to it, we found it was Okehampton not Chagford. We had missed our target by eight miles - as the crow flies - but about 12 miles by the shortest road. Not being crows, we decided there was nothing to do ' but spend the night at Okehampton. Then we had to find a lodgin7; that was all right because it wasn't the holiday season. They must, by some magic have expected us, for over the mantlepiece in the bedroom we found a framed text with six words from a popular hymn, Rock of Ages; this said "nothing in my hand I bring", which was exactly our position. After managing to get some food in a pub, when we went to bed Ally developed a frightful toothache. So I volunteered to try to find a dentist. Success did not seem very likely in a little country town after 11 p.m., but I went wandering round and at last found a house, with a dentist's name on it, whose lights were on. It appeared that the dentist was going to get married next day, and was celebrating with some friends. I told him the heartrending story of Ally's predicament, and with the utmost good nature he said he would come along. He put his pliers in his pocket and came along and operated on Ally, for which we paid him half-a-crown. Then we - or at least I - went to sleep. Next morning we started early to walk to Whiddon Down, which is nine miles away - there Ally, rather exhausted by now, stayed and waited for me while I walked the six miles to Chagford to pick up the bicycles. One I rode, the other I had to steer as well as my own, not easy on those hills. But there were few motors about in those days. Anyhow, I got back safely to Whiddon Down, and we proceeded to ride to Tiverton. 306

I have documentary evidence of this episode in a post card with the Okehampton postmark, 10 p.m. September 27, 1909. There was no way to warn Mother we couldn't get back that night; and when we didn't turn up, being used to the funny escapades that Ally and I sometimes got into, she probably didn't worry overmuch. Anyhow she got the postcard next morning and kept it for me till she died in 1943. Posts ware wonderfully good in those days. If this story proves anything it shows that one must watch-out when one sees a river running up-hill; at any rate on Dartmoor. About twenty-five years later, again on Dartmoor, we came on a little stream evidently running up hill. I knew something must have happened. When we got back to Three Corners, there was the Ivybridge policeman. He had come to inform us that our house in London had been burgled during the previous night.

307

(118) GRAVE, GAY, SATIRICAL, SILLY

1. There has been considerable comment over the awarding of the to a soldier. I am afraid this does not seem as remarkable to me as it quite evidently does to others. I know a great deal of the horrors and tragedies of war. Today as Chairman of the American Battle Monuments Commission, it is my duty to supervise the construction and maintenance of military cemeteries in many countries overseas. The cost of war in human lives is constantly spread before me. I am deeply moved to find some means or method of avoiding another calamity of war. General George C. Marshall, at Oslo, 11 December, 1953 (on the same day as Dr Albert Schweizer received the same award for 1952). In 1947-48 Marshall was Secretary of State, and initiated the European Recovery Programme ("Marshall Plan").

2. There is no evidence that scientists always tell the truth, and the chances are that they are only marginally more honest than politicians. Nature, Leading Article, 1968.

3. (a) To say that he was a cross between a chameleon and a barometer would be undignified. (b) The chief virtue of the Irish Bull is that it is always pregnant. (c) On the mental effects of high altitudes: Meakins had a feeling akin to what he thought would be produced in him by excess of alcohol. (d) The chief error in Peters' experiments was the accurate measurement of 2 c.c. of blood. Joseph Barcroft. Passim.

4. It is possible that the shock which the ovum receives from the impact of the speeding spermatozoon is an accelerating mechanical factor in the cleavage processes that follow within the ovum. From Shakelee and Meltzer, "The destructive effect of shaking upon the proteolytic enzymes". Amer.J. Physiol, 1909, 25.

5, Every result given in this paper is the mean of at least one experiment. Amer. J. Physiol.

6. The wandering symposiast, afflicted by his excessive dromomania, is a new type among us. Can it be that what drives him on is the Carrollian aphorism that "what I say three times is 308 true"? You may call this habit "stocktaking" if you will, but no efficient business takes stock with such frequency. Francis Walshe on Symposia. Perspect. Biol. Med. (1959) 2. 2.

7. Sheepstor Church, Dartmoor, Devon; Sunday morning. Clerk to parson moving towards the pulpit; "thee carn’t gaw oop thur, old gooze bin zettin on er aigs all week". Old Guide to Dartmoor.

8. "It is a disgrace to the university that representatives of hate and violence are allowed on our campus to recruit." Dr David Hallam, University of Sussex, referring to a visit of representatives of the Navy, Army and Air Force. The Times, 1969.

9 “I know I’ve got many faults, but being wrong isn’t one of them.” Contributor to “Farming Today”, BBC, 1972.

309

(119) LARGE STREAMS FROM LITTLE FOUNTAINS FLOW, TALL OAKS FROM LITTLE ACORNS GROW

(How he came to go to India) The tall oak is now a magnificient feature of the All-India institute for Medical Sciences, established by an Act of Parliament in 1956; the little acorn was planted about 1910 by an elderly lady, Mrs Poole, who had spent many years in India and felt a strong call to befriend Indian students in Cambridge. She lived in Newnham Terrace. An active agent in helping the oak to crow was Sohan Lal Bhatia to whom as a medical student, I demonstrated in 1911 in physiology classes; he was one of Mrs. Poole’s young friends so I got to know him outside the laboratory. He still holds her memory in esteem and honour. Now according to the Hippocratic Oath, the first obligation accepted by a student of medicine is: to reckon him who taught me this art equally dear to me as my parents, to share my substance with him and to relieve his necessities if required. The same sense of obligation to a teacher is inherent in the ethical principles of India; not only in its ancient systems of medicine (going back much further than Hippocrates) but also - as I have continually experienced - in common life. For sixty years “S.L." has practised these principles towards me; and indeed quite literally, in 1943-44 when I was in India he shared his substance with ne, and relieved my necessities. One of these necessities, arising out of my mission there, was to learn more about the state of medicine and of medical science in India. In this he in turn became my instructor, and from our discussions arose a plan for an All-India Medical Centre which was the forerunner of what now exists in Delhi. Others too must have thought of such a plan, it seemed very obvious to us, as it may have been to them. The Bhore Committee's report on the subject was published in 1946. S.L. Bhatia was born in 1891 at Amritsar in the Punjab. Why I liked him directly we met I cannot tell; but I have always been fond of soldiers, he looked like a soldier, some or his relations have been in the Indian Army and Navy and - as it proved - he did distinguished and gallant service during the 1914-18 war. I must instinctively have felt the other qualities he had, which matured into his becoming a scholar, a historian and a philosopher, as well as a physician and administrator. He seems also, from his writings to be both a Buddhist and a Christian! After qualifying at St. Thomas! Hospital in London, he served in the Indian Medical Service in the field, gaining an M.C., then in 1920 he returned to the civil branch and worked at the Grant Medical College in Bombay till 1941, starting as professor of physiology, continuing as Dean and finally as Superintendent of a group of hospitals. When we collaborated in 1943-44 he was Deputy Director of the I.M.S. and a Major General; since then, nominally retired, he has been kept perpetually busy by innumerable people wanting his advice. In 1959 I had to give a lecture to a medical audience in Karachi. In it, among many other names, I mentioned that of Bhatia. Unexpectedly, but to my great pleasure, his name drew long and enthusiastic applause - in spite of the bitter hostility existing between India and Pakistan. In Bombay and in the I.M.S. he had been the teacher, or the inspiring leader, 310 of many of them; political stupidity had not altered human gratitude. Here, reflected, were the principles on which his own conduct was based. During the war of 1939-45 I was biological secretary of the Royal Society and also Member of Parliament for Cambridge University. Both gave special opportunities for being a nuisance, when necessary, in good causes. One of the good causes was to improve scientific contacts and communication between Britain, the United States and many countries of the British Commonwealth. Left to officials and politicians such things tend to be neglected. It proved rather easy to get full scientific partnership working, even with the United States nine months before Japan eased her into the war. But with India, progress was slower. At both ends politics tended to dominate the scene, to the exclusion of more sensible things; together at our end, with the snobbishness of racial superiority. Finally, however, the Government of India was persuaded that something must be done, and I was asked to go to India to advise on scientific research in general, and its bearing on present and future problems. I consulted a good old friend of mine, Sir Stanley Reed, (1872-1969) then an M.P., who had been editor (1907-23) of The Times of India and knew the climate of Indian opinion well. He replied, more or less, for God's sake don't let them think you are coming as a Member of Parliament or you will find suspicion and mistrust everywhere and failure to cooperate; get the Government of India to invite the Royal Society to send you there as its representative. He was right and I did; and I received nothing but kindness and help from everyone. The only unfavourable comment was early in Delhi when a reporter stated that I was an elderly scientist who had passed his best days and was only fit to be a general busybody. My Indian scientific friends, particularly Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar, being quicker witted than that, saw in my coming an opportunity of getting their needs at last attended to. I was given every possible assistance and encouragement, and was urged that discretion is not the better part of valour; but rather was invited to criticise openly whatever I thought wrong or stupid. Many things were wrong and stupid, and much has since been put right; but the particular thing to be considered in this note was the miserable state of medicine. I had recently been serving in London on the Interdepartmental Committee on Medical Schools, so the matter was vividly in mind. Returning now to Bhatia. I had net him at intervals over the years, he had always pressed me to come to India, but there was never an opportunity. In Delhi I stayed frequently in his house and we spent much time discussing the sorry state of Indian medicine - which I had every opportunity of witnessing for myself. I knew how the whole level of American medicine had been raised by the single action of Johns Hopkins University (founded in 1876) in setting new standards which, in the end, the other universities were forced to follow. In my Report to the Government of India in the spring of 1944 I had urged, among many other things, that the same should be done in India - in fact, as we said for short, an Indian Johns Hopkins should be founded. A shortened version of what I wrote in my Report follows (so far as it relates to Medicine), Par.6 A RESEARCH BACKGROUND IN MEDI CAL EDUCATION. A. Research in the preclinical sciences. B. Research in bacteriology. 311

C. Research in clinical science. Par.7. AN ALL-INDIA MEDICAL CENTRE. In all the subjects of a medical course, in laboratory as well as hospital, the crying need in India is for full-time workers, capable and well-trained, able to devote their lives to the advancement of the science and practice of medicine by education and research. It has become almost a cliché to say so, but in no other subject than medicine is it so necessary that education should be given in a research atmosphere. Each patient presents a problem, each diagnosis is a theory, each treatment an experiment, often an expensive and painful one; and it must seem to anyone of scientific upbringing almost a crime that the results of nearly all these costly experiments go unrecorded. In the right research atmosphere this would not be so, but in that of an ordinary general hospital, with a very part-time staff and no provision, e.g. by an almoner’s department, for 'follow-up', it literally is. How can medical education produce & scientific attitude of mind in such circumstances? Infact it very seldom does. Far the most effective way of producing a change in all this would be to set out deliberately to create teachers and research workers of a new kind, people who would devote their lives to the single object of advancing in India the art, science and practice of medicine. For this purpose a great All-India Medical Centre should be established, an 'Indian Johns Hopkins’, starred in all departments by the ablest people available anywhere, employed full-time and adequately paid. The students of the All-India Medical Centre should be highly selected ones, preferably with good degrees in arts or science as a start: and since a large proportion of the most desirable students cannot meet the financial cost of a long training in medicine, all who require help should be given it in the form of scholarships or bursaries. This last point is a very important one and can be put in this way. There is little doubt that the medical profession does not tap much of the best ability of any country, partly because medicine, as usually practised, does not appear to offer the same intellectual interest, or challenge, as science does, but largely because of the cost of a medical education and of maintenance during it. Many medical students in all countries are in fact of rather inferior intellectual quality. The importance, however, to any country of a really high type of doctor is great; and the importance of a high type of medical teacher and research worker is very great Indeed. The intention of the All-India Medical Centre would be to produce the future leaders of Indian medicine and public health, the teachers and research workers. Now in industry it is recognized that the cost of any product depends upon design, manufacture and raw material. The cost of raw material is often so small & part of the total expense that it is folly to use anything but the best if a high-class product is required. The total cost per student in the All-India Medical Centre is bound to be high: if by liberal scholarships amounting to (say) 10% of the total annual cost the final product could be made on the average 50% better, then obviously the scholarships are money very well spent. That I believe is exactly the situation. The best possible students should be brought into the Centre, regardless of all other considerations - financial, racial, religious, political, 312 provincial and so on. If any reason whatever were accepted for admission other than ability and character, the project would lose at once a large part of its value. The All-India Medical Centre should be genuinely an All-India affair. It might be thought best to establish it in some great industrial city: but the need to avoid communal, political, interprovincial and inter-state difficulties and rivalries is so great, the need to avoid jealousies and conflict with existing interests so evident, that I have been convinced that the centre should be established in the capital city of India. Delhi University is growing in stature and importance: there are many scientific institutions in and around Delhi; Delhi is the meeting ground of many scientific and medical interests: Delhi will probably become the headquarters of a future national academy of sciences and of other specialist national scientific bodies; and air transport in the future will make communications with other parts of India vastly quicker than at present. If the All-India Medical Centre is to play the national part it should in advancing medicine and public health, and to gain the international repute which will put Indian medicine ‘on the map’ and attract first class teachers and research workers from any part of the world, then I think it must be given the national recognition and status which is possible only by its establishment at the capital of India. The project of an All-India Medical Centre is bound to be very expensive. Well designed air-conditioned buildings and the best modern equipment and libraries, though important will represent only a small part of the whole cost. The chief running expense will be that of the full-time staff required. Supposing recurrent expenditure to be met from interest on invested funds, an approximate estimate of the total capital required, allowing for interest at 3 1/3%, is about Rs7 to 10 crores, It should be possible to obtain a considerable part of this from Indian and other benefactors and from international foundations. If it proved possible to build, equip and endow the Centre entirely from voluntary gifts, the freedom and independence so given to it would greatly strengthen its hand against eventual political or other pressure, to compromise with which would inevitably lead to a lowering of standards.

