HL Deb 22 March 1916 vol 21 cc449-57

LORD GRIMTHORPE had the following Question on the Paper—

To ask His Majesty's Government whether the studies and investigations of the Inventions Committee have resulted in the discovery of any inventions that can be utilised to the advantage of this country during the course of the war.

The noble Lord said: My Lords, I have purposely framed this Question somewhat broadly, so as to leave the Government full room to say as much or as little as they like in reply. If, as I hope, the answer is in the affirmative, I do not, of course, ask the Government to specify exactly the kind or character of the inventions which they expect to utilise during the war. The Inventions Committee, under Lord Fisher, has been sitting now for a great many months, and no announcement has been made as to the result of its labours. During this period the brains of inventors have no doubt been in an incessant state of eruption, and countless plans and projects must have been submitted for consideration. The public take a very keen interest in this matter, and it would be a satisfaction to them to be informed that the labours of this Committee have not been in vain, and that something has been unearthed which may be of practical utility.

Up to the present time, as far as he is able to judge, the man in the street does not see that anything on sea or land or in the air has been discovered which has had or is having any practical effect upon the operations of the war. We all know that in Germany inventors are encouraged and invited to apply all their mental resources to the service of the State; and we have seen the results of that. In the case of a promising invention money is found for tests and experiments, and every assistance is given to the inventor. The German Government does all it can to secure the full fruition and advantage of any scientific and technical discovery which may be able to be obtained. Now, can the same be said of our Government? Undoubtedly in the case of Great Britain, as we have seen recently from various letters to the newspapers from men of science, it appears that scientific discovery, science in general, has been treated with neglect and indifference. Several instances of it might be given. I read with great interest the other day in a leading periodical of the epoch-making discoveries of Lord Lister with regard to the antiseptic treatment of wounds, discoveries which have been the means of saving thousands and thousands of lives. Nothing could be more valuable. They are among the greatest of the discoveries of the nineteenth century. Yet for years those discoveries were derided and pooh-poohed in this country, and were not put into practice here until they had been welcomed in the principal countries of the Continent.

There is another matter, referring to a War Office invention. Just before the war a certain colonel—who shall be nameless—presented a scheme to the War Office of a new invention. They examined it very closely. They did not say it was not practicable or would not be thoroughly effective, but—I read the words myself—that they "could not consider this invention because, if adopted, it would involve a revision of the established methods of attack." It may be said that since the war we have changed all that, and that we now approach inventors in a different spirit and with a more open frame of mind. But do we? If I am to judge from the amount of correspondence I have received and the complaints that have been made, I am not quite sure of it. I am fully aware that many inventors are mere cranks, and that nine out of ten, perhaps ninety-nine out of a hundred, inventions are perfectly worthless. But what we wish to know is, If the tenth or the hundredth invention is not worthless, has it been adopted and is it likely to be put into the service of the State? I do not wish to labour this point, but I confess that I am not quite sure that the suggestions of inventors are received in that spirit which is necessary in such times as these. A little time ago I listened to a lecture from Professor Bone, one of the most distinguished and enlightened chemists in this country, who is in charge of the laboratory at South Kensington. In an address delivered before the Chemical Society he referred to the fact that he had made repeated offers to the Government to place his staff and works at their disposal in order to increase by 25 per cent. the output of an ingredient in the manufacture of munitions which is absolutely essential and of which there is a danger of our running short. Professor Bone said that those offers to the Government, even though made through influential persons, had been so far entirely disregarded.

The other day we heard from Lord Montagu that the predominance in the air which was ours at the beginning of the war was for the time being lost. Why was this? Because Germany has gone faster ahead than we have in the discovery of new and better aeroplanes. I should like to ask the Government this question. It has been rumoured—I say "rumoured" because I have no means of testing the statement—that the Fokker, the wonderful new aeroplane now employed by the Germans with so much effect, was offered to but refused by our Government before it was offered to Germany. I cannot believe that to be true, and if untrue it is most desirable that the Government should say so. These and other instances do suggest that even under the pressure of the war we are not yet so wide awake as we might be to the supreme value of brain power. The old theory of "muddling through" has been scotched—thank goodness!—but not yet killed, in spite of the fact that it has produced many striking and painful instances of how not to do a thing and has cost us so dear in men, money, and reputation.

