Notes

Abstract

THE French National Fête Day is July 14, but as the date fell on a Sunday this year it was celebrated with much enthusiasm in London on Friday and Saturday. Last year the sum of 200,000l. was raised on “France's Day” for the French Red Cross, and this year it is expected that a total of a quarter of a million pounds will have been reached. The festival was made particularly noteworthy by messages which were dispatched to France by many leading societies and institutions in Great Britain, among them being the following:— Royal Society: The Royal Society of London sends greetings to the French nation, and more especially to its scientific men. It recalls the intimate friendship which since their foundation has bound together the Académie des Sciences with its own body. Always united in their endeavour to promote the advance of science, they are now joined in their efforts to defend the cause of civilisation and freedom. British Association: Nineteen years ago the Dover meeting of the British Association was “so arranged that two great nations which had been, a century earlier grappling in a fierce struggle should in the persons of their men of science draw as near together as they could.” Another joint meeting with France was on the point of taking place when our high hopes of lasting general peace were so cruelly destroyed. But out of the destruction has arisen a far closer union of our two peoples, and an even brighter prospect of our future co-operation for the good of humanity and of science. Royal College of Surgeons of England: Brothers-in-arms, we greet you. Bound by ancient ties of blood and by the memories of many a gallant contest in the past, to-day we stand as one nation united in a sacred cause. We have before us a happy presage from the past. As the united efforts of Pasteur and Lister have laid low the tyranny of disease, so shall France and Britain conquer a tyranny still more remorseless. Our future brightens, and shall endow Gaul and Briton with a common birthright to remain a splendid heritage for all time. British Academy: To France, who has so often inspired and led civilisation in Europe: to France, who upholds the banner of intellectual freedom and unfettered thought; to France, who for nearly four years has endured brutal outrage and the violation of all decencies of humanitv and civilisation, the British Academy, in the name of British scholarship, sends on this great anniversary a renewed assurance of loyal fraternity and of unshaken determination to continue the conflict until liberty is secured and French soil delivered from the desecration of the invader.