Memoirs : with a full account of the great malaria problem and its solution / by Ronald Ross.

  • Ronald Ross
Date:
1923
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Memoirs : with a full account of the great malaria problem and its solution / by Ronald Ross. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    co-workers, Lord and Lady Derby, the Lord Mayor, Mr. Winston Churchill, Colonel Seely, shop-keepers, hotel-keepers, servants, and even vacuum-theorists. But the inevitable tragedy followed—or rather did not follow. I had arranged to take Mr. Masefield and Dr. Carnegie Brown for a short holiday to Capel Curig in my motor-car. Masefield wished me to join him in writing a great drama there; but I was too busy answering all the congratulations. Thus the world lost a masterpiece indeed ! I must now mention a holiday amusement of mine which interested several friends, especially Sir William Osier. I had long studied phonetics in connection with the subject of euphony of verse, but found the spelling employed in that science to be if possible uglier than that used by spelling-reformers or by the public. So I set myself the following pretty problem_ what is the most beautiful way of rendering English correctly by means of the existing alphabet only ? A number of factors, often overlooked by reformers, must be considered ; and the test is English verse—which becomes ridiculous at once with a bad scheme. After examining I think every scheme which has been or may be suggested, I concluded that there is no perfect one possible, but that there are half a dozen good ones. Unfortunately these are so equal in value that it is impossible to judge which is the best ! But in 1911 Messrs. C. Tinling of Liverpool put ten of my poems set in one of these schemes into beautiful type [115], under the name Lijra Modulata (fifty copies without preface or explanation) ; and I sent copies in lieu of Christmas cards to some of my amazed friends. Several asked me what language it was, and one suggested Esperanto. Since then I have preferred another scheme, which I call Musaic Spelling ; and I still hope to horrify the world some day with a second edition of Lyra Modulata (see also Science Progress vol. viii, 1913-14, page 367). Another holiday task was the following. In 1903 my brother, now Major-General Charles Ross, C.B., D.S.O., published a book called Representative Government and War (Hutchinson, London), which was one of the first books to warn us of the German danger. Of course it was angrily denounced by manv newspapers ; but I believe it helped Lord Roberts and the National Service League in their appeal for an adequate army —which, if the politicians had listened to it, would probably have prevented the Great War. I joined the League, and thought to help it by expressing the same doctrine in the form ot a satire called The Setting Sun, This was to be anonymous,