My report was made to the Government of India in the spring of 1944. I admit that I did not really expect much result from it. I wrote to Wavell about it In 1945 and he replied sympathetically; and in 1947 when Mountbatten went to India as Viceroy I asked his wife, who was keenly and devotedly interested in medical and particularly nursing services, to keep an eye on it. That may have helped the implementation of the Bhore-Committee’s report (see below) which had been published already in 1946. The gift from New Zealand came in 1947. In 1956 an Act of Parliament in New Delhi established an All-India Institute of Medical Sciences as an autonomous institution of national importance and defined its objectives and functions. Its Hand Book, Volume I, shows that it covers all aspects of medicine: clinical, scientific, undergraduate and post-graduate. In 1966 its Faculty contained ninety full-time members, and honorary staff numbered seventeen. Its immediate origin was a report, published in 1946, of the Health Survey and Development Committee (the Bhore Committee) which recommended very strongly the establishment of a national medical centre at Delhi which would concentrate on training highly qualified teachers and research workers "in order that a steady stream of these could be maintained to meet the 313 needs of the rapidly expanding health activities throughout the country. The impulse which, after the attainment of Indian Independence in 1947 stimulated immediate action was the magnificent offer (under the Columbo Plan) by New Zealand (with a population only 0.6% of India's) of one million pounds to start it off! One could not expect any action to be taken before the war was over. This note is about the origins of things. If I had not known Mrs Poole and Bhatia in Cambridge in 1911, it seems unlikely that I would have been concerned in 1943 about the lack of liaison between British and Indian scientists. Nobody else seemed to be inclined to do anything about it. If not, I should not have gone to India and there might not now be an All-India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi - nor several of the other things proposed an the Report which Bhatnagar got so excited about when Nehru became Prime Minister after Independence in 1947. Nehru was a great help to him, having taken a degree in science at Cambridge in 1910. Somehow the course of events seems to give a sense of long-range inevitability - once Mrs. Poole’s acorn had been planted. [It was decided in July 1971 that the XXVI International Congress of Physiologists will be held in New Delhi in 1974. This will be based on the All-India Institute of Medical sciences.]

314

(120) ARITHMETIC FOR FUN

I was always fond of arithmetic of a sensible kind, but never could see any sense in wasting labour with English scales of weights, measures and money. At my preparatory school I often had to be punished, and look back happily now to one of the chief punishments inflicted: working out the square of all the natural numbers from 1 to x, where x might be 100, or 200 or whatever. Empirically I found out quite a lot of amusing tricks, which were helpful. For example if the square of any number is known, the square of the next number is obtained by adding the number and the next number to the square of the first. This of course is obvious algebraically, but I didn't know any algebra when I started being punished. The best of my discoveries, which I still find useful, is that (for example) the square of 85 is 80 times 90 plus 25 = 7225. The habit of thinking easily in numbers has been a great advantage all my life; my children and some of my grandchildren have the same facility. But this has been derived from my wife’s ancestry as well as mine. In 1964 I had the following birthday letter from a grand-daughter. Grandpa, Happy Birthday , Love from , Charlotte. me born 1954 1954 age now 10 learnt twelve times table 1960 known it 4 years 4 Total 3928 you born 1886 1886 age now 78 learnt to ride motor bic 1911 been able to ride, 53 years 53 Total 3928

This appeared to show how alike we are; though only as regards the sort of things that amuse us. She did not realize the suspicious fact that our common 3928 was just twice the number of years A.D. of the date at which the calculation was made, 1964. In fact if she had assumed that I was born in 1066 and learnt to ride a motor bicycle in 1660 the answer would have been just the same. I did not tell her till 1972; she took it very well then! But my grandson Mark, her cousín, made a much more important discovery. He found that the date of my birth 1886 can be expressed as the sum of three perfect squares in 16 different ways. For example, 1886 = 342 + 212 + 172. Whether anyone now living was born in a year, other than 1886, which has the same delectable property I have not tried to find out. Probably Mark knows anyhow. He says he does not attach any moral significance to it.

315

(121) MUGWUMPS

[At the opening session of the Empire Scientific Conference, held in the rooms of the Royal Society in London in June 1946, at which the scientific organization in the United Kingdom was described, I spoke on "Scientific Societies.° Of what I said perhaps the final paragraph is worth preserving]

If scientific societies are to preserve their name for independence and integrity they must keep out of partisan politics. . This might seem unnecessary advice; but having seen one or two things from inside of recent years I know it is not. Science has news and propaganda value and the prestige of a great scientific society like that of a great scientific man, could easily be exploited for ulterior purnoses: for a time: after which the prestige would be gone, but that would not matter to the exploiter. A few months ago a politically minded professor addressed a gathering of students at the Imperial College of Science and Technology. According to reports in the press next day there was a certain amount of liveliness among the students, which seems to have provoked the professor to the pronouncement that Fellows of the Royal Society are a lot of mugwumps. What that had to do with his argument, or why the students resented it, is not clear: but he explained that a mugwump is a person who sits on the fence till the iron enters into his soul. Perhaps our Canadian colleagues know what a mugwump really is; I did not, so consulted the Oxford Dictionary. It appears that mugwump is a North-American Indian word meaning "great chieftain," which was applied offensively in the presidential election of 1884 to signify an independent in politics. The Royal Society's motto is Nullius in Verba, which means that we do not take our opinions from other people but form them for ourselves. In other words we are mugwumps and the professor was right: I hope we can live up to his epithet.

316

(122) MY TREE

In 1953 I visited Brazil on the invitation of Carlos Chagas, Professor of Biophysics. While there I was invited to plant a tree in the Jardin Botanico; this I did, I had never planted anything before (except some mustard and cress about 1896), though my wife - a great gardener - was always trying to get me to take an interest in planting things. She was glad to learn that I had to this degree unbent. The tree was a Pentaclethra Filamentosa. In 1965 a friend of mine, Dr Montgomery Mann, was going to Brazil and I asked him if he could find out how my tree was getting on. He discovered it in the garden, by then fifteen feet tall, with a plaque at its foot: PLANTADA PELO PROF SIR ARTHUR HILL 30 OUTUBRO 1953. Arthur Hill in fact had died in 1941, but he had been Director of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew for twenty years, so the attribution to him was rather natural, apart from dates. Mann pointed out the error to the authorities of the Garden and they promised to correct the inscription. In 1971 Lord Adrian was going to Brazil, so I asked him if he could verify the continued existence of my tree and see how it had grown. He went to the Garden, but was unable to locate it. Probably they had, to save trouble, just removed the incorrect inscription without putting a correct one. But Adrian pursued the matter, and going to the office discovered in a record book, which they dug out, that the planting of the tree in 1953 was still attributed to the ghost of my friend Arthur Hill. Perhaps, now, knowing that this is the only thing I have ever planted (except for that mustard and cress) they may, in charity, put their detectives on to find it again. It certainly was a Pentaclethra Filamentosa in 1965.

(123) SYMPATHY OR COMPASSION?

The first is made up of two greek words, the second of two latin words, meaning exactly the same; "feeling (or suffering) with another person". But in English they have not usually the same flavour. In the O.E.D. "compassion" is also defined as "pity that inclines one to spare or to succour". "Sympathy", in the 0.E.D., has a variety of meanings and illustrations - e.g. "he had no sympathy with the anti-opium party”. I have no sympathy with some forms of art; though I may have compassion for those afflicted with them. It would be interesting to know whether such differences of sense or flavour exist in other languages.

317

(124) THE MERGING OF PHYSICS WITH BIOLOGY.

Continually, over many years, I have talked, or written, about the relation of physics to biology, physiology and medicine. I let myself go, particularly in three lectures:- The Physical Reasonableness of life, (1930), J. Amer. Med. Ass. 95, 1393-1397. The Physical Sciences in Premedical Education (1950), unpublished. Why Biophysics? (1956) Science, vol 124, no 3234, pp1233-1237. In a naive way I have often speculated also on the degree to which physical theories, and their assumptions, depend on the nature of the biological machinery in the brain that invents, nourishes and uses them. If it is claimed that the phenomena of life and living things are only a special aspect of physics and chemistry, it can equally be claimed that the theories and assumptions of physics and chemistry are themselves fashioned and conditioned by the neurological machinery. By all means let us try to "explain" A in terms of B; but let us realize that in the end B will equally be "explained” in terms of A. In fact natural knowledge, except for purposes of law, administration and convenience, cannot be divided into separate categories, in reality everything depends on everything else. That will shock some traditional physicists who have grown up in the belief that their theories and assumptions have the status of a revealed religion and that everything else must be made to fit in with it; for this idea there is no basis in nature. Of the three lectures mentioned the first and third were published in accessible journals. The second has never been put on record. Reading them all again I find that the second was probably the best of the three; so parts of it are given below. Its original title is used, another might be better. THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES IN PREMEDICAL EDUCATION (given at the Centennial of the Woman's Medical College in Philadelphia, 13 October 1950) Twenty years ago, almost to the day, in October 1930, I addressed a distinguished gathering in this city at a celebration of Medical Progress connected with the Johnson Foundation for Medical Physics, then recently established; of this my good friend, Doctor Bronk, was head. The subject of my talk was "The Physical Reasonableness of Life", a somewhat cryptic title which allowed me to expound a conviction that no limit will be found at which the application of physical methods and ideas - of course that implies chemical ones too - will be forced to stop in the investigation of living processes. I was at pains to emphasize that this did not imply that biology would ultimately become simply chemistry and physios - at least as one knows them now; indeed the boot would rather be on the other leg, physics and chemistry would ultimately have a great deal to learn from biology, in their philosophy and ideas, as well as in opportunities for research. It is obvious indeed, at any rate to those biologists who know something about the properties and functions of the human nervous system, that physical theories and conceptions can have no general validity apart from the brains that conceive them; if they can be conceived by the human brain it is inconceivable that their character is not conditioned, and to some degree determined, by the properties of that organ. What we 318 know of the working of brain and nervous system is largely due to the application of physical, particularly of electrical, methods: but there is only one sort of science, and just as scientific instruments are designed to fit the human senses that employ them, so scientific theories are made to fit the human brain that has to conceive and use them. The influence is reciprocal. Twenty years ago I emphasized an uncompromising conviction that the methods and ideas of the physical sciences are an unconditional necessity to biological progress but an equally firm conviction that biology is not in the least danger of being submerged in the process. The advances of twenty years have strengthened these convictions. Physics and chemistry could dominate biology only by becoming biology, which perhaps someday and in some sense they will. Already many chemists, and among them the most eminent, are very willing to learn from the processes of the living cell; and many good physicists are beginning to find today that biology provided them with some of their most challenging problems. We can live in hope of the future unification of the biological and physical sciences. On that occasion, twenty years ago, the addresses were given in an auditorium outside which the police had posted notices NO PARKING HERE, PLACE OF AMUSEMENT, a compliment which, though unmerited, was highly appreciated. Looking back on that occasion, and finding in your programmes - I suppose at Dr. Bronk's suggestion - that I am expected to speak on a rather similar subject, I looked up what I said then, and recalled a remark that Rutherford made to me once, "This morning, Hill, I was looking up some of my old papers, and when I had read them for a bit I said to myself, Ernest, my boy, you used to be a dammed clever fellow". I wouldn't put it quite like that; but I did reflect that anything I could say today would certainly not meet the unwarranted expectations of the Philadelphia police any better than what I said then. In fact, one steadily becomes less amusing as one gets older, except maybe unconsciously; or perhaps because one's inhibitions diminish. It would of course be possible to make a wide variety of platitudinous remarks about the necessity of physics and chemistry as ingredients in the training of a modern doctor. So far as these were true they would mostly de obvious to all who are listening, and if they were not obvious they would probably be wrong. The important thing to remember is that even medical students are human. When I was in India in 1944, in reply to pressing invitations from Indian friends I had frequently to tell them that even a physiologist cannot be in more than two places at once. There is a similar limit to the capacity of medical students. I have recently been temporarily involved with the problem of load-carrying by the infantry soldier. In given circumstances, with a given individual, there is an optimum load; give him much less and he will march and fight better for a time, but he may then have no food and water to march on and no weapons or entrenching tools to fight with. Give him a greater load, on the other hand, and he will march and fight worse, however well fed and armed he may be. It is just the same with the modern medical student; the poor creature has a terrific load to bear anyhow and if you pile too much upon him - there is no danger, as indeed there is none with the infantryman, of giving him too little! - you will make him unable to do the educational equivalent of fighting, namely think, criticise, reflect, discuss, absorb. For that 319 reason much as we should like to have him learn more physics, chemistry and mathematics, more biology, more physiology and anatomy, before we send him on to his clinical courses - much indeed as we should like him to know more of literature, philosophy or sociology, and to have a wider culture and experience - we have to think of him, as we think of the poor infantryman, as having an optimum load which must not be exceeded. That load, as with the infantryman, since it has to be the same for all, must be within reason for the weaker individual, and that means that the stronger one could carry more. In education, the extra physics, or the extra biology, or the extra culture and experience, must somehow be provided as an extra for those who can bear that particular burden easily enough; or whose other burdens are so relatively light that they have time and energy to spare. We must, in fact, provide opportunities outside our regular curricula for the more talented students to follow their natural bents. They probably will anyhow...

320

(125) INDEPENDENCE IN PUBLICATION.

