8197955822

tous les oeuvres, le Prof. Casagrande, de la celebre universite d’Harvard. Et je pense que dans sa retraite, notre president d’honneur, le Prof. Terzaghi en sera particulierement heureux. Nous sommes ainsi tout a fait rassures de la haute tenue de notre association, et nous adressons au president de demain Texpression de notre joie, en voyant son merite exceptionnel reconnu par votre Comite executif.

Enfin, nos remerciements vont a tous les membres dece Comite qui ont si bien travaille pendant la periode ecoulee, et nous souhaitons la bienvenue aux nouvelles personnalites.

Nos hommages vont vers les nombreuses dames qui ont eu le courage d’accepter les fatigues du Congres, a vous tous, a vous toutes nous adressons l’expression de notre vive amitie; nous formons les voeux de vous retrouver avec vos compagnes dans quatre ans, a Montreal, dans ce merveilleux Canada, pays de labeur et d’equilibre.

Le President : La parole est a M. le President Skempton :

M. A.W. Skempton : I would like first to thank Mr Caquot for the extremely kind words he has spoken. I was very amused by his description of one of my pursuits, namely, porę pressure in soil, as a spherical tensor. I had not thought of it in this way, but he is, of course, perfectly exact in his description.

Everyone will agree, I am surę, that this Conference has been a great success and, as Mr Caquot has just thanked those organisations and individuals who have madę it possible to hołd the Conference I wish now to thank him and his organising committee for having brought the Conference to life. It is not sufficient to provide funds and administrative help : behind this there must be a great source of energy and enthusiasm, and this has been provided by Prof. Caquot and his colleagues. They have combined to make the Conference an enjoyable one, to make our stay in Paris a memorable occasion both scientifically and socially, and in the latter aspect I think all of you would wish me to mention especially the highly remarkable evening which we spent at Versailles last night.

I may say that the pleasure of this evening was very much enhanced for me by the fact that I had on one side Mr Caquot and on the other side Mr Cahen-Salvador. Mr Cahen-Salvador speaks English quite perfectly, and so I was enabled to enjoy the earlier part of my dinner. After three, or possibly four, glasses of winę I discovered that my French had improved sufficiently to enjoy a most lively conversation with Mr Caquot. This for me was almost the high point of the whole Conference. Certainly one week ago I would not have thought this possible.

Now with the name of Mr Caquot I would like to asso-ciate particularly those of Mr Buisson and Mr Kerisel, both of whom have done most valuable work on the organising committee, and Mr Mayer and Mr Habib, who have been in charge of the technical discussions. Their innovation of the panel system has, I think, been a great success and we owe a great deal to them for this fruitful departure from precedent. I should be rather surprised if Mr Legget and his Canadian colleagues did not follow the example set here in this connection.

Mr Habib has also been extremely busy, together with his colleague Mr Peltier, in acting as Editor for the volumes of the Proceedings. These volumes, as you will already know, are beautifully produced and, as far as I have had time to tell, they are very accurately done from the point of view of printing. The amount of work involved in editing 270 papers submitted by authors the majority of whom were not writing in their native language, the task of editing and correcting them and seeing them through the press in due time, is a great achievement, and we are greatly indebted to these two gentlemen for their efforts.

Another group of individuals to whom we are extremely indebted are the General Reporters. I was one myself at the Zurich Conference and I know that even in those days, when the number of papers was comparatively smali, my task appeared to be very heavy. What it must have been like, for example, for Prof. Meyerhof, who was General Reporter of Session I with something of the order of 70 papers to deal with, is almost beyond comprehension : to read these papers, study them, digest them, produce a report and organise a panel discussion on the papers and points arising from them must have been a tremendous task. I only mention him, but there have been six others, all of whom have done most considerable work in this connection, and I hope they will not think I am merely uttering a platitude when I say that we are extreniely grateful to them.

I would also like to say, on behalf of my wife and all the other ladies, how much they have appreciated the efforts madę on their behalf, and in this connection I think they would like me to thank especially Mme Mayer for her help.

Now however enthusiastic the individuals may be, and however prepared they may be to put in a great deal of work, much of this would be to little avail were it not co-ordinated and directed towards useful ends; and, of course, behind the whole organisation there has been General Caminade. Four years ago, when I had just been elected President, the decision was madę to hołd the next meeting in Paris, and from the start I was reasonably certain that our French colleagues would do a marvellous job. But I am an engineer, and I felt it very necessary to be able to obtain at least a qualitative estimate of the factor of safety involved in this operation. Consequently I came over to Paris — I think it was early in 1959 — to see how things were going, because it was just about time that some fairly clear-cut decisions were being madę, and that Bulletin No 1 was on its way to being prepared.

I had a very pleasant day or two here. I met the organising committee and I met General Caminade, whom I found to be in command of a smali but highly effective army of workers, and from that moment I had no doubts at all; and that impression has been amply confirmed in the present week.

When I visited Paris I was delighted to hear that it was very much hoped (and indeed Mr Mayer was quite confidcnt) that we should be able to hołd our meeting in this building, the UNESCO building. I took the opportunity of having a look at it — it was then only very recently completed — and I thought it was going to be quite cxccllent, and I think you will agree that this very modern structure has acted as a stimulus. It certainly has to me. Also the smali rooms in the sous-sol havc been very useful. First of all they have provided offices for hardworking people like Mr Banister and Mr Caquot and Mr Mayer and other people (and perhaps I might also say myself) and in addition there have been a number of rooms available for “ private ” meetings, and I am extremely glad to see that a number of such meetings have taken place. For example Prof. Sokolovski has given an extremely valuable seminar on some aspects of plastic theory, which was attended by a large number of people.

Another meeting took place between various people who are intensively concerned with very difficult problems con-cerning partially saturated soils — such people as Prof. Jennings, Dr Bishop and Dr Aitchison. They held a smali meeting between themselves, which was most fruitful — the sort of thing, of course, which is almost impossible to arrange except unofficially.

But in a Conference of this kind we first think of the Proceedings, this great work of Mr Peltier and Mr Habib. These papers provide a permanent source of information which we will go on reading probably for the rest of our lives. I, for example, still quite frequently refer to papers which were published in the first Conference, in 1936. Many papers in that Conference are still of great value. I have heard people say “ Oh, the Conference Proceedings — I

49