Another remarkable assertion from the same informant made a lasting impression. According to him, united Germany would not have endured very long, if it had not been for the rapid rise of the German steel industry and of other German industries which followed in its wake. The organization of Germany as an economic unit secured the organization of Germany as a political unit. He summed it up by saying that Bismarck and Moltke had raised the structure of the German Empire, but that Gilchrist Thomas had built a steel ring around it which prevented it from falling to pieces. He added then a corollary to this startling statement, and I repeat it here in the form of a question. If the scientific research of a young clerk in a London police court, who studied chemistry in a London evening school, could do so much for Germany, how much can one reasonably expect from the great research laboratories of the German universities and technical schools? This, according to my informant, had become a national question in Germany. This information reminded me that the great movement in Great Britain and in the United States for higher scientific research was also present in Germany, but in a much more advanced form. My informant called my attention to Werner von Siemens’s pioneer work in this German movement. Ernst Werner von Siemens was at that time, next to Helmholtz, the most admired scientist in the German Empire. He was the head of a great electrical plant in the heart of Berlin, and was known everywhere to possess a splendid combination of talents in abstract science and engineering. Men of that type were quite rare in those days, and they are very rare even to-day. I heard a great deal about him in a course of lectures on electrical engineering which I attended at the Polytechnic School of Berlin. I saw him several times, when he called at the Physical Institute on his friend and relative by marriage, Excellenz von Helmholtz. His remarkable appearance made a strong impression upon me, and I longed to see his great plant, where all kinds of electrical things were made, from the finest electrical precision instruments to the largest types of dynamos and motors, many of them his own inventions. As a sign of special favor Helmholtz gave me a note of introduction to his distinguished friend, who received me graciously and gave me to an official who took me around the great electrical plant, the first that I had ever seen. The impression which it made upon my mind was certainly wonderful, but not more wonderful than the impression which the great personality of Siemens had made upon me. The more I learned about him the more I became convinced that no industrial organization ever had a presiding genius of greater attainments than Siemens. His attitude toward abstract science and its relation to the industries is best described by mentioning here a fact which is of great significance in the history of physical science. He