[This letter had rather a good effect. The Chief Scientist of the Ministry of Supply told me it was just what he needed; when he came to his office two days after its publication a dozen copies had been left there by his friends. The Director of the Atomic Energy Establishment (J.D. Cockcroft) wrote that they never did things like that at Harwell - which, knowing him, did not astonish me. Others were silent, but the requirements of some have been modified. For those who may not know, "pedicular" means "of or pertaining to a louse: lousy." Nature, (1955), 175, 266.] MR. once told a story which is typical, one hopes, of the sturdy independence of the British people. A dock strike was on, and enormous lorries were going in and out with impressive notices "By the authority of H.M. Government, or "By permission of the T.U.C." Among them was a tiny donkey cart, driven by a little old man with a bashed- in bowler: on the cart was a notice "By my own bloody authority." In the pages of Nature, and of other journals, are many papers whose authors find it necessary to thank the Director of This, or the Chief Scientist of That, or the Ministry of Something or Other, for permission to publish them. There is nothing imaginably secret about most of these; during the past year they have dealt with such matters as: boiler scale, aircraft noise, paper electrophoresis, internal stress in glass, the sexing of the confused flower beetle and the ageing of quartz crystals. Senator Joseph McCarthy is unlikely any more to make trouble between Britain and the United States because of such revelations; nor could a sensible director of research feel anything but amused shame that anyone should need to ask his permission to reveal them. Could not this nonsense stop? It would still be possible, if they wished, for the chief scientists, who are really quite amiable people, to follow the example of the late Lord Knutsford | of the London Hospital, at the end of a meeting over which he presided: "And now I have one particularly pleasant duty to perform - to propose a unanimous vote of thanks to myself for the excellent manner in which I have conducted this business." The occasional performance of a simple rite of that kind would obviate the necessity of requiring authors to thank (for example) the Director of Pedicular Research in the Ministry of Provocation for allowing them to publish their results (say) on the mean free path of insect vectors of disease. This letter is published without the permission of the professor of physiology in this college. Department of Physiology, University College, London, W.C.1.

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(126) REFUGEES AS A SYMPTOM OF AN INTERNATIONAL DISORDER - ISOLATIONISM. [Address given at Birmingham on 18 January 1942, at the Annual Conference of the Refugees Organizations. Not nearly all the problems there presented are yet solved. E.D.(1960) ] In the November issue of the American Journal Fortune is an article on Freedom. A photograph is printed of a Frenchman, standing in a crowd at Marseilles, watching his national flag go by. The tears are pouring down his face. In that face, as the writer says, is the story of our times: the story of successive governments of France, of indecision and corruption, of final collapse and dishonourable surrender; the story of all the little countries that refused to join together, the story of Britain floundering among theories of isolationism, pacifism, and non-intervention, misled by Nazi claims to be the saviour of the world from Bolshevism, selfishly following the rule of "business as usual"; the story of the betrayal of Czechoslovakia, and of the persistent blindness, impotence, and complacency of America. There, the American bitterly writes, in that man's face is the face of democracy. Everyone has been to blame, everyone who has ever enjoyed freedom but failed to appreciate its nature and obligations. We must try now to understand the disease which has rotted the heart of democracy everywhere. That disease is isolationism. It rests on the belief that a democratic people, like the priest and the levite who passed by on the other side, can survive and prosper without recognizing obligations to other peoples in other parts of the world. It lies in the unwillingness to share with others either the risks or the rewards of freedom. One of its manifestations is the illusion that "these things never happen to us." The diagnosis of the American writer is accurate, and since the refugee problem is one symptom of the disease from which the world has been suffering, it may be well to consider not only the symptom but the disorder. Often, in medicine, ordinary humanity demands that the painful symptoms shall be treated before the disease itself. That, however, is an unsatisfactory business, if it prevents the disorder itself from being properly tackled. Many have been concerned, some with great devotion and knowledge for many years, in planning to ease the sufferings and restore the human dignity of refugees. That is a task which common humanity requires shall be undertaken, just as it demands that a lifeboat shall go out to a wreck. The task, however, does not end - it only begins - there; until the world disorder itself is correctly diagnosed and treated, there can be no hope that the problem of refugees will be solved. The disease, as the American writer says, is isolationism: the failure to recognize that mankind is a single living organism, that the health and well-being of the whole cannot be except by maintaining the health and well-being of all the parts. Much nonsense has been said and written about the biological principle of the survival of the fittest as an imagined guide to human affairs. Some of this is tautology, "fitness" being measured merely by capacity to survive the particular circumstances of the day. Some of it is unfounded assumption, or bad biology. Yet those who worship the tribal gods are still too ready to offer sacrifice to this preposterous demon. A far more certain biological principle is the one which underlies all physiology, that of the extreme dependence on one another of all the organs of the body. In taking the organized body as an analogy to the human commonwealth we do 322 not need to assume that the various parts have the same needs, the same capacities, or the same functions: we recognize only that they are in contact with the same circulating bloodstream of civilization, that none of them can be deprived of reasonable opportunity for healthy development without damage to the rest, that none can be allowed to run riot and develop a malignant growth without imperilling the sanity of the whole. These two causes - lack of opportunity for full development in some communities, malignant growth in others - have combined to produce the sorry state we are now in, the state which has produced our refugees. At the moment we are engaged in the urgent surgical operation of removing the cancer which threatens, if unchecked, to destroy our civilization. When the operation is finished we must make sure that the other cause of world disorder - lack of economic and political opportunities - is properly examined and treated. Only when this treatment has been successful can we hope that the particular problem of refugees will be near solution. Till then - and I fear that the convalescence of civilization may last for a good many years - we must continue in the task of alleviating hardship and suffering, and of trying to restore to usefulness and self respect some of the human wreckage which the waves of world disaster have cast up. In individual human relationships, as in medicine, we can trust very largely to the healing power of nature and time. In international relationships, unfortunately, there is no reason to believe that the same broad principle of vis medicatrix is applicable: indeed it has been tried continually and found wanting. The commonwealth of mankind has not yet developed the immunities and stability of the adult animal. Left to itself it will certainly develop some new childish disorder. We cannot risk another of them. We must set out deliberately now so to plan our international economy that no recurrence is possible. For many years mankind of western civilization has been worshiping a false god. The fond belief in inevitable progress, posing as liberalism, was used as an excuse for slackness and complacency. Nothing is inevitable except chaos - without the continual efforts of good men to maintain such wisdom, freedom, and mercy as we have, and perhaps to add a little to them. These things do not grow of themselves - though they can perish of themselves. The war of 1914-18 came near to shattering the illusion, but it did not do so quite. Then came Hitler in 1933. Perhaps it was a mixture of militarist and internationalist, of conservative and radical, which made one pretty clear quite early what the Nazis were up to; which made one's blood boil at the stories, which one knew were true, of the cruelty and persecution, of the crazy pseudo-science, which one's refugee friends brought over. Unfortunately, all those years, this country as a whole was playing politics, the conservatives and the militarists mostly clinging to "business as usual", to isolation and to the worship of their tribal gods, the radicals and the internationalists bamboozling themselves too often with unrealities. Appeasement was the monstrous child of their unhappy union. That is how we got into the present fix. The problem of the refugees shows up continually the difficulties provided by the attitude of otherwise humane and intelligent people towards an international order. So little have they realized that this is not just a tribal war of the old kind that they have continued to deprive us, to a large extent, of the willing, skilled and devoted help which many of our alien 323 friends now here are burning to give. To many people, particularly to those who flirted with fascism before the war, all foreigners, whatever their antecedents, are potential fifth columnists. Ministers, instead of taking a bold lead, mostly have followed timidly behind their more reactionary supporters: security first has been their motto, too often security from the vocal minority of objectors. We have been too slow in realizing a great opportunity of making plain to ourselves and the world the fundamental nature of the struggle with Germany and her satellites. Our treatment of the refugees is an index of our attitude. It is humane indeed, apart from occasional blunders, but officially it has been unimaginative, sticky, suspicious, and unforthcoming. This is not the fault - and we can say so with gratitude - of the permanent officials in the Home Office or in other departments; ministers, parliament, and the public itself are to blame. The officials have had a very difficult task. From the start they were between two devils and the deep sea: the devil of exclusiveness whether in profession or factory, the devil of latent anti-semitism, and the deep sea of offending our long tradition of hospitality to political refugees. They did all they could to hit off a reasonable balance. Later they had to accept the appalling task of administering the blundering policy forced upon them from above, and of trying to rectify its follies and injustices. I have often myself complained of the ways of the Civil Service, but in this case at any rate the failure to realize the opportunity, the stickiness and the stupidity, were not their fault at all, but the fault of our people at large and of their elected representatives. In the broader issues of foreign and international policy, there was little (if any) accepted leadership; appeasement, that monstrous child of isolationism and pacifism, was the only original idea we had. To this lack of leadership in foreign and international policy, to this persistent isolationism, is due, among other consequences of more importance now, the dismal history, gradually getting better I admit, of our treatment of the refugees. The refugee problem in Great Britain to-day is relatively unimportant in itself compared with the other gigantic issues at stake. In the world as a whole, however, there are many millions of refugees, constituting ultimately in themselves a major problem for international statesmanship and reconstruction. Our treatment has been officially humane, if unimaginative and suspicious. In many countries, however, the inhumanities of to-day would only a few years ago have shocked the conscience of mankind. Apart from an appalling death rate, due to starvation and disease, a whole generation of refugees is growing up with bodies stunted by deficiency, with minds seared by suffering, bitterness, hatred, fear and misfortune, a permanent liability in a world which could so easily have given sufficient to all. This disorder of mankind will not be cured by sentiment alone, however, exalted; by international law alone, however wisely drafted; by education alone, however liberal. It needs all these things indeed, but behind them is required the immediate sanction of superior force. We must free the world, not only from the nightmare of nationalist aggression, but also from the day-dreams of pacifism; so only, I think, can a world order survive. Some may find this a hard saying, for conscientious scruples to the use of force are often mixed with a fine and generous idealism. But I should be failing in honesty and committing the very fault I have condemned in others, were I to hide my firm conviction for fear of hurting people's feelings. We have had too much of that kind of appeasement 324 already, we have lived in a world of unrealities too long. How the immediate sanction of superior force is to be organized in the world commonwealth of the future, how the perils of national self-determination are to be avoided, are matters just as important as the social, economic, and political questions which will arise. To refuse to try to solve them is to leave the door wide open to the gangsters of the future, out for glory and loot like the gangsters of today. (note added in1972: Thirty years later, the problem of refugees in the world at large is no less acute)

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(127) OUR ALIEN FRIENDS

On 19 September, 1940. F.L. Lucas*, a temporary civil servant in the Foreign Office, wrote me a long letter which I have abstracted as follows: “As a temporary civil servant I cannot air political opinion: but I am still your constituent. I will take as little of your time as I can.... (1) Our treatment of refugees, much better than it was, but still very unsatisfactory.... (2) ... still too much desire in some quarters to meddle with freedom of speech... (3) Ministry of Information... news films are cemeteries of murdered opportunities. (4) Haile Selassie... (5) ... Spanish International Brigade.... I find Communists exasperating and bone stupid. But better anything than the foulness of Fascism... One remembers too anxiously the betrayal of Abyssinia, of the Spanish Government, and of Munich, by men who had this scarlet fever fear of Communism.” To this I replied; and he answered on 26 September "Had I seen your admirable letter in the Spectator (20 Sep.) I should have felt no need to write at all.” But I cannot have answered all his questions. At any rate I hope he felt that I was, on the whole, on the side of his sort of angels. He had served in the First World War, in the R.West Kents and Intelligence; and he expressed himself with becoming vigour on such matters as the drowning of 1500 refugees, selected at random and in haste, in the sinking of the Andorra Star by a German Submarine a 3 July. Following is the letter he applauded. Our Alien Friends Some Englishmen were never hoodwinked by Hitler and Mussolini, they knew too well what those gentlemen were doing: and none knew better than those who took part in the effort to help to re-establish the victims of their oppression. It needed no special gift of prophecy to realize that a policy of appeasement would fail, only personal knowledge of what was being done in Germany and Italy. But a ruling clique in Britain, bamboozled by the claims of Fascism and National Socialism to be the saviours of Europe from Bolshevism, and blind to the fundamental similarity of those creeds, pursued the policy of hesitation which has landed us in this mess. These are the same people who, in May, were seized with the panic by which so many of our warmest friends, and the bitterest enemies of our enemies, have been shut up. That wide internment was necessary is admitted: but that no advice was taken from responsible people who knew which of the aliens were our friends is in keeping with the previous inability to see who were our enemies. Among the alien refugees now in England many are anxious to join our fighting services: not in an inferior status but as active fighters. In September 1938 one of these came to me to know how he could join the Royal Artillery, in the war which then seemed imminent: another wanted to join the R.A.F. The first was interned in May and has just been released: it is quite like paradise, he writes me - "and now how can I join the Artillery?" The second went to a job in Australia last summer: he tells me that he has tried to get into the 326

R.A.A.F. as gunner or observer, but must wait till he is naturalized. A third came to me recently to urge how much good it would do if he and his friends could be allowed to fight. It certainly would. They have an account to settle with Hitler, like the Polish squadron in the R.A.F. of which we have heard recently. Why on earth do we not accept their service? Many of us (of all political parties, or none) have no confidence at all in those who were deceived by Hitler and Mussolini for so long. The present treatment of many of the bitterest enemies of the dictators is too closely in keeping with previous efforts not to hurt those gentlemen's feelings. Now what is needed is not merely an improvement in internment camps, or a widening of the categories to be released, but a total change of policy towards those whose one desire is to help in defeating our common enemies. Until quite recently we refused the help of American volunteers unless they swore allegiance to H.M. the King. That idiocy is now gone. How long will this other idiocy remain?

· *Foot-note Scholar, author, university Reader in English, Fellow of King's College, Cambridge; d. 1894, d. 1967.

