The weekly times-record. (Valley City, N.D.) 1912-1922, 1914-10-08
SCIENCE IN PEACE AND IN WAR.

It is inevitable that new discoveries
in physics and chemistry should be
promptly seized by military men and
applied in deyising death-dealing en-
gines of appalling power. But is it
necessarily inevitable that science
should be more Systematically applied
on the whole, to increasing the ettl'
cheney of high-powered guns than to
mitigating the evils of disease and to
better the general lot of humanity?
Ten years have passed since the
Russian-Japanese war was fought. In
that decade it is safe to say that more
costly experimental investigation has
been conducted to increase the EN-.
cacy Of guns and explosives than to
eradicate any one of a dozen human
diseases for which there Is at present
no cure. The art of war is as old as
the art of agriculture. But battleships
are so rapidly improved that in less
than five years the most powerful
dreadnought of her day becomes a
third rate fighting machine. Can as
much be said of harvesting machin-
cry?
Despite our Carnegie Institutions,
our Rockefeller Institutes, our Pasteur
Institutes, despite all the laboratory
work done by the universities of the
world, it is safe to say that more
money is spent to discover new and
more terrible ways of destroying hui
man life than to preserve it. Not so
long ago, the old battleship "Texas"
was taken to Hampton Roads and used
as target in order to test the de-
structive powers of our latest battle
ship guns. Before that Great Britain
had conducted similar experiments
with the Belle Isle" German officers
with an academic turn Of mind have
tested Roman catapults, old guns, and
the like in order to determine what
progress was made in artillery from
ancient days to Napoleon's time, thus
completing the history OF guns in
way that must cause the historians of
science to sigh with admiration and
envy. In 1883 and 1886 tests were
made during which Gruson turrets
were subjected to modern artillery
fire, experiments that cost a fortune,
not only in ammunition expended, but
in the actual destruction of test OBJ
jects. The legislatures of the world
must be implored to grant compare
lively small sums for conducting re-
search which will ultimately result
in lettering social conditions. A mere
pittance is granted to a man like
Luther Burbank, who performs the
miracle of creating plants more USE
full to mankind than the vegetation Of
nature; but a princes ransom is set
aside to onduct a scientific investiga-
ton into the effect of a new explosive
at range Of five niles. Advocates of
eugenics do their best to arouse the
public conscience to the need Of race
improvement, to the folly of permit
ing the insane, the epileptic, the So
cially unfit to reproduce their own
kind; but the armies of the world take
the flower of humanity and leave be-
hind only human dregs.
No doubt there is a good psycholo.
gical reason for this frightful anomaly.
But when this hugest of wars is over
when We have counted the dead It'd
wounded, when we have reckoned the
dreadful cost in money of the millions
Of rounds fired, when we have tolled
off the brilliant intellects that have
been blotted out and that could ill be
spared, and then reckon up what We
have left in money and human mater
ial to continue the constructive work,
so unnecessarily interrupted, will the
anomaly be perpetuated? Will Reich
stays, congresses, and parliaments
grudgingly allot $4,000 to discover
the cause Of some new mysterious
wheat blight and 100000 to discover
a better kind Of bomb that may be
dropped from a dirigible airship?
THE FATHERLAND.