T. E. Thorpe

“ Was not Lancashire, with its many populous manufacturing towns, as fully entitled to the advantages of a university as the cities over the Border? The time had passed for imagining that Oxford and Cambridge, rich and powerful though they were, could do all that England legitimately required in the way of the highest academic culture. Where was the evidence that the establishment of provincial universities would lower the tone of higher education, or that the creation of new avenues to degrees would injuriously affect the reputation of those symbols of culture? ”

“ Wherever British industry or commerce flourishes there German merchants or manufacturers are found, and there they remain. In our own great cities, in those of our oversea dominions, as well as in our most distant settlements, the ubiquitous German flourishes, and is a welcome strength to the community. What more can England do to assist German trade and industry than she has done and is doing? How can it with any truth be said that England stops Germany from coming out into the sun? ”

“ The Associates of the Owens College, whom it is my privilege to present to you to-day, are spontaneously linking their names and reputations with the name and fame of our University, and it seems a twice-blessed relationship which on both sides is founded on goodwill. Many of those whom I am about to lead to you are men distinguished in letters and science, and in the several learned professions and other occupations to which their lives are devoted. Some are members of the governing and teaching bodies of our own University. ”

“ And if the true opinion of the British and of the German peoples could be obtained who can doubt that it would be in favour of peace and good feeling rather than of hostility and war? But to err is human, and to be misled is easy, so that it behoves those who love progress and hate all that opposes progress to use all efforts to denounce and destroy Chauvinism in every country and in every form. In England Jingoism has practically no power. In Parliament certainly none—witness the speeches lately delivered in both Houses—not one note of ill-feeling towards Germany was heard. ”

“ The ultimate effect of this may be that you may evolve a wider and more comprehensive college for higher education. I look to that time with hope, for differentiation of our colleges will be the best thing for learning and for vigour of intellect. Each great provincial town should have a college as a centre of intelligence, each a sun capable of warming and illuminating a region around it, not merely a moon to cast pale and cold beams as a reflection from a distant luminary. ”

“ He pointed to the creation of institutions for secondary and higher education in our large centres of industry as a sign that the country was awakening to the fact that all our great branches of industry were founded on a scientific basis. Although the education—however indispensable it might be—of the eye and the hand could only be acquired by actual practice, it could be nothing short of prejudice to deny that the education of the intellect was also a matter of primary importance. ”

“ It was your good fortune at the outset of your career to come under the influence of illustrious chemical philosophers—Graham, Williamson, Bunsen. Your good fortune has been our great gain. You have not only worthily upheld the traditions associated with such names, but you have inspired others by your example. Your influence is to be seen in the creation of the great School of Chemistry in which you have laboured for thirty years, and in which you taught hundreds of pupils ”

“ Is there any other point of view from which the notion that England can personally gain by making war on Germany can be urged? I do not know of one, and perhaps our Jingoes may even admit this. But say they: “If we do not declare war Germany is certain to do so. Is it not better for us to choose our own time and occasion rather than allow our enemy to take the step when the conditions are most favourable to them?” This conclusion is sound provided the premises are also sound. Does Germany intend to declare war or so to act as to bring about a war with this country? ”

“ A broad-minded man, who thought spaciously and did things magnanimously, nature intended him to be a leader. His example was infectious, and nowhere was it more obvious than at Owens College, where the success of his own department was a constant stimulus to his colleagues. [194] Men valued his counsel because they trusted his judgment.
He knew his limitations as a man of science. He was too honest and sincere to cherish any illusions as to the position posterity would assign to him as a leader in chemical inquiry. ”

“ The personal and individual attention of the professor is the true secret of success; it is absolutely essential that he should know, and take an interest in, the work of every man in his laboratory, whether beginning or finishing his course.... It is in the laboratory, and there alone, that chemistry can be properly learnt, and it is by the peripatetic teaching of the professor and his demonstrators that the student benefits most. Laboratory teaching must inculcate method and accuracy ”

“ Certainly if we are to accept the statements of the All-Deutschen party as representing the opinion of the nation at large there are good grounds for believing that war is inevitable. But surely every one who knows anything of Germany and German opinion is certain that the All-Deutschen have even less power to bring about war than our own Jingoes have, and that their utterances represent public opinion in Germany to a less extent than those of our Jingoes represent the English opinion. ”

“ For upwards of a century—ever since, indeed, the renascence of chemical science which originated with Lavoisier—far-sighted men have been preaching the same story. But to the great majority in this country it has been as seed fallen by the wayside. Not so abroad. Thanks mainly to a clearer recognition of the part that science plays under the changing and progressive conditions of modern life, other nations have been more heedful: the seed with them fell upon more receptive soil. The catastrophe which has overtaken us has brought a rude awakening. ”

“ On this firm foundation of a competent theoretical knowledge of inorganic and organic chemistry, and of a thorough practical acquaintance with analysis, can alone the proper and higher education of the chemist, whether for purely scientific or for technical purposes, be based. It was upon this view Roscoe consistently acted. He steadily set his face against any practising of rough-and-ready works-methods until the student had learnt to appreciate the exacter processes. ”