327

(128) The Origins of Matter and Life: Speculations are not evidence

Inheritance and evolution are the basis of all biology. As to the mechanism of evolution, the most acceptable hypothesis is that it is the consequence of the continual survival of favourable heritable mutations and the failure of others less favourable. As to inheritance itself, the problem continually arises in people's minds of where and how did material appear in a non-living world which has this peculiar habit of handing on its properties to a successor. The simple and to many the unpalatable answer is that it never did appear: it has always been somewhere. There is a peculiar prejudice of the human brain in favour of believing that everything had a beginning. Most ordinary things in human affairs do have a beginning: but there is no evidence at all that matter or life did. Nobody had ever succeeded in getting completely sterile matter to imitate these characteristic properties of growth, variation and inheritance. There is no reason to suppose that anyone ever will, speculations there are in abundance but these are not evidence. The necessary properties of an evolving system are: 1. a sufficient stability, 2. the ability to produce things like itself; but 3. with mutations of limited size and frequency, and 4. the possibility of favourable mutations providing a greater chance of surviving the hazards of the physical world and of biological competition. Life and non-life. Some things are clearly non-living in any ordinary sense, e.g. molten metal or high-pressure gas. I am unaware of any evidence (not speculation) that the world as astronomers know it (it’s protons, neutrons, , mesons, hyperons etc.; its matter energy and radiation) has ever not existed. Bits of course of it have not. Nor is there any evidence that life has, or had, an origin from non-life. The "origin" of life, in the broad sense, is a myth as meaningless as the "origin" of matter. If anyone claims that he can create life out of sterile matter, such claims will give him, for a time, much publicity and self esteem, he will be applauded by the Communist press and he may even be given a Stalin prize (or its present-day equivalent); but as usual it will prove a chimera. To repeat - I do not believe that there is the least evidence (not speculation, there is plenty of that) that matter, or life in some form or other, has ever not existed. Life is an accompaniment of the natural world whenever physical conditions allow, just as the natural world is always an accompaniment of life. To suggest that life started ten, or a hundred, billion years ago in a soup of amino acids (of course with the help of A.T.P.) is just science fiction. It is like the political myth of the inheritance of acquired characters which caused Vavilov to be sent to die in North Eastern Siberia. How matter and life started we can never find out; not because we are not clever enough, but because they never did start; they have always been present, floating about somewhere or other.

328

(Handwritten Postscript to 128) Long after this was written I came across a lecture by Sir in Everyman’s Science, May-July 1973. “When I began my own studies in photochemistry I should have found difficulty in justifying its relevance to anything very profound. But it has turned out it is the very basis of our modern understanding of how life began. It is now a precise and wholly respectable activity of science to study how the light of the sun, acting upon the primitive atmosphere of our earth, created, first of all, simple organic molecules and how these, still under the sun’s influence, grew into the larger proteins and nucleic acids and then into organised arrays of molecules which at some point we recognise as life.” I could believe this story if someone could make a really, and demonstrably, sterile mixture of these chemicals which would, if left in sunlight become alive spontaneously. But I would have to be very, very sure that some bug or other living thing, had not somehow got into the mixture. This demonstration has never been made. Without it the proposition depends on one’s faith – and one is more likely to believe if one is a communist. AVH.

329

(129) “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark” Hamlet I. IV. 90

In 1936 Ribbentrop became German Ambassador in London, continuing till 1938. His name appeared in Who's Who until 1946 and among his activities while he was Ambassador in London he records "Affiliation of Austria, March 1938", and "Affiliation of Sudeten Area, October 1938". That he was able publicly to claim activities so completely incompatible with that of an Ambassador in London is characteristic both of him and of the rich titled society here in which he moved during that period. The second claim is commonly associated with the disgraceful episode of "Munich" in 1938, when Chamberlain surrendered to Hitler, That led immediately to Anthony Eden's honourable resignation as Foreign Secretary, an office which he had held since 1935. He remained in the wilderness till 1940. That a scoundrel like Ribbentrop should have been able publicly to claim that he was doing such a thing against the interests of the country to which he was accredited as Ambassador, shows the rottenness of the state of Britain at that time. Perhaps he was lying, which was quite usual, and merely claiming credit for what Hitler had done. But lying or not, H.M. Government could have made it clear that his remaining here as Ambassador was unwelcome. From Who Was Who, 1947. RIBBENTROP, Joachim von; Minister for Foreign Affairs, Germany, 1938-45: b. 30 Apr. 1893; s. of It.-Col. Richard Ribbentrop and Sophie Hertwig; n. 1920, Anna Elisabeth Henkell; two s. two d. Educ: Kassel; Metz; Grenoble; London. Four years business in Canada; served European War, volunteer, 2nd and lst Lieut. western and eastern fronts (wounded, Iron Cross I and II); A.D.C. to Plenipotentiary of German Ministry of War, Turkey, 1918; A.D.C. to German peace delegation ,1919; left army,1920; head of import and export firm in Berlin; helped at negotiations to form Hitler’s Government, Chancellor's principal collaborator in questions of foreign policy,1932-33; member of Reichsstag, 1933; deputy of German government for disarmament questions 1934; ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary of the Reich, 1935 ; leader of German delegation for naval talks in London; Anglo-German delegation in League of Nations' Council,1936; SS-Gruppenfuhrer, 1936; German Ambassador to Court of St. James ,1936-38; Affiliation of Austria, March 1938; Affiliation of Sudeten Area October 1938; Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia established, March 1939; return of the Memelland, March 1939. Recreations: sports and music. Address: Berlin. (Died 16 Oct. 1946.) 330

(130)

THIS TITAN

At noon on 10 June, 1948 Winston Churchill was admitted to an honorary degree of Doctor of Letters at Cambridge by the Chancellor of the University, Field Marshal Smuts. This had entailed an early start from London, which Churchill did not like at all, and the alcohol level in his blood was uncomfortably low; so he felt very grumpy and a bit like a bear. This unfortunate condition was soon adjusted when the ceremony was over; and the party proceeded to Trinity College for lunch. As an honorary fellow I was present and next to me was Stafford Cripps, then Chancellor of the Exchequer. Smuts of course made a speech and in a warm and eloquent tribute referred to Churchill as "This Titan". Quick as light, Stafford whispered in my ear, "in which sense?"

331

(131) AUTOBIOGRAHICAL SKETCH (REVISED)

(Editor’s Note. In the original volumes deposited in Churchill College AVH included here a revised version of his autobiographical sketch as published in Perspectives in Biology and Medicine in 1970 and republished by Johns Hopkins University Press Project Muse. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/pbm.1970.0009) Introduction Since 1956 I was in frequent contact with Doctor Dwight J. Ingle, the Editor of Perspectives in Biology and Medicine (Chicago University Press); and since 1959 received Perspectives as a gift. In sending me in 1958 the Autobiographical Sketch of H.H. Dale, Ingle wrote that he would be glad to have one from me. The intention of such sketches, as he saw it, was "to reflect on one's formative years and rewarding experiences and to express one's philosophy of science and life". Having too much already to write at that time (three books were published in 1960, 1965 and 1970 (Notes 197, 16, and (23.), I replied that I would keep his invitation in mind and tell him later. In 1969 I accepted his challenge and the result was published in the autumn of 1970. Now, in 1972, I find myself engaged in putting in order, as though for publication, a number of things I have written from - time to time, and others that seem to need to be written. It was obvious that the autobiographical sketch should be part of this collection, but various minor additions or corrections were wanted; and also, as it seemed to me, a short new section on Religion should be added. This is No.8, following the seven other sections. I feared it would be difficult to write, but in fact it was not. There was not really much to say. 1. Forbears. I was born in Bristol, England, on 26 September, 1886, the son of Jonathan Hill and Ada Priscilla (Rumney). My known ancestors were all from the south-west of England and South Wales; apart from the first of them, James Hill, who came from Northern Ireland in the middle of the eighteenth century and founded a timber and mahogany business in Bristol. His son James (born in 1771) carried it on, and it remained with the till 1924. Other families that joined the Hills by marriage were Hawker, Bayley, Griffiths, Huggins and Rumney. The second James married in 1795 a daughter of Thomas Hawker; he was a son of John Hawker of Woodchester (Glos.) described as a ‘house carpenter’. Thomas was apprenticed in Bristol in 1747 to a butcher, and by title of his apprenticeship became a burgess(1), or freeman, of the City of Bristol in 1756. Starting with him, five of my ancestors, ending with my father in 1880, became burgesses. The freedom of Bristol never had any snob value, though before 1835 it had various practical advantages. Burgesses are still appointed; but its value now is sentimental and historical, in the connexion it implies with a city which has been famous in history for eight hundred years There are many Bristols in the United States, and Americans interested in seafaring and discovery will remember John Cabot and his son Sebastian who sailed from Bristol, 332

England; in 1497 John Cabot exploring for King Henry VII discovered Newfoundland. The life of Bristol has always depended on its mariners and their trade. Ships from Bristol joined at Plymouth against the Spanish Armada, the first steamship* to cross the Atlantic was launched at Bristol in 1837, and the phrase ‘ship-shape and Bristol-fashion’ is traditional. Americans may recall that Edmund Burke, one of our greatest political thinkers, in the 1770's when he was Member of Parliament for Bristol, pleaded for conciliation with the American colonies. My mother's Rumney descent, also connected with Bristol, goes back to John Rumney in the eighteenth century; he lived in the parish of St. George at Easton-in- Gordano just west of the Avon estuary. Earlier records of his family were destroyed unfortunately in riots in 1831. The name is uncommon and almost certainly derived from the little town of Rumney on the River Rhymney, fifty miles across the Bristol Channel in South Wales. The ‘prepositor’ of Bristol in 1221 was John de Rumney and the Mayor in 1276 was Peter de Rumney, and there were others in later times. (Romney, with Romney Marshes, in was known until the sixteenth century as Rumney; but I doubt if my descent has anything to do with Kent.) John Rumney’s son Charles (b.1772) was apprenticed in 1807 to a Lawrence Houghton, boatbuilder and shipwright, ‘to learn the art and mystery of boatbuilding'. William Rumney, another member of the family, a pilot in the Bristol Channel, was drowned off Clovelly in N. Devon in 1830 aged 33. Later, Charles built ships near Bristol and possibly at Bideford. My mother's father, Alfred Jones Rumney, son of Charles, was apprenticed (1846) as a woollen draper in Bristol and later followed the trade of woollen merchant there - with singular lack of success. He might well have made good as a scholar, writer or teacher and he had a lively sense of the ridiculous; this fortunately passed on to my mother who often needed it. His family was miserably poor, but his four daughters were people of character, originality and resource; particularly my mother and her sister Nettie.

The other side of my mother's descent (Huggins) came from mid-Devon. There were many Hugginses there of whom the first in our record was John Huggins who married Elizabeth Pope of Bow, or Colebrook. Their son William (b.1761), described as a yeoman, married Grace Townsend of Whitstone four miles west of Exeter, who lived to 90 and died, according to legend, from breaking her leg climbing over a hurdle while chasing geese out of her garden. Their son, George Huggins (b. 1798), was apprenticed (1815) to a ‘chymist and druggist’ in Exeter. Later he acquired a chemist’s business there and lived over the shop at a beautiful house (209 High St.) a few yards from the Guildhall. The house was symbiotic with Allhallows Church. The sketch below shows them as they were about 1805. Neither now exists; road widening already in 1900!

[*This, the Great Western, was designed and built at Bristol by I.K. Brunel 1806-59 His second, a far superior ship, the Great Britain, launched in 1843, crossed the Atlantic in 1845 and remained in service until she ran aground on the Falkland Islands in 1886, where she remained for 84 years. In 1970, however, she was put on a raft and brought across the Atlantic. She is today in the dry dock at Bristol where she was built, and can now be seen.]

333

George Huggins married Priscilla Couch of Dartmouth. Their daughter Emma Lavina, was my mother's mother. She was a dear, but unlike her husband had no sense of the comic. I remember when my aunt Nettie began to ride a bicycle and had to blow up the tyres, 'Grannie’ expressed fears that this must be very painful. She thought they were blown up by mouth; but she enjoyed being laughed at. George Huggins was much esteemed by friends and customers in Exeter and was familiarly known as Doctor Huggins. When I was given an honorary degree at Exeter in 1963, having to make a speech I claimed that my great-grandfather also was an ‘honorary doctor’ there - but long before there was a University.

So that is what little I know about my genes. It is difficult to recognise one's own traits in one’s ancestors; but I am sure that I owe many of them to my mother.

2. Childhood. 334

I have few memories of my earliest days, and none at all of my father; and Mother never spoke about him. Though all her life, unknown to me until she died in 1943, she kept a golden locket containing his photograph. Only when I was older did she tell me the sorry story of how she was forced to leave him. In my younger days we were always poor, and occasionally she would refer to what we would do ‘when my ship comes home’. The phrase, no doubt, was part of the nautical tradition of Bristol. Though I never had any communication with my father, he took rather a pathetic interest in me. This I learnt, only after his death in 1924, from a kindly old uncle. For example, in 1921 when I had made a speech at my old school, on Speech Day, finding a report of it in the Tiverton newspaper he had copies printed to give to his friends. And, more remarkable, he included at the end in ‘thanks to the speaker’ a tribute to my mother for her ‘sacrifice and devotion’, paid by an old friend of ours, a former medical officer at the school. Whatever I have done since is due to the start she gave me. Mother lived till 1943 and might have gone on much longer had she not dashed thoughtlessly into a bus, while crossing a road in Cambridge to buy a greetings card for a grandson who had just got engaged to be married. If a psychologist reads this he may speculate on whether any peculiarities I have shown can have been due to lack of a father's influence; or to the compulsion or silence I felt about him because of Mother's feelings. Certainly the external course of my life would have been very different had I had a normal family upbringing in Bristol and become the sixth mahogany merchant. I think Mother was sometimes rather alarmed when she heard later about some of the peculiar things I did. But she was spared the worst. She might have been deeply shocked (at any rate for a time) if I had, by a fluke, become a peer or a bishop. But she was mainly responsible for the way I started off. My only sister (I had no brother, though I often wished I had) was born in February 1889, just a year before the break with my father in 1890. Of that crisis I have only the faintest memory, as of a darkened room. We moved soon to another home in Bristol of which I remember little; only a few events stick out. I had a white mouse; all I recall of it was the awful tragedy that resulted from my stepping on it in the bathroom. I longed to have a gun, and some kind man took me to a shop to buy one. But when it was demonstrated I was so frightened that I refused to have it. That filled me with shame which I still feel – I also had a boat but nowhere to float it except a bath; so I tried to make a pond in the road by spitting. The completeness with which that early experiment failed may be the reason why I recall it so vividly. I remember making drawings of a flying machine which was intended to be driven by a paddle-wheel. Another experiment, of which I have no memory at all - Mother told me of it later - was connected with a hen sitting on eggs. Apparently I decided that the eggs were unduly dilatory in hatching, so I opened them at intervals to see how they were getting on. Finally I decided to sit on the rest myself. That experiment has vanished into complete oblivion; and I never wanted to be an embryologist. Mother taught me the three R’s. The arithmetic led me to a curious reflection for a small boy, on how much better it would be if the symbol 10 meant twelve instead of ten. What put that idea into my head I don't know, but it is hard to believe that I invented it later. 335

Anyhow Mother must have taught me very well; but she'd never have thought of that one for herself.

