With this issue of the Journal of Glaciology the British Glaciological Society opens its postwar activities. To this publication we tie all those hopes of successful work in the service of science that are combined with peace and progress after the devastation of the war.
The British Glaciological Society under its leader, Mr. G. Seligman, has already contributed to the development of our knowledge of snow, ice and glaciers with successful researches. I need here only refer to the significant investigations on the Jungfraujoch in 1937 and 1938. We have consequently every reason to expect that in the future the Society will also successfully accomplish its programme.
As science becomes more and more specialized each branch comes to depend more and more on collaboration with others. In order to promote such collaboration and also to stimulate the interest in specialized research, a Society is required. The British Glaciological Society is the only Society in the world which safeguards our knowledge of snow, ice and glaciers and its existence is therefore a great satisfaction to all who realize the necessity for increased knowledge of these subjects. It is also necessary that such a Society should be able to publish in a specific organ the results of the studies of its members and give reviews of those of others. We welcome this first issue of the Journal of Glaciology with gratitude and hope that this serial publication will in future continue in the form most suitable for its aims.
It is well known that the more we learn the more remains to be discovered. As a science glaciology is young, even though snow, ice and glaciers have been noticed for centuries, and scattered contributions to a knowledge of them have been made, but they have been remarkably late in becoming the subject of systematic investigation. And this in spite of the fact that snow and ice are of great practical importance in northern countries. If we date the beginning of modern Arctic research back to the middle of last century, five decades passed before the drift ice and the glaciers, covering the main part of the area, were more generally noticed by science. In the Antarctic it is only of late years that we have received some isolated information about the structure and physical properties of its ice cover. We are as yet only on the threshold of the world of ice in the Antarctic that conceals the answer to questions of the greatest importance to the understanding of physical-geographical conditions both at the present time and during the Ice Age.
The glaciers at all latitudes round the earth are of no less interest. As yet we know very little about the meteorological reasons for their existence and variations in size, about their structure, movement and other features. Before these questions are satisfactorily settled, the glaciers cannot be utilized as the climatographical registrars they really are. The glaciers and their variations in size provide the only, or at least the most reliable, evidence of the history of climate. About their morphological activity many speculations have been made and more indeed has been written than is justified while we know so little about the glaciers themselves and their mechanical and dynamic actions.
The tasks confronting us are immense and various and only two have been mentioned here. To serve its aims glaciology must in future be founded in the first place on physics, mechanics, crystallography and meteorology and must belong to the complex of sciences that in certain countries go by the name of geophysics.
It is my confident expectation that the British Glaciological Society will promote this development in a successful manner and with its publications will further liaison and collaboration, not only among British scientists but between those of other countries, an essential prerequisite in the successful pursuit of any branch of science.
