it comes into being, a country needs more and more this profounder
strength of intellectual and creative activity.

This country most of all, which was left so far behind in the production
of submarines, airships and aeroplanes, must be made to realise the
folly of its trust in established things. Each new thing we take up more
belatedly and reluctantly than its predecessor. The time is not far
distant when we shall be "caught" lagging unless we change all this.

We need a new arm to our service; we need it urgently, and we shall need
it more and more, and that arm is Research. We need to place inquiry and
experiment upon a new footing altogether, to enlist for them and
organise them, to secure the pick of our young chemists and physicists
and engineers, and to get them to work systematically upon the
anticipation and preparation of our future war equipment. We need a
service of invention to recover our lost lead in these matters.

And it is because I feel so keenly the want of such a service, and the
want of great sums of money for it, that I deplore the disposition to
waste millions upon the hasty creation of a universal service army and
upon excessive Dreadnoughting. I am convinced that we are spending upon
the things of yesterday the money that is sorely needed for the things
of to-morrow.

With our eyes averted obstinately from the future we are backing towards
disaster.


Sec. 3