A. V. Hill and his mother in London 1936. 3. Early Schooldays. About 1894 we moved from Bristol to Weston-Super-Mare twenty miles away. When I was about eight I went to a small private school which must have been excellent. Mother kept all my school reports and bound them in a book! It is still on a shelf in my study. At eleven arithmetic, algebra and Euclid were reported to be ‘very good indeed’. At twelve and a half I was gradually getting control of my temper; that apparently took rather a long time; among other things, I did not like losing at games. Because of that temper the other boys used to tease me by showing me a large picture of a lion, the assumed prototype of a bad-tempered animal. After many years I came to the conclusion that it never (repeat never!) pays to lose one's temper; but that occasionally in a good cause it is useful to pretend to lose it. In that sense I lost it in 1936 with Lindemann and in 1940 over the indiscriminate internment of refugees; and can still do so when idiotic people pretend there is no population problem. When I was eleven I got mumps; (* In 1972 I went to Weston again and fund the house we lived in, and looked sentimentally at the sunlit windows of the bedroom where I had mumps.) that proved to be a good thing, by introducing us to a Dr Fligg, who two years later advised Mother to move to Tiverton and send me to Blundell’s School. Without the mumps and Dr Fligg my future would probably have been quite different. Once at Blundell's I was on a moving staircase to what happened later. When I was thirteen the report said ‘he takes delight in most of his work, hence his rapid progress'. The subjects were; scripture, grammar, history, , spelling, writing, arithmetic, algebra, Euclid, Latin, French, shorthand, drawing, gymnasium and carpentry! Fifty-three years later, in 1952, I gave the Presidential Address to the British Association 336

Meeting at Belfast. The broadcast was heard by a little old lady in Weston, who had been on the staff of my school. She wrote to remind me that she had taught me my multiplication tables; I replied that she must have done it very well because I still remembered them perfectly.

Of Weston I have many happy or amusing memories. To pick out a few, Mother decided that on Sundays I should wear an Eton suit, a hard starched collar and a top hat. This caused me considerable embarrassment, particularly when a little boy asked me politely in the street if I kept rabbits in the hat. Perhaps because of the superiority implied in that Sunday garb other little boys, not so polite, threw stones at me as I went to school on week- days; which I countered by learning to throw stones further and straighter. That may have helped to guide me later to studies of ballistics. I remember reading (in French) Dumas’ stories of D'Artagnan and the three musketeers; which led me to construct, out of bamboo, weapons which I thought were like their rapiers. I used to brandish them in Ashcombe Road outside our house; there was not enough room inside. Also I became very good at playing hockey, and enjoyed long walks and climbing hills. Once a bottle of cod liver oil in Mother's store went rancid and I threw it for her over a high wall into a field. It fell, as it proved, into an open water-butt and broke against the inside. Later a man who washed his hands in the water was heard cursing in the field; but Mother looked very innocent and was never suspected. Whenever she recalled this deplorable episode she laughed till the tears ran down her face. I have inherited her infirmity. We kept a cat who saved us the trouble of drowning her kittens by eating them in the mint bed; this was my earliest contact with the population problem. On Sunday afternoons we went to a sort of Sunday School. That was not for me a very religious exercise, partly because a girl of about my age, sitting further up the church, seemed to me more beautiful than anything I had ever seen. I never spoke to her though I remember her name, and have no idea whether she ever noticed me or the top hat. On one occasion, after church, the parson invited me to a private talk and warned me against certain nameless and unspecified sins. I knew nothing whatever about them and was puzzled for years; though for the most part I had more interesting things to think about. It was a stupid way for him to go about it. 5. Blundell's School. When I was thirteen, in the spring of 1960 we moved to Tiverton* in Devon, so I could go to Blundell's. Devon was Mother's spiritual home, as it became mine. She always kept a delicate flavour of Devonshire in her speech. She had spent some time in Exeter with her grandparents during her childhood and was christened and married there. From 1900 to 1909 we made our home in Tiverton. I was at Blundell’s till 1905 and then went as a Scholar to Trinity College, Cambridge. *One of my most vivid early memories then is the muffled peal of the bills of St Peter’s Church for the death of Queen Victoria on 22 January 1901. Blundell's School was founded by the Will of Peter Blundell of Tiverton, a manufacturer of woollen cloth who started in a very small way and made a great fortune. He left most of his wealth to charities. He died in 1601 and the school was opened in 1604 for 337 the education of the boys of his native town, together with a certain number of 'foreigners'. A close friend of Peter Blundell was Sir John Popham who was Lord Chief Justice of England from 1592 to 1607; his home near Wellington in Somerset was twelve miles from Tiverton. The school owes a great debt, in its planning, building and constitution, to Peter Blundell's ‘right deare and honorable Friende Sir John Popham’ whose advice and direction were to be taken by the executors in all matters affecting it. That these worked well is shown by the beautiful building beside the Lowman, now belonging to the National Trust and used for private dwellings; the present school is a mile outside the town. Readers of Lorna Doone will remember how that story begins with Jan Ridd’s fight in front of the school. For more than two hundred years a Popham was usually a member of the body of Feoffees (trustees) of Blundell's. Popham had many activities not all of them connected with the law. One of them is remembered in New England, the establishment of a colony at the mouth of the Kennebec River in Maine, at what is now known as Popham’s Beach. The nearest township is called Topsham after the little port near Exeter from which Popham’s ships had sailed. That was fourteen years before the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers from the Mayflower. I was never any good at formal history, but in the environment and tradition of Devon and Blundell’s I managed to absorb many odd bits of it through my skin. I agree with George Trevelyan, whom I knew and loved, about the poetic value of history. While still at Blundell’s I attended its 300th anniversary, and in 1954 its 350th; and from 1925 I have had a long and fortunate connexion with the Marine Biological Laboratory at Plymouth. Among the happiest things in my life has been this continuing association with Devon. I had come rather well prepared from Weston, and Mother's collection of school reports shows how I got on in the new environment. The strongest subject was always mathematics and I arrived in the top mathematical class when I was just fifteen. At the end of the first term there the best teacher I have ever known reported, "I like his work very much.” My comment could well have been that I liked his even better. I spent three and a half years in that mathematical class under ‘Joey’ Thornton. He was a very good mathematician, "Fourth Wrangler: at Cambridge in 1883; which means that he was fourth in order out of 106 of his year, in the most exacting mathematical examination of its time. He died in June 1916 aged only 56. The Kaiser’s War was on then and already four of his younger pupils had been killed in action, including one who would probably have been very distinguished. I had my eye on him as a future physiologist; but alas! Hearing of Thornton's death I wrote on behalf of his pupils to the school Magazine, ‘in grateful and affectionate memory', a note which contained the words: ‘The characteristic which left the deepest impression on us was the feud he had with all manner of confusion and inexactness of thought. His caustic comment was typical 'That's the sort of thing you hear from a politician', or ‘you'd better go and talk about Tariff Reform’, or even (sad to say) 'you'd better go and do classics’. So one was led to act upon the conviction that carelessness, looseness and inexactness, in thought, speech or habit, are not only foolish and unprofitable but despicable and wrong. Insight and brilliance he realised were for the few, and with lack of these he had 338

patience and sympathy. But carelessness, dishonesty and looseness of thought or expression were avoidable and to him not merely an intellectual but a moral failing.’ In inviting me to write this sketch the Editor told me that ‘readers like to learn about the formative years...in addition to the professional years’. That is why I have written so emphatically about the man who taught me mathematics. If I had not been his pupil my life would probably have been very different, That is true also of Walter Morley Fletcher, concerning whom see the following sections. When I was eighteen in 1904 I took the examination for College Scholarships at Cambridge. If I had failed to get a scholarship I could not, in those days, have gone there. But that was before the era when children get unduly excited before examinations. I got more rattled myself before a mile race, or making a speech at a debating society - which should not have mattered two hoots. 5. Cambridge. Anyhow I got the scholarship and went to Trinity College in October 1905. There I stayed until the Kaiser’s War began in 1914. What happened at Cambridge is most easily described by quoting (with a few changes) from the Bayliss-Starling Memorial Lecture which I gave to the Physiological Society in 1969; its title was Bayliss and Starling and the Happy Fellowship of Physiologists. I had been told that the Society would be glad if I would speak also about how and why I became a physiologist. ‘A short answer to that is: because Walter Morley Fletcher' was my College tutor at Trinity. Before Cambridge, at school in Devonshire, apart from a lot of mathematics and a certain amount of classics and divinity with a smattering of science, my interests were in athletics, cross-country running, swimming in the Exe, walking long distances over the beautiful hills near Tiverton, and rifle shooting. Some of these proved quite useful in the end. When I got to Cambridge I started working for the Mathematical Tripos. But during my first year I began to lose interest in some of the things that seemed to me rather remote from reality and hankered after something more practical. I realise now that I was better fitted to engineering than to mathematics, but physiology proved in the end to be much like engineering, based as it is on the ideas of function and design. Anyhow, I went to Fletcher to discuss whether it would be better to take up something else. Already physiology had been mentioned as a possibility. ‘In 1905 Fletcher and Hopkins had begun their work, later to become very famous, on lactic acid in muscle. This was published in March 1907. Fletcher by his earlier work on the of muscle, had given new life to a subject which had become stagnant in a morass of fanciful theories. Hopkins, who had come to Cambridge from Guy's Hospital in 1898, had never before been seriously concerned with muscle: but the precise methods of analysis they used were his. It was a wonderful combination, and they started a line of research which can be traced directly to the present day. ‘Fletcher and I had a common interest in athletics. He told me about the production of lactic acid during muscle activity, and its removal in the presence of oxygen; and that this must have a lot to do with fatigue and recovery during and after severe exercise. Which it still has, in spite of phosphocreatine, ATP, molecular biology and all that. But he advised 339 me also to stick to mathematics for a second year, which I did. So in 1907, a year early, I took the Mathematical Tripos, which in those days was an extraordinary business, with fourteen three-hour papers and great public interest as to who would be the ‘Senior Wrangler’. It was too much like the Grand National Steeplechase. I did very well but nobody encouraged me to go on with it; which was a good thing, perhaps they realised that my interest was elsewhere. So I sought Fletcher’s advice again, and decided to become a physiologist. That summer I spent, apart from going to Bisley [ The site of the Annual Meeting of the National Rifle Association.] and Scotland and other diversions, in reading books on chemistry, physical optics, and the properties of matter. Then in October I started off with physiology, chemistry and physics at Cambridge. ‘This may seem an odd way of starting physiology. But there were two people in the physiological laboratory at Cambridge in 1907 who had started in just that way: Langley had spent five terms at mathematics before taking a degree in natural science in 1875, while Gaskell had got a first in mathematics in 1869 before going on to natural science and medicine. Both were original members of the Physiological Society. And there was another, Keith Lucas, who even started as a classical scholar; he also was guided by Fletcher (his director of studies) into physiology, otherwise he would probably have followed his natural bent and become an engineer. ‘Anyhow that is how it happened, and after rather a hard slog for two years I emerged from the Part II examination as a physiologist. I should be ashamed to tell you all the things I was still ignorant of, including zoology (and anatomy). And there were lots of other gaps which at intervals amused my friends. But some less reprehensible peculiarities amused them too: John Haldane used to laugh at me because I could solve quadratic equations, which he thought most unfitting for a physiologist (though Barcroft, as often, took the contrary view); and he always protested against my affection for the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Anyhow, in spite of these disabilities, I became a physiologist and in 1910 was elected to a fellowship at Trinity for physiology. 'The Cambridge laboratory, in those years before the war in 1914, was a wonderful place - because of the people in it; the laboratory itself was pretty awful by present standards. There were probably more great physiologists there to the square yard than in any other place, before or since; and not only because there were so few square yards. A list of those who worked there between 1909 and 1914 follows: Cambridge Physiology Department 1909–1914 / J. N. Langley, H. Hartridge, W. H. Gaskell, G. Winfield, L. E. Shore, Ff. Roberts, L. Orbeli (St Petersburg). W. B. Hardy, J. C. Bramwell, M. Camis (Parma), H. K. Anderson, E. D. Adrian, H. Piper (Berlin), F.G. Hopkins, C. R. A. Thacker, H. Straub (Tübingen), S. W. Cole, D. Dale, F. Müller (Berlin), W. M. Fletcher, (Mrs Thacker), Alex Forbes (Harvard), J. Barcroft, R. A. Peters, F. Verzir (Budapest), K. Lucas, A. N. Drury, V. Weizsäcker (Heidelberg), T. S. Hele, J. H. Burn, J. K. Parnas (Strassburg) V. H. Mostram A. M. Hill C. L. Evans (U.C.L.), G. R. Mines, (Mrs Hele), A. V. Hill, C. G. L. Wolf, J. R. Marrack.