Another complaint made by inventors—it may or may not be reasonable—is that they are treated with scant courtesy and consideration. They say that they are employing their brains in the service of the country, that they have spent in many cases large sums of money upon experimenting with their inventions, but that when they present the inventions to the Committee they are treated in such a way as makes them think that those who offer inventions are regarded as troublesome and irresponsible persons who ought to be snubbed for their pains. That is not the way to treat them, although I admit that in some cases inventors have such a high opinion of their inventions that they are not ready to accept an answer in the negative. But they have a complaint of a more serious nature. They say that there is a lack of cohesion in dealing with inventions, that when their inventions have been accepted they do not know what to do because there does not seem to be any satisfactory machinery or organisation, that they are sent from pillar to post, from one Department to another, and, finally, in many cases they cannot find that there is proper machinery in existence for utilising inventions as speedily as possible even after they have been approved by the Committee.

There is another question I should like to ask the Government, although it is not of much importance. Are they able to say what number of the inventions which have been adopted represents the work of the general body of inventors and what number represents the work of inventors connected with Woolwich, Portsmouth, or the Royal College of Science or other Government institutions? For here, again, is another suspicion, in which I place no credence myself. It has been said that inventions are not always judged strictly on their merits but that the personality, credentials, and so on, of inventors are allowed to weigh in the scale. I think the Government will have no difficulty in dispelling that impression, and if they can do so in a positive manner it will do good.

I do not think it can be said that in asking for a general statement on this subject I am seeking information which it is improper or dangerous to furnish, because a little time ago the French Minister for Education issued to the Budget Committee a statement of the details of the work done by the Inventions Committee in France. Some of those details were published, and I was glad to read in an extract from that publication in France that a large number of suggestions, many of them of great value, had been received which dealt with all branches of the war, especially with the subject of anti-aircraft gunnery. This is comforting news, as I assume that anything of great value which has been discovered in France will be placed at our disposal. I hope, however, that English inventive genius has not lagged behind, and that it, too, has been able to suggest inventions of considerable value. No doubt in our weapons of defence and attack many improvements have been made. That cannot be denied for a moment, but I invite the Government to say whether we have gone beyond that, and whether anything of first-rate importance has been discovered which is likely materially to help us in our efforts to terminate the war successfully at an early date.

THE LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL (THE MARQUESS OF CREWE)

My Lords, my noble friend has, I think, shown full discretion in the manner in which he has enforced his Question. He has entirely realised that there is a great deal that cannot be said on this subject, and he has not pressed us to say it; but I will give him such information as I can on the subject, which, we all agree, is of absorbing interest to the public generally. As my noble friend knows, there are two bodies concerned with this question. There is the Munitions Inventions Department and also the body to which my noble friend particularly alluded, the Board of Inventions and Research, the headquarters of which are at the Admiralty and which is presided over by Lord Fisher. Those bodies work in close concert and co-operation. The meetings of each and their Committees are regularly attended by representatives of the other, and I think it may be fairly claimed that there is no loss of power or overlapping owing to the fact that there are nominally, at any rate, two bodies and not only one.

The Board of Inventions and Research is a highly competent body, comprising, I think, in its membership no fewer than fourteen Fellows of the Royal Society, including the very distinguished President of that body. The Board and the other body have received—I will speak of them now as though they were one—a very large number of suggestions and statements of inventions. By now I fancy that something like from 14,000 to 15,000 suggestions of different kinds have been received. I think I can venture to say quite categorically, although perhaps it is hardly safe to do so without having personally examined the 14,000 or 15,000 inventions, that there is no colour whatever for the suggestion that those which proceed from what may be called official sources obtain any kind of preference over those which come from sources not so publicly known. The real answer to any supposition of that kind consists in the character and standing of the people who examine the proposals that are made, and I am glad to have the opportunity of saying as much as I have on this particular complaint.

My noble friend was quite right in his statement that a vast proportion of these proposals and suggestions are not of any very great value. A number of them are intrinsically useless. There will always be a certain, indeed a considerable, proportion of suggestions of that kind which are more worthy of the Island of Laputa than the country in which we live. But there is a quite definite fraction—I am sure my noble friend will not expect me to name any figures in this connection—

LORD GRIMTHORPE

No.

