ABSTRACT
Scientific civil servants were underpaid, their status in the bureaucratic hierarchy was both inadequate and indeterminate, their organisation was chaotic. There were, in fact, before 1945, three important indices to the governmental attitude to the public significance of science. The first was the very small amount spent upon it, and the fact that, even of this small amount, by far the largest item was for research into the defence services. The second was the general failure of the politicians and of most of the heads of departments to gauge the speed and volume of scientific advance. The third was the comparative failure to urge upon schools and universities, on the one hand, and upon manufacturers, on the other, the urgency of making the significance of science understood in their curricula and in their process of production respectively.