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‘How it all happened nobody knows, though I suppose it was an after-effect of Michael Foster: he died in 1907, but Langley had succeeded him in 1903. It certainly wasn't a ‘school’: like a school of herring, in which everyone works on the same subject as the head of the department. We worked on all sorts of things; Langley never kept that sort of school. Anyhow it did happen. So, when I am asked why I became a physiologist, the complete answer really is the extraordinary interest and variety of work that was going on in that laboratory and the sort of people who were doing it; also the kindness and encouragement we youngsters received from them all. The environment is well described in Adrian's article in the beautiful little book about Keith Lucas - which ought to be reprinted. But it was Fletcher in 1907 who led me to take the first step. In such company the rest followed.’ I referred earlier to ‘Joey’ Thornton at Blundell's to whom I owe so much, and coupled him in my debt with Fletcher at Trinity. They were very, very different characters but they had the same strict intellectual integrity. Fletcher left Cambridge in 1914 to become secretary to the newly established Medical Research Committee (later Council). There he set the high standards which the Council and his successors have maintained ever since. He, and the M.R.C., are described in T.R. Elliott’s beautiful Biographical Notice in 1933. In June 1933 I was going to America; Walter had been seriously ill and I went to see him in May before I left. I found him apparently much better, very gay, lying in bed in his home with the window open, shooting (with an air-gun) balloons laid on the lawn by his daughter Anne. A black cat jumped on the wall as I left, and Walter was a good shot. That is my last memory of him. When I got to New York Alan Gregg* of the Rockefeller Foundation, came, unexpectedly, to meet me at the dock. He did not want me, he said, to hear of Walter's death except from a friend. *Gregg was a wonderful man. See The Difficult Art of Giving: the Epic of Alan Gregg; by Wilder Penfield, 1967. Little, Brown & Co. Boston and Toronto. To return now to the early days, in 1909 I embarked on a research suggested in a letter from Langley, after consultation, I am sure, with Fletcher, Lucas and Hopkins. It is typical of much help I received continually. There is no need to repeat it here; it can be found in the original article in Perspectives. Any who are interested in further details could look at an article of mine in 1959, The heat-production of muscle and nerve, 1848-1914 ,pp 1-18. It covers the period till the start of the Kaiser’s War in 1914; the most important finding (1912) was the ‘recovery heat- production’, followed by the proof (with Weizsäcker, 1914) that the initial chemical processes of contraction are altogether non-oxidative in character. But from 1913 I became much interested in physical chemistry, and in 1914 was elected to a University Lectureship in it; if the war had not happened I might have been diverted altogether from physiology, but after 4 years absence I returned in 1919 to my first love. In 1913 I married Margaret Neville Keynes, daughter of , of Cambridge, and his wife . Our friends and twenty descendants (in 1972) agree that this was the cleverest thing I ever did. It would be wrong, however, to give me all the credit; though rather surprised about it, Margaret provided all reasonable assistance. Her father J.N. Keynes at the time was Registrary of the University, he had 341 published in 1884 a well-known book Studies and Exercises in Formal Logic (reprinted 1928): and in 1891 Scope and Method of Political Economy (reprinted 1930). His wife was a great public servant and had her hand in many excellent pies (as Margaret herself had later); she celebrated their Golden Wedding in 1931 by becoming Mayor of Cambridge. Her beautiful little book Gathering up the Threads (a study in family biography), published when she was 89, relates the history of the . Under the old rules J.N.K. was obliged to resign his Fellowship at Pembroke College when he married in 1882; but it was worth it he said. He died aged 97 in 1949, she aged 96 in 1958. Our friends will remember our children, Polly, David, Janet and Maurice; also our holiday hone, ‘Three Corners’, within sight of Dartmoor in South Devon. From there, the Marine Biological Laboratory at Plymouth was easily reached; which, as seen from the record provided a base for research from 1926 to 1958. But that comes into the last half century. 6. The Kaiser's War. In 1914 the war broke on us. I had long feared it would come, particularly after spending four months in Germany in 1911. There, in Jena, I had gone to see a number of student duels. They seemed to me a grotesque and tragic mixture of stupidity and brutality; a great people who could allow, or encourage, their youngsters to go on like that were not safe neighbours. Also I met a man who was learning to fight, in order to face (in turn) the three chief bullies of a corps he had ‘insulted’ - with intervals between the fights to recover from wounds. When I talked about this with the young men of a liberal German family whom I knew, they agreed that if one of them were so challenged, and refused to fight, he would be pursued with blackmail for years by members of the ‘insulted' corps. So I was not surprised by what happened in 1914. The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime! .( Edward Grey, 3rd August). That is nearly 60 years ago and they are flickering even to-day. The fault may be in the moral failure of a civilization unable to keep pace with the achievements of its technology. On Sunday 2 August my brother-in-law Maynard Keynes, suddenly summoned to the Treasury, asked me to drive him there in the side-car of my motor bicycle. We duly arrived in Whitehall. He did not usually care about conventions; but he had been at Eton and did not fancy, I think, the idea of arriving at the Treasury in a side-car. Anyhow he asked me to stop a few hundred yards short and let him walk the rest of the way. If he had been at Blundell's he would have been proud to arrive in that contraption. He remained at the Treasury till the end of 1918; then he attended the Peace Conference in Paris and afterwards wrote The Economic Consequences of the Peace – which was not at all conventional. If his wise mother had not read the proofs it might have lost some of its impact by being too vehement in denunciation and derision. On 4 August war was declared and mobilization took place. I had been in an officers training corps for a good many years and since 1909 had held a commission; and I joined up at once with the Cambridgeshire Regiment of the Territorial Army. There was in fact no obligation to do so, and it would have been better to wait a bit; but nobody knew what was 342 going to happen and like a lot of other young men I rushed to do what I could. At first I served as a regimental officer, but soon went over to training recruits to shoot, the only job for which I had special qualifications. That continued for some time and I remained in a state of doubt and perplexity, safe in England while my friends were being killed in France. I felt beastly about it but the decision was not really mine to make. Things were better during Hitler's War; in 1938, well before that began, I was responsible (with A.C. Egerton) through the Royal Society, for organizing (for the Ministry of Labour and National Service) a central Register of Scientific and Technical Personnel, to help to put people into their proper jobs in the war that was foreseen. My perplexities during the First War probably helped to guide me to this action in the second. Finally, however, late in 1915 I was asked, through Horace Darwin, to undertake a general investigation of the new and urgent problems of anti-aircraft gunnery. If anyone wants to know more about that, see above. It kept quite a lot of us busy for three years at things remote from our ordinary interests and led to the writing afterwards of three official text books which were useful in preparing for Hitler’s War. Also it gave me an acquaintance with official and service procedure; this was handy later and led, particularly through Henry Tizard, to the kind of things I did before and during the Second War. 7. Return to Physiology in 1919: The Last Half-Century. When the war was over I returned in 1919 to Cambridge and physiology; there was nothing now I wanted so much as to get back to the cellar and research I had left in 1914. But that did not last long. I was offered several chairs of physiology, among them one at Johns Hopkins in succession to W. H. Howell, and finally decided in 1920 on the job at Manchester. The muscle-heat experiments were continued at Cambridge by Hartree till 1933. I had to get into functioning order a long-neglected department of physiology, with about one hundred ex-servicemen as students; and began research on severe muscular exercise in man, which I had long wanted to tackle. There was also the pulse wave velocity in man and the physical chemistry of oxygen and carbon dioxide in blood; and that will-o- the-wisp, not cornered till 1926; the heat production of stimulated nerve, with which other people are still busy. In 1923 I succeeded Starling (1866 - 1927at University College London, and in 1926 became a Royal Society Research Professor there. Now I had the chance to do better the research in which I had been engaged from 1909 to 1914 and from 1919 to 1926. But a lot of other things persistently turned up. There was always, from 1910 onwards, a running fight with anti-vivisectionists. I took part in this, largely because my own work did not require the sort of experiments they objected to, so counter-attack was easier; partly also because these A.V.s not only had my initials but, by their quaint ideas, provided a lot of fun. ‘God never intended that one animal should profit at the expense of another’. But there were much more serious matters. Early in 1933 a flood of refugees began to arrive from and needed help; In May the Academic Assistance Council was founded, with which I took part. Early in 1935, in view of the evident menace of war, a small committee of the Air Ministry was formed of which Tizard was Chairman and Blackett, Wimperis and I were the original members; it dealt with problems of Air Defence, and among other things was the midwife of radar. From 1935 to 1945 I was biological secretary 343

of the Royal Society. During those busy years before Hitler’s War began, I was able still to continue with research, and in fact look back now to that time as one of the more fruitful periods. From 1940 to 1945 my laboratory, being in London, was closed. During that interval, elected in 1940 I served as a Member of Parliament for Cambridge University. But in February 1940 I went for four months to the British Embassy in Washington as a sort of air attaché. The purpose of this, as Tizard described it, was to get the American scientists into the war before their country. It worked in the end rather well. When I returned in June I was kept very busy trying to extract from gaol the scientific victims of a stupid and indiscriminate internment of refugees. In 1943-44 for five months I was in India, to advise the Indian Government on a variety of scientific problems. In 1945 the war ended, and a General Election was held. I did not stand for Parliament again and was able to return, happily as in 1919, to my laboratory. Now for a time all went well, until (in 1952) I was more or less conscripted as Secretary General of the International Council of Scientific Unions (I.C.S.U.). In itself this was a worth-while job, and I do not really regret doing it; I made many friends and may even have saved I.C.S.U. from a take-over bid by U.N.E.S.C.O. - which would have been disastrous. Also, in a curious way, I persuaded the U.S.S.R. to join the Council. But at that time much of this had too strong a flavour of politics, to which I had become allergic during five years in Parliament. I stood it for four years. When I told my good friend Lloyd Berkner, then President of I.C.S.U., that I intended to give up, I had to say firmly that I was now 70 years old and was damn well going to do what I liked. We left it at that, and I had eleven years more to continue my experiments in relative peace. Then, after 47 years away from Cambridge we returned there and I wrote First and Last Experiments in Muscle Mechanics There is no need to amplify the story of what happened in the ‘last half century’. Details can be found, if wanted, in journals or the various books referred to. The purpose of this sketch is not to describe all that was done, or to excuse what was omitted or done poorly; but simply to explain how, when and why it started and the kind of motives that drove it. 8. Religion. The reader may have noticed that I have written almost nothing hitherto about religion; the laughing reference to the Sunday exercises at Weston need not be taken too seriously. But in fact religion, in some sense gradually changing through the years, has played a substantial part in my life and probably influenced many of the things I did. I was baptized in the Church of England and "confirmed" in 1901 while at Blundell's School. I know the Bible rather well, particularly because I had, fortunately, to study "divinity" rather intensively in order to gain a special scholarship (open to West Country Schools) to assist my going to Cambridge. The change over when I was twenty-one, from mathematics to physiology was bound to lead to a more realistic idea of man's place in the world, and to a growing disbelief in magic or miracles; while two years as Junior Dean at Trinity College (1912-14) settled my distaste for the formalities, and some of the plain 344

nonsense, that beset many so-called religious observances. Anyhow the Kaiser’s war, starting in 1914 provided a clear break; and when I returned in 1919, still glad, as I am today after another half century, to admit belief in God (as a kind of moral power or purpose behind the universe) I became progressively more sceptical of the value to me of religious ritual or ceremonial, or of the pertinence and validity of metaphysical theory in religion. But my previous experiences and searchings of heart were not wasted. A bye- product of these, a feeling of obligation to other people, individually or collectively, particularly when they were down on their luck, led me quite early to take part in various "good causes". One fortunate result of this was that in 1913 I married Margaret Keynes who felt the same sort of obligation. A critic might say that such things have nothing to do with religion. So much the worse then for his sort of religion. My own conviction as I look back on what happened, is that they have a great deal to do with what I understand by religion - a conviction of the existence of some moral purpose outside oneself. That does not lead to chanting meaningless praises of the Almighty or to believing in the Resurrection of the Body, or in any sort of future life for the individual. I would as soon believe in the divine right of kings (or trade unions!) as in many of the assertions in the various creeds. My religious convictions have, it is true, changed gradually with the years and probably diminished but they do not seem to be tending to zero. And this is the only time I have written explicitly about them. Perhaps I may be charged with arrogance in drawing such conclusions from my own thoughts and experiences, without specific reference to those of saints and prophets. But a scientist, as I have been for more than sixty years, would never get far if he did not trust his own observations. The motto of the Royal Society, taken from Horace, is Nullius addictus jurare in verba magistri. Which means "not pledged to swear allegiance to the words of any master". Is it arrogant to put one’s trust in what one believes to be true? Irresolution is not the better part of valour, integrity, honesty, or humility. Robert Burns, the Scottish poet, wrote of a friend: If there's another world he lives in bliss; If there is none, he made the best of this. Many would hate the prospect of eternal boredom suggested by the first line, as of a perpetual tour in a luxury liner; they would hope rather for the kindly, if final, judgement of the second. In drawing these admittedly, indefinite conclusions, about religion one possibility has perplexed me which I had better confess. I accept gladly the morality of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew, Chapters 5, 6 and 7). But my judgements now of the Bible and religion may be strongly biased by memories feelings and experiences of many years ago. There are some hymns, and for that matter some songs, which cannot be recalled without emotion; while the sound of the Last Post on a bugle makes my hairs stand on end, and if I were a dog I should howl. The music of Cornish place names, or of the Carol Service in King's Chapel, does not provide me with any evidence at all for or against the existence of a merciful God or 345 another life. My conviction of a moral power behind the universe is derived rather from contacts with many people of whom it could be said (in the words of the prophet Micah) that they did justly and loved mercy and walked humbly with their God. NOTES AND ADDITIONAL READINGS. 1. Until 1835 only burgesses had a parliamentary vote, and earlier than that they alone were allowed to trade in the city and to benefit from its charities. Members of the Society of Merchant Venturers (founded 1543) still have to be burgesses. 2. ‘History is read by different people for various reasons; it has many uses and values. To me, its chief but not is only value is poetic. Its poetic value depends on its being a true record of actual happenings in the past. For the mystery of time past continually enthralls me. Here, long before us, dwelt folk as real as we are today, now utterly vanished, as we in our turn shall vanish. History can miraculously restore them to our vision and understanding, can tell us a little of what were their hopes and fears, their words and works. The curtain of cloud that hides the scenes of the past is broken here and there and we have magic glimpses into that lost world, which is as actual as our own, though placed on another step of the moving staircase of time...’ G.M. Trevelyan (1949) An Autobiography and Other Essays. Longmans, Green and co. London. 3. Richard Henry Dana (1840) Two Years before the Mast, xx,61. 4. 'King Henry III with his counsellors and tutor came to Bristol in 1216 as a safe place, at which time he permitted the town to choose a mayor after the manner of London and with him were chosen two ‘grave, sad worshipful men called prepositors.’ William Barrett, F.S.A. (1789) The History and Antiquities of the City of Bristol, p.668. Printed in Bristol. 704 pp. 5. The shop is 210 High St and a window of the church, is visible between 210 and 211. The road on the left was Goldsmiths Lane. Copied from a photograph by my mother of a picture she found in a “Book of Quaint Houses”. 6. At Blundell's School, reluctantly I once wrote a set of Latin verses in a competition for a prize which I had no chance of winning. I had to put a Latin motto on it instead of my name. In a dictionary, with mother's help, I found the phrase nolo episcopari, which seemed to be suitable; it means literally "I do not wish to be made a bishop' - which was true enough. What I did not know is that the words are used to show humility during a man’s actual consecration as a bishop. The adjudicators of the prize could scarcely admonish me for flippancy, because the motto was meant to conceal one's identity; though they probably knew. 7. A.M. Hill. She went to Cambridge University and became a biochemist; and married another biochemist, T.S. Hele, who later became Master of Emmanuel College. 8. C.P. Snow (1961). Science and Government. Harvard University Press. 9. A.V. Hill (1960). The Ethical Dilemma of Science and Other Writings. The Rockefeller University Press, New York. This has been translated into Japanese. 10. Pophara. See Dictionary of National Biography; also Arthur Fisher in Blundell's Worthies(1904), edited by M.L. Banks, Chatto and Windus, London. 11. Lorna Doone (1869) by R.D. Blackmore. 346

