The British Association in War Time

Abstract

SINCE the Dundee meeting of the British Association was brought to an untimely end, the office at Burlington House, London, has been re-opened for the routine work which always follows upon the annual meeting, and a certain amount of official business is also being carried on at Down House, where the rooms normally open to the public are closed and dismantled, and Charles Darwin's former dining-room serves the valuable if regrettable purpose of an office-refuge. The first number of the new quarterly report, The Advancement of Science, will be produced, all being well, probably rather later than the announced date at the end of October, and in smaller bulk than was contemplated. As to its future, and, for that matter, the future of the Association's work generally, obviously nothing definite can be stated. Preparations for the intended meeting next year in Newcastle-upon-Tyne have been suspended, by agreement with the authorities there. It is an unhappy coincidence that the last meeting in that city was the last to be held during the last war, in 1916. Conditions are so far different now that it is impossible to estimate whether any sort of meeting could or should be held next year, whether in Newcastle or anywhere else. Yet it is permissible to dream of the possibility of adapting the Association's very flexible constitution to a meeting of four days or so, with science in war time as the leading theme, with sessions in three or four telescoped sections—physical, biological, anthropological, and economic, for example—and of course the Division for the Social and Economic Relations of Science. No doubt before anything of this sort could be undertaken there would be need of careful and wide inquiry as to the amount of support which might be forthcoming for such an effort. But if this were favourable, such a meeting could be arranged at relatively short notice. “The minor humours of war” may be offered in advance as one subject on the anthropological side.