THE MARQUESS OF CREWE

There is a quite definite proportion which have been accepted and examined, and in a substantial number of cases have been found to be distinctly useful. A great many have been capable of development by the experts who are actively serving the Government. Some are probably rather crude and inchoate, but they contain some sort of novel suggestion on which it is possible for a skilled man to improve. There have been some other cases, perhaps not very numerous, in which the invention itself has been found applicable to our needs at first. A very large number, as noble Lords would suppose, of those submissions are connected with the more modern developments of warfare, a great many with aircraft, and also with the subject which my noble friend mentioned as having been dealt with in France, various anti-aircraft expedients. Those have been very numerous. There have also been a great many suggestions connected with submarines and projects of all kinds for meeting and defeating submarines; a great many connected with explosives, with different kinds of gases, and projectiles of all sorts; a great many connected with trench warfare generally in all its strange and unexpected developments. There have also been a number concerned with transport and engines of different kinds, including several dealing with the not very hopeful possibility of perpetual motion.

Of the suggestions that are received a certain proportion, of course, are put aside at once, but a large number are carefully tested, and, as I have said, some have been found either to be of immediate use or easily adaptable to such use. The models that are sent in by inventors are in all cases returned; drawings as a rule are not returned, for reasons which would take too long to explain, but I think would be generally regarded as reasonable and adequate. It would be altogether unfair to conclude that any inventor receives discouragement at the hands of these Committees. Inventors are, as my noble friend I think himself indicated, something of a genus irritabile, and I have no doubt there are some who consider that their discoveries, offering vast and almost incredible prospects of use to the country, have been ruthlessly cast aside owing to the unhappy jealousy of the Fellows of the Royal Society and others who have considered them. But what I think is even more important than the reception of inventions and discoveries—though clearly they ought to be thoroughly examined and tested, because if even only one in a thousand turns out to be really practically useful it ought not to be discarded—is the regular carrying out of research by those most competent to undertake it at the places which are most suitable. It is safe, I believe, to say that all our best scientific minds in the country are now being devoted to research. It has been recognised nised that there have been various branches of industry, including the production of some indispensable commodities, in which we have fallen sadly behind, and which have been allowed to fall into the hands of our enemies. That balance, so far as possible, is now being redressed. A vast amount of work is now being done at all the principal chemical and physical laboratories in research and experiment. A considerable part of that harvest cannot be reaped until the war is over, but it will be then reaped to the great advantage of the country in a hundred methods of which the country as a whole is, I dare say, hardly now cognisant.

My noble friend said that there are some signs of discontent in the scientific world with the general position of the country in relation to science. That is quite true. My noble friend alluded to a letter to The Times written at the end of January and signed by a large body of the most eminent men of science in the country. The particular complaint contained in that letter is one of undoubted importance, though it only forms a small part of the whole subject of scientific education. That letter dealt specifically with the fact that examinations for admission to the Civil Service in practice put science aside almost altogether, and that in fact it was the literary student, classical or other, who in practice possessed the monopoly of entrance to the Civil Service. That is an important fact, as I have said, and it is one which undoubtedly merits close examination. My noble friend mentioned two specific instances, on which I am not particularly informed, and therefore I will not attempt to give him a definite answer. The first was with regard to the South Kensington Chemical Laboratory and an offer to supply materials.

LORD GRIMTHORPE

Organisation and superintendence of the chemical work, not necessarily at South Kensington but all over the country.

THE MARQUESS OF CREWE

I did not quite apprehend what my noble friend said, but I am not specially informed on the matter mentioned by Professor Bone on that occasion. Therefore I will not attempt to answer. Also I am not actually acquainted with the facts about the Fokker aeroplane, and as to how far the story is true that that type of Dutch aeroplane was offered to our authorities here. But my noble friend will, I think, agree that although that machine has played a remarkable part in a certain type of attack or defence by the German troops at the Front, its supremacy has been somewhat overstated in the Press. It may have been talked of in terms too exalted for its merits, although no doubt within the limits of its powers it is a remarkable and an exceedingly effective machine. I think I need not detain the House longer. I should have been glad if I could have been more specific in reply to my noble friend, but I think he has fairly understood the limits which are of necessity imposed on a Minister in replying to the Question which he has put.

LORD GRIMTHORPE

I thank my noble friend for his very interesting answer, which I am sure will be satisfactory to the country.