12. Bayliss-Starling Memorial Lecture (1949) J. Physiol. 204, 1. 13. T.R. Elliott (1933) Obit Not. R Soc. 153. 14. Keith Lucas, Heffer, Cambridge (1934); articles by W.M. Fletcher and E.D. Adrian. 15. Of the last sixteen names in the Cambridge list, which is in order of seniority in the two columns to the left, ten were still yun. alíve iň June 1972 in spite of the war of 1914-18. Is physiology a specially healthy pursuit? or have the assassinatory prayers of anti- vivisectionists a strong negative effect? (see article above) 16. A.V. Hill (1965). Trails and Trials in Physiology. Edward Arnold, London. 17. A.V. Hill (1959) Ann. Rev. Physiol. 21, 1-18 18. F.A. Keynes (1950). Gathering up the Threads. Heffer, Cambridge. 19. Ronald W. Clark (1965).Tizard. Methuen, London. 20. A.V. Hill (1943). Nature, London. 152, 154. 21. J.V. Howarth, R.D. Keynes and J.M. Ritchie (1968), J. Physiol. 194, 745-793. 22. W.H. Beveridge (Lord Beveridge) (1959). A Defence of Free Learning Oxford University Press. 23. A.V. Hill (1970). First and Last Experiments in Muscle Mechanics. Cambridge University Press. This has been translated into Japanese and Russian.

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(132) NOTES ON EIGHT BOOKS

A. TITLES AND SHORT DESCRIPTIONS OF EIGHT BOOKS, 1926 - 1970 Between 1926 and 1970 I published eight books of which the themes are relevant, more or less, to a good many of the essays in the present collection. 1. MUSCULAR ACTIVITY. The Herter Lectures of 1924; published for Johns Hopkins University by the Williams and Wilkins Company, Baltimore, 1926. 2. LIVING MACHINERY. The Christmas Lectures (1926) to a Auditory, given at the Royal Institution, London. Published by G.Bell and Sons, Ltd., London, 1927. These six lectures were translated (1) into Swedish and published in 1929 in Stockholm by P.A. Norstedt and Söner; (2) into Polish and published in 1934 in Warsawby Nakladem "Mathesis Polskiej". Kokyo The six lectures, together with two others of a more philosophical kind, were given as the Lowell Lectures in Boston in the spring of 1927 and published by Barcourt Brace and Co., New York, in 1927. 3. MUSCULAR MOVEMENT IN MAN: The George Fisher Baker Lectures at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., published by the McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., New York, 1927. 4, ADVENTURES IN BIOPHYSICS. The Johnson Foundation Lectures, 1930, at the University of Pennsylvania. Published by the University of Pennsylvania Press, 1932. These lectures were translated into Russian and published in Moscow - Leningrad in 1935. 5. CHEMICAL WAVE TRANSMISSION IN NERVE. The Liversidge Lecture at Cambridge 1932. Published by the Cambridge University Press, 1932. 6. THE ETHICAL DILEMMA OF SCIENCE AND OTHER WRITINGS. The "Ethical Dilemma of Science" was the title of the Presidential Address to the British Association in Belfast in 1952. The other sixty-five titles date from 1919 to 1959. Published by the Rockefeller Institute (now University) Press in 1960. It was translated into Japanese and published in Tokyo in 1971 by Igaku Shoin Ltd. 7. TRAILS AND TRIALS IN PHYSIOLOGY. A bibliography of the author's scientific writings, together with sixteen chapters on special subjects. Published by Edward Arnold, Ita., London, 1965. 8. FIRST AND LAST EXPERIMENTS IN MUSCLE MECHANICS. An account of experiments made at various times between 1923 and 1967. Published by the Cambridge University Press 1970. Translated into Russian and Japanese.

348

1. MUSCULAR ACTIVITY (1926). Introduction. (See footnote) In 1924, on the first evening I ever spent in America, before going on to Baltimore I gave a lecture at the in Philadelphia on "The Mechanism of the Muscle". Realizing the physical and engineering tradition of the Franklin Institute I told my audience what I could, in the brief space of an hour, about the inner working of that beautiful and mysterious machine. At the end, when questions were invited, I was asked, rather indignantly, by an elderly gentleman, what use I supposed all these investigations were. For a moment or so I tried stumblingly to explain what practical results might be expected to follow from a knowledge of how muscles work. There are practical consequences of course from all improvements of knowledge, as the history of science and invention tells. But to prove to an indignant questioner on the spur of the moment that the work was useful seemed a thankless task and I gave it up. I turned to him with a smile and finished - "to tell you the truth we don't do it because it is useful but because it's amusing". The answer was thought of and given in a moment; it came from deep down in my soul; and the results were as admirable from my point of view as unexpected. Prolonged and hearty applause greeted my confession. The questioner retired shaking his head over my wickedness and the newspapers next day, with obvious approval, came out with headlines "Scientist Does It Because It's Amusing." And if that is not the best reason why a scientist should do his work I want to know what is. That was my first evening in the United States and from then on I felt at home. Footnote. This introduction has been transferred from “Muscular Movement in Man”, 1927 since it refers to what happened immediately before I went to Baltimore to give the Harter Lectures in 1924)

Preface. In the preface to his book "The Respiratory Function of the Blood", Mr Joseph Barcroft quite rightly tells us that long ago, by spending his leisure in sailing boats, he learnt what he knows (which is no little) of the way to venture beyond the visible horizon. Now, the practice of running is just as ancient and respectable as that of sailing, and the reader may perhaps see signs of the source of my inspiration, at any rate in the fourth lecture of this series: indeed, to tell the truth, it may well have been my struggles and failures, on track and field, and the stiffness and exhaustion that sometimes befell, which led me to ask many questions which I have attempted to answer here. In that attempt, to continue the analogy,' I was given a very long start, for Sir Walter Fletcher (1873-1933) was my tutor and counsellor at Cambridge and one of his happiest recollections - in spite of all , he has accomplished in physiology and in the organization of medical research - is of running for two English Universities against two of the United States. It was no small honour to be invited to give the Herter lectures, to represent the English Universities not against but before one in America. Yet what one remembers is not so much the honour as the goodwill and understanding, bred by comradeship and friendly rivalry in discovery. May I therefore acknowledge here, not by name for the list would 349 include the whole of the Medical Faculty and many others, the kindness I received in October 1924, from my colleagues in Baltimore. 2. LIVING MACHINERY (1927) Introduction. When Sir William Bragg invited me to give these Christmas lectures I summoned my family and asked their advice. They had no doubt about an answer, and it was decided that I should accept. What should I lecture about? Here I got very little help. The only positive suggestion came from David (aged eleven), who, remembering perhaps that these lectures are given to young people shortly after Christmas, a time of good cheer, not only moral but material, proposed that I should lecture on “How we taste Things”. It was with regret that I felt unable to carry out David’s suggestion, but I feared that it might be difficult for me to lecture for six whole hours on the subject, and I foresaw that demonstrations and experiments on it might lead to ill-feeling. Were I to use my own family only, for experiments on the subject of how to taste things (presumably good things), it might make the rest of my audience jealous and the family sick. If I carried out the experiments on the whole of the audience it might make the Royal Institution bankrupt. So I had to think the matter out for myself, and I decided to talk on something very ordinary - our nerves and muscles: how we feel what is going on inside and around us, and how we move ourselves about. Once a decision had been made the family expressed a lively interest in the matter. (I must remark that they sometimes come to the laboratory with me to "help".) Of their suggestions the best came from Janet, aged eight, who proposed that I should make experiments upon her, a proposal seized upon at once by the rest, with results which I hope you will see. The more I thought about it, the better it seemed. Fearful experiments I would make: P.'s heart (aged twelve) should be shown beating, her lungs should be measured up, perhaps even her bones should be shown; and her emotions should be exposed on a screen. D. should be given electric shocks till sparks came out of his hands; he should climb half-way up Mount Everest and pedal a bicycle there (a strange place to find a bicycle) till exhausted; then he should be given oxygen and feel fresh again at once. J. should have the movements of her stomach (there is no decency in young ladies these days) shown to the audience on a screen. Then the noises made by M.'s heart (aged seven) should be made to resound like a gun all round the lecture hall; he should breathe strange gases out of a bag; and he would not be content till I had promised him that he also should have electric shocks. Alas! not all of this can be done, but some of it can. It is extraordinary how little most people know about their own bodies. I myself only learnt, at the age of sixteen from a classical headmaster, that muscle is the red meat and not the gristle, and I often imagined that my heart must be wrong because I could hear it beating. Again, in common with most boys, I had the most ridiculous notions about "training": drink as little as possible, don't eat potatoes or pastry, take a spoonful of some wonderful patent food after each meal. It is the same with other machines. Most people who own motor-cars know very little about the insides of them and how they work, which is 350 distressing enough, especially when they go wrong. How many more who own perfectly good bodies haven't the vaguest idea of their machinery, or of the meaning and importance of their various parts? In the se six lectures I shall try to give you some idea of the working of two of the most important parts of the body: the muscles which move it about, and the nerves which arrange where and how it shall be moved. If you begin to understand these you will know enough to make you want to understand a lot of other things too. 3. MUSCULAR MOVEMENT IN MAN (1927) Dedication. As I finished the pages of this book I heard of the passing of a very gallant gentleman Ernest M. Starling (1866-1927) Foulerton Research Professor of the Royal Society, sometime Jodrell Professor of Physiology at University College, London, well known and dearly loved in this country, as well as in his own. At the International Congress of Physiologists at Stockholm in 1926, Starling described Physiology as "the greatest game in the world." I had hoped to tell him of these experiments on runners, for he too knew something about running. This is forbidden, so I dedicate the account of them to his memory: and since he loved young men, and himself never grew old, he would be proud to have his name coupled with The Athletes at Cornell whose friendly co-operation made them possible.

4. ADVENTURES IN BIOPHYSICS (1931) Preface.

If you go to Devonshire in September and wander in the lanes you saw at the end of March you will find it hard to believe that they are in fact the same. Reading now in February the proofs of the lectures given at Philadelphia in October I am equally astonished at the changes which a few short months have wrought in our outlook. It is fortunate to be concerned with a field of research in which one's colleagues are so active, but it makes it no easier to describe the present, or any other outlook. The last three years, indeed, have brought strange and precious growth in subjects which seemed to be reaching maturity. I have avoided any detailed alterations in the picture presented in the lectures themselves, and have been content to show, in somewhat numerous footnotes, as far as I am able, the changes which have occurred in the meantime. No doubt the picture will be old-fashioned again in six months: but still, when the primroses return it may help to explain how they once gave place to blackberries, how - for example and for a season - lactic acid was replaced by phosphagen, equilibrium by steady state, bound water by free.

