BANQUET IN GUILDHALL 
77 
other nationalities, but who could nevertheless speak their language. In this manner 
a truly international atmosphere was introduced into the proceedings. 
The banquet ended at 10.30 p m, when a fleet of taxis arrived to carry away 
to their hotels a convivial company who seemed to have enjoyed themselves 
thoroughly. 
Sir Lindor Brown, in replying to the toast of the guests, said: 
If you take the trouble on an occasion of this sort to steal a glance at the notes 
prepared by the speaker for his brilliant, impromptu reply on behalf of the guests, you 
will usually find that the first line reads “Unworthiness of self”. I myself have omitted 
this line because the unworthiness is so self-evident that to underline it would embarass 
both you and me. My diffidence is somewhat further increased by the fact that you 
seem to have been afflicted this evening by a certain excess of Browns. I should like 
to assure you that your Chairman’s choice of me as a speaker is in no way due to 
nepotism or to any other family ties. Let me point out to our guests from overseas that 
the Browns of England are like the sands of the ocean and, like the Thomsens of 
Denmark, the Duponts of France and the d’Silvas of Portugal and Brazil, are not 
necessarily related to one another. We have one claim to distinction: we are heavily 
outnumbered in the London Telephone Directory by the Cohens and the Smiths. 
Now let me leave “Unworthiness of self” and proceed to my proper business. 
The era in which we live has often been called the era of the common man, or the 
age of steel, or the atomic age, or the age of the satellites, but I think that these are not 
particularly apt descriptions. This is par excellence the age of the international confer 
ence; ranging from the dizzy altitude of the Summit, through the foothills of photo- 
grammetry and the more pedestrian ways of the Boy Scouts jamborees, to the some 
what doubtful and miasmic swamps of international organising committees for organ 
ising international organizations and so, like the fleas, ad infinitum. It is a sobering 
thought that at any instant of time during the months of July, August and September, 
in the Northern Hemisphere, you should be able to find a group of men and women 
listening with imperfect comprehension to a lecture given in a tongue with which they 
or the lecturer, or both are imperfectly familiar, or alternatively and more happily 
listening, as you appear so kindly to be doing, to the lucubrations of an after dinner 
speaker. More happily indeed because your senses are lulled and the keen edges of 
your perceptions are I hope blunted and your tolerance increased by the wonderful 
hospitality we have enjoyed tonight. 
It has fallen to my lot as an officer of the Royal Society to be on some occasions 
the seeker and on others the potential donor of money, or what is euphemistically called 
financial support for travel to International Conferences of Pure and Applied Science. 
Some of the more hard-boiled members of Committees discussing the advisability of 
giving money to a hopeful applicant have been known to ask “Is this a serious con 
ference or is it a jaunt or a jamboree”. Some of my more misogynistic or soured 
colleagues have even been sufficiently ungallant to say “If wives are invited, it is not a 
serious conference”. The soured investigator might indeed be tempted to do a little 
quantitative research into the programme of this very congress. I find, on a cursory 
glance, that twentyone tours are available to objects of such immense Photogrammetric 
interest as Eton and Windsor, St. Albans Abbey and Cadby Hall. But I confess I hear 
the stern voice of duty calling when to-day after luncheon at the Anglers Hotel, Runny- 
mede, the ladies “returned by coach independently of the men” and the men, segregated 
not through prudence but through their urge for enlightenment, visited Overseas 
Surveys at Tolworth. 
Let us look with a more searching eye at the programme: it was possible for an