“ In foreign parts we shall have nothing more to say, for our mercantile and naval fleet will be almost entirely destroyed. And as for money indemnity, even in case we conquered our opponents we cannot hope for heavy terms. We shall be glad after this blood-letting to embrace peace and to receive a portion of our war expenses. We should have to fight hard, and only through rivers of blood and by straining every nerve can we hope to keep our Empire intact. In the 1870 war against the French Empire in nearly every case our victories were bought with superior losses. ”

“ On each occasion the Duke of Devonshire was in the chair. At the College meeting Lord Frederick Cavendish, its President, gave a short account of its origin and aims. They were there, he said, to take care that they did not through ignorance waste the natural wealth of the county, or stay the further development of the natural qualities of its people. Wealth, however, was not much in itself but only as a means. Were they quite certain that in the great wealthy industrial North they had made the same progress in intellectual culture and refinement as they had in wealth? ”

“ They cannot get hold of our great industrial centres in any permanent way unless they raise them in self-respect and dignity by giving them an intellectual understanding of their vocations, and upon that understanding they may engraft as much polite literature as they can. A college of science, such as we are inaugurating to-day, is admirable in itself, but it is not complete. ”

“ We recall with pride in how large a measure your own labours have contributed to that growth—by your [178] work as an original investigator, by your literary productions, by your remarkable and almost unexampled success as a teacher, by the influence you have exerted in the organization and direction of societies concerned with Science, by your unceasing and well-directed efforts to secure for Science its due position in the scheme of National Education and the fuller recognition of its relations to the well-being of civilized communities. ”

“ In the British Press, with a few dishonourable and unimportant exceptions, the same thing may truthfully be said. The working classes have never been infected by anti-Germanism. Our commercial men, who are brought into intimate trading relations with the Germans, desire an Anglo-German understanding beyond all other aspirations in the sphere of foreign policy.
To believe that England now wishes, or is likely ever to wish, to go to war with Germany is a delusion in which only the insane can indulge. What on earth, may well be asked, can England gain by commencing war with Germany? ”

“ They saw clearly that as new forces and their application were brought to aid industrial production, human labour was relieved from much of its drudgery, and that the conceptions of the brain became more important than the sweat of the brow. Look to Switzerland, as an example in point. She has no coal, and no seaboard by which she can introduce it. Separated from other countries by ice-clad mountains, and hemmed in by hostile tariffs, she still becomes an industrial nation. What has led to her great industrial industry? ”

“ In its present more extended form it is offered to a wider public as the record of “a life in civic action worn,” and as a slight tribute from a grateful pupil, an attached co-worker, and a lifelong friend to the memory of a strenuous high-minded man, of large aims and generous impulses, who spent his abilities and energies unstintingly in promoting the welfare of science and the good of his kind. ”

“ What the College should aim at is to increase the science and intelligence of the community, and not to teach industries which they know a great deal better than the professors. The new College is only the local expression of a general movement for higher education. That movement has no doubt received its primary impulse from the conviction that our industrial population ought to be educated in the principles which underlie their occupations. ”

“ Bunsen, indeed, used to say that one new chemical fact, even an unimportant one, accurately determined, was worth a whole congress of discussion of matters of theory. [195] The truth was Roscoe, in chemistry as in other matters, was primarily a man of action: he was essentially an “experimentarian philosopher,” as Hobbes sneeringly dubbed the whole of the Fellows of the Royal Society. A fact absolutely ascertained was a definite and permanent addition to knowledge; hypotheses and theories were transitory and mutable; they have their day and cease to be. ”

“ Every town of 10,000 inhabitants has its technical school, supported by the municipalities. Look at Germany, which, though it does possess valuable raw materials, cultivates with assiduity the intellectual factor of production. In war and in peace her population is able to be used to the greatest advantage. Europe has scarcely yet recovered from its amazement at the sudden development of that empire, though it had been laying the foundation for its prosperity in the educational organization which she gave herself when the wars of Napoleon taught her the sources of her weakness. ”

“ Of all gratifying and far too flattering addresses which I am to-day receiving, none come so near my heart as that signed by three hundred of my former students.
What can a teacher value more than the sympathy and good opinion of his pupils, and this you have given me in full measure.
If I succeeded in forming a School of Chemistry at Owens, it was because, in the first place, I learnt from Bunsen how the foundations of such a school must be laid; secondly, because I fortunately secured the co-operation in the task of good men and true, like Schorlemmer and Dittmar ”

“ I, for my part, do not believe that Germany or its people are gone mad, or likely to become so, and therefore I do not believe that Germany will ever try to wrest from England her Oversea Dominions or to invade the New World with the millions of armed men necessary to establish a Fatherland in the West.
Much has lately been said about Germany being over-populated. Her people increase by nearly one million souls yearly. ”

“ But not numbers, nor weapons, nor careful preparations in times of peace are going to conquer in the war of the future. Esprit alone will turn the scale, and to quote the words of Frederick the Great, “The esprit of an army lies in its officers.” Those officers will have the best influence on their men who have the most hardened physique and who are trained each one according to his particular bent, and are able to do without comforts and have the natural gift of comradeship with the common soldier combined with strict discipline. ”

“ He was no less mindful of the claims of science: “imperfect indeed would be the civilization of that people who, devoted to the accumulation of wealth by industry, should, from an apprehension of expending their means on useless objects, refuse to encourage scientific inquiries.” ”