Introduction. 351

Twenty summers ago, on Sunday mornings, certain young Cambridge physiologists used to go and dig in Gaskell's garden on the Gog Magog hills while he regaled then with histories of the great things he had seen, and the great days he had spent in Ludwig's laboratory and elsewhere. These stories supplied, what no paper in a scientific periodical can supply, a vivid picture of the human side of scientific research. In our journals we try, so far as we can, to present a concise and logical account of our alleged discoveries. The real reasons why we did the things we did, the delays and imperfections and perplexities which beset us, the misery of continual failure, the joy of occasional success, the faith that with patience and persistence we should -.find the unknown something we were sure was there — all these are unfitting in a scientific periodical, yet somewhere a hint at least of them should be recorded. Such lectures as these are not intended to take the place of reviews or of articles in abstracting journals: those are much better read than heard. I hope, therefore, that Professor Bronk will persuade my successors, as he has persuaded me, to tell you of their scientific adventures: for so, firstly I shall be in good company, and secondly you will see better into their minds, you will realize that for you as for them the pursuit of natural knowledge may be one of the great adventures of the human spirit. It was Borelli two hundred and fifty years ago who affirmed that the study of the motion of animals, no less than Astronomy, is a part of physics, to be enlarged and adorned (note the word "adorned") by mathematical demonstrations. The Johnson Foundation for Medical Physics, in which I have the honour to inaugurate this annual Series of lectures, is intended to fulfil Borelli's precept. I wish it good fortune in its enviable task: may it adorn, as well as extend, the fields of biological and medical knowledge! 5 CHEMICAL WAVE TRANSMISSION IN NERVE (1932) Preface. In his will the late Professor Liversidge (1847-1927) made a bequest to the Master and Fellows of Christ's College, Cambridge, "for encouragement of research in Chemistry not in ignorance of the fact that there are already in existence other Lectureships in Chemistry but because there are none such as I contemplate namely for the express encouragement of research and for the purpose of drawing attention to the research work which should be undertaken and because having regard to the vastness of the subject I wish the subject to be elucidated by as many workers as possible and feel that the friendly emulation of the lecturers holding the various lectureships above mentioned may be of benefit". He enjoined that "if possible the lectures shall be published...so as to disseminate the information for the benefit of such of the public as are unable to attend", and further that "the lectures shall be upon recent researches and discoveries and the most important part of the Lecturer's duty shall be to point out in what direction further researches are necessary and how he thinks they can best be carried out". "Having regard to the vastness of the subject" the Master and Fellows invited, to give the lecture in 1232, not a Chemist but a Physiologist: who, gladly accepting the challenge and its implication that physiology is a branch of chemistry (as of several other sciences), chose for his subject one in which the help of Chemists (not to mention Physicists and Engineers) is an essential condition of advance. The most important part of his duty being 352 to point the way to further researches and "how he thinks they can best be carried out", he has urged that Physiologists should seek the aid of Chemists in the study of one of the most fundamental of their problems. For the Lecturer has observed that Chemists (not to mention Physicists and Engineers) are very intelligent people. Often, to be sure, they are singularly ignorant, not seldom they are quite unaware of the most elementary facts. He has met — incredible it may seem — persons of great distinction in these subjects who did not know that a frog's heart will go on beating, its nerves transmitting messages, its muscles contracting, long after these are removed from their owner. He has admired the astonishment with which they regard quite simple everyday things relating to life, their readiness to accept vital phenomena as magic beyond reason or experiment. He sympathizes with them in this, for he too is often afflicted with the same wonder and astonishment. But perhaps that is because, as Ernest Starling once told him, he too is so ignorant. One of the Lecturer's fond dreams is of a day when all educated people will have at least an elementary knowledge of the main facts of life. At present they are apt to take no interest at all in the matter: or - what is worse - to imagine that life is merely rather complicated colloid chemistry (it certainly is rather complicated). For biology, after all, is the fundamental science: indeed the behaviour of the nervous system - the study of which belongs to physiology - is the ultimate basis of all education and of all intellectual activity. Our bodily habits affect even our theories of the nature of things, as witness the influence of ball games on doctrines of the constitution of matter proposed by British physicists. Our conceptions of time and space and mass depend on the impressions which reach us from our sensory organs. No Biologist has not read of the atomic theory of matter: yet many Chemists - one might say most Chemists - have never even heard of the "atomic theory" of nervous activity, namely that this depends on wave-like impulses of an "all-or-none" character, with properties as clear and as peculiar as those of any other wave. It is sad but true, and something must be done about it. Realizing then, on the one hand, how little they know of such things, and on the other hand how much interest they would find if they knew and how much help they could give, the Lecturer has broadcast this, his S.O.S.: in the hope that a Chemist or two may be induced thereby to come to the aid of Physiologists in one of the most difficult - and therefore the most attractive - of all scientific problems, the nature of the change which is transmitted in nerve. (6) THE ETHICAL, DILEMMA OP SCIENCE AND OTHER WRITINGS (1960) Preface. The persuasion of various friends has led to the publication of these collected writings. They have no common theme, though common motives, hopes and feelings can be recognized (perhaps too often) in many of them. No single title could cover them all, so it seemed better to adapt the title of one of them, the presidential address to the British Association in 1952, the one which received more blame, and perhaps more approval, than the others. Some of the contents have little, if any, direct relation to science; though often their origin can be traced to convictions which are part of custom or morality among scientific people anywhere. 353

Some of the contents may seem flippant and some people dislike flippancy; but laughter may serve a useful purpose sometimes, except to those who do not like it. In a few, exasperation has driven me to relieve my feelings in "verse", admittedly bad, and some people may not like that; but these fragments were given a place for historical, not aesthetic reasons. Others, more prosaic, are included because they may possibly have an interest to those who want to know when and how some things started. In talks and writings scattered over forty years there was bound to be considerable repetition, together with much unworthy to be perpetuated. The kind reader may remember that nearly all that is printed here was written at the request of other people: I did my best, my fault is not to have buried it all since. Anyhow selection was necessary and two-thirds has been buried. In making the selection, or rather the rejection, I have wondered how far to heed the advice quoted by Samuel Johnson (1773):- Read over your compositions and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out. I have borne this principle in mind, but it was very little help in reducing the material to one third. Yet the reading of these papers again, after nany years of forgetfulness, has proved a less depressing business than I feared, partly because they brought back the endeavours and companionship of earlier years. Some of my friends, and particularly Detlev Bronk, recall at intervals remarks they say I made to them, often many years ago; with no memory of these left, or of the circumstances, they sound to me nevertheless like things I might possibly have said. For example (recalled by G.A.H. Buttle of an occasion when, he says, I found him renewing his strength, which did not need much renewing, in the middle of the morning), "You're a sort of irreversible process, a lot of food goes in and very little work comes out". The same feeling that I might have written these papers was evoked by their re-reading: but here the evidence of origin was better documented, though unfortunately, unlike the other stories, the material has not been improved by keeping. There is much in these papers that today one might prefer to alter, but that would be cheatings and no-one can be sure that what he thinks now is any wiser (or less wise) than what he thought forty years ago. Knowledge and the circumstances may have changed, and what may seem platitudinous now may have been comparatively bright then; and however insignificant these papers may be as history it was better to treat them with historical integrity. Extensive omission was necessary, partly to save the reader from repetition and boredom. A few obvious errors have been corrected, but no alterations of sense have deliberately been made; though occasional rephrasing was necessary to bridge omission. I hope there has been no bad cheating during the omission; there could be. The papers have been grouped in six Chapters, in each chronologically. In order to make them intelligible, an introduction (generally short) has usually been included after each title and reference has been made, by numbers in the text, to notes. For many years I have had such an interesting time that I have thought, now and then, that it might be nice to share it with others. But such an idea can lead one into being a terrible bore, and I sheered off. The actual impulse which set this volume going was applied by Dr Paul Rosbaud and my son N.N.Hill. After that Dr D.R. Wilkie came in. Their original 354 idea, however, of collected (or even selected) scientific papers rather shocked me; perhaps I did not feel that old, and in the end they were propitiated by the present plan. The next stage in its realization came when I mentioned it casually to Dr. Bronk, who at once suggested that the book should be published by the new Rockefeller Institute Press.. I was the more inclined to trust his opinion, because of this remarkable capacity of his for remembering things said to him over many years; he would know the kind of thing the Press would be in for, there could be no claim afterwards for false pretences. Anyhow that is what happened.

7. TRAILS AND TRIALS IN PHYSIOLOGY (1955) Preface. In 1957 the Editor of the Annual Review of Physiology invited me to write a "prefatory chapter" for his 1959 volume, containing (if I found the idea tolerable) a certain amount of autobiographical comment. I had too much already waiting to be written and, telling him so regretfully, replied that I would soon be completing an introductory chapter to a monograph I had long intended to write on The Heat Production of Muscle and Nerve; would that serve his purpose? Apparently it did, and it was printed as pp.1-18 of his 1959 volume. It appears again in the present book as an Introduction to Sections A and B. But the monograph itself made little progress, although material was gradually collected to be fitted together some day. The chief trouble was that whenever I began to write I found gaps and uncertainties that cried out to be filled, errors that needed correcting, experiments that could be done better by present methods, and quantities that could be more accurately measured. This, in fact led to a lot of new-and interesting results; but perfectionism is the enemy of the practical and the monograph did not get much further. Now it happened that for some years several of my friends had been urging me to make, or to allow to be made, a volume, or volumes, of collected papers. This I was very reluctant to do; partly because I cannot believe that such volumes are generally very useful, partly because I have rather a poor opinion of much that I have written. Some of the latter may have been important in its time, in recording a tentative step into the unknown; but mostly it is dull reading now. I persuaded them therefore hat it would be better to write the monograph. But as time went on the monograph was still very far from being written and in the end I offered a compromise. A complete chronological bibliography should be made of my scientific publications since 1909, with titles, references and annotations. And this should include, for completeness, the papers of many of my friends, written jointly or independently about things we started together. Such a book would be of reasonable size, so reasonable in fact that it could contain, in separate later chapters, reviews of certain subjects which needed to be written, including some new results, accounts of methods and instruments that might otherwise be lost, and a reconnaissance of the field for further research. This project lifted a cloud from my mind. It would not be such a dismal, dubious, embarrassing and extensive affair as collected papers might be. It would release me from 355 the slavery of writing, all over again for the monograph, what had already been written, more or less adequately, elsewhere; and anyhow the monograph originally proposed, with its limited title, could not refer to a good many amusing things that had been done. The new plan would complete the record, so that others could see what had happened and turn to original sources if 'they wanted to (after all, what are libraries for?). and it would give me a good deal of harmless entertainment in annotating the papers, and in pointing out the errors, the false trails and the imperfect theories which are among the creational hazards of research. Winston Churchill is said to have remarked : If I am accused of this mistake, I can only say with M. Clemenceau on a celebrated occasion: "Perhaps I have made a number of other mistakes of which you have not heard." Since I have made many mistakes myself, it would be better to confess them to the reader and not leave him to find out. As a title I had thought originally of Adventures in Biophysics, which is also that of the little book containing the Johnson Foundation Lectures given in Philadelphia in 1930. Of the description of much of our work as "adventures" there would, I hope, have been little doubt in the minds of those who shared in it. But there were three difficulties about the title: first, that its repetition might cause confusion to bibliographers and librarians, for apparently the little book of 1930 is not altogether forgotten: second, that in recent years two other books have been called "Adventures in—.", and there might be others before long; and third, that biophysics is proliferating so fast to-day and so many publishers of journals are jumping on its bandwagon, that my old-fashioned things might scarcely be recognized under its title. Finally, therefore, this book has been called Trails and Trials in Physiology. The implication of "trails" is obvious, sometimes false sometimes genuine. That of "trials" is deliberately equivocal; mostly the word relates quite simply to tests, to experiments, but it would be a reminder also of vexations, failures and frustrations that were part of the job. How often did one waste a day, or a month, in fruitless experiments? How often were one's facts misinterpreted or one's theories found wanting? (and one was lucky if one discovered that for oneself). In undertaking difficult experiments (and few others are really much fun) such trials are inevitable, and it may be comforting for people to realize that others have experienced them too. Often I have told my young friends that when they have found something they cannot understand at all, instead of being cast down they should jump in the air for joy; for that is often how discoveries are made. Research must indeed be planned; but the most interesting things can emerge when the plan does not work, providing a test not-only of tenacity but of understanding. The researches recalled in this book are not chiefly my own; they are largely due to the young friends, few of them so young now, with whom I have worked. As I put them in order it became even more evident to me, as I hope it will be evident to the reader, how much I owe to my colleagues. In fifty years they have numbered more than a hundred, and they came from twenty countries. Without their ideas, their inventiveness and skill and their obstinate faith in accurate experiments little could have happened. I have been very fortunate in their friendship and companionship. And they would all expect that special 356 mention should be made of two of them, A.O. Downing and J.L. Parkinson, and they would agree with my use of J.L.P.'s initials to call them all a Jolly Laboratory Partnership.

8 FIRST AND LAST EXPERIMENTS IN MUSCLE MECHANICS (1970) Preface. In 1964 my last papers on the heat production of muscle were published: and about time too. After that I returned to another favourite theme, one that came to mind in 1920 but started in earnest with Herbert Gasser in 1923. It turned up at intervals later, particularly in a paper of 1949 called The Abrupt Transition from Rest to Actfvity in Muscle. That paper triggered off a general interest in the growth and decay of the active state after a stimulus. But I have long realized that the methods and ideas of 1923 and 1949 had obvious defects and that the transition was not as "abrupt" as I claimed. So in 1964 I set out to do the experiments better. That took a long time, some of it spent in improving methods, more of it wasted in repeating elegant experiments which persisted in giving the same result. There was something missing, which appeared only after the experiments had changed course: in which there may be a moral. But a number of interesting things turned up; some were new and exciting, some answered questions already asked, others posed new questions without decisive answers. Finally, early in 1967, it was decided that we should return to Cambridge (after 47 years); which was quite a job and meant abandoning a laboratory in London and all the instruments accumulated since 1920. In Samuel Johnson's words, 'When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully’. In fact it was five months, not a fortnight, and returning to Cambridge was not a bit like being hanged, but the stimulating effect on my mind was the same, and some or the most interesting things turned up during that rather hectic period. All of which left a vast amount of experimental material requiring critical analysis. The results, and the conclusions to be drawn, were too variegated to be put into ordinary scientific papers. Besides, it would be better to speculate rather at large, to 'let oneself go' in a way that editors or scientific journals quite properly forbid. That would require a book; and I recalled that in 1932 the Cambridge University Press published a little volume of mine on Chemical Wave Transmission in Nerve. The Press was ready to consider a second one; the interval of thirty-five years gave a reasonable assurance that it would be the last. But a title would be needed. In 1950 my wife's mother, Florence Ada Keynes, in her ninetieth year, published a beautiful little book called Gathering up the Threads. The title described very well what I had to do, and I might have been tempted to use it myself had I thought of it first. That being out, I had to look for something less romantic. The force- velocity relation had been in my mind for many years, at first in primitive form. It was linked later, as can be seen from the record, with the gradually evolving ideas of the series elastic component and the active state. They could be put together, with various intermediate things, under the title, First and last Experiments in Muscle Mechanics. 357

There had, in fact, been many other experiments of mine before 1923 on a variety of themes; but none before 1920 of any serious import in relation to muscle mechanics. In 1920 I began to get interested, particularly for human muscles, in the relation between speed of movement and work performed. The results of that, never properly thought out, were revolving in my head when Gasser arrived. Our experiments in 1923-4 on The Dynamics of Muscular Contraction were indeed the start, as mine in 1964-7 were the finish, of the adventure described in this book.

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