Ashland tidings. [volume] (Ashland, Or.) 1876-1919, 1914-10-05
IN PEACE AND IN WAR.


II is inevitable that new discover
les in physics and chemistry should
be promptly seized by military men
and applied in devising death-deal-
ing engines of appalling power. But
is il necessarily inevitable that sci
snce should be more systematically
applied. on the whole, to increasing
the efficiency of high-powered guns
than to mitigating the evils of disease
and TO better the general lot of hu-
manity?
Ten years have passed since the
Russian-Japanese war was fought.
In that decade it is safe to say that
more costly experimental investiga-
ton has been conducted to increase
the efficacy of guns and explosives
than TO eradicate any one of 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 be-
comes a third rate fighting machine.
Can as much be said of harvesting
machinery?
DESPITE our Carnegie institutions,
our Rockefeller institutes, our Pas
teur institutes, despite all the labora-
tory 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 hu-
man life than to preserve it. Not
so long ago the old battleship Texas
was taken to Hampton Roads and
used as a target in order to test the
destructive powers of our latest bat
tleship guns. Before that Great
Britain had conducted similar expert
ments 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 Ma
poleon's time, thus completing the
history of guns in a way that must
cause the historians of science to sign
with admiration and envy. In 1888
and 1886 tests were made during
which Gruson turrets were subjected
to modern artillery fire, experiments
that cost a fortune, not only in am
munition expended, but in the actual
islatures of the world must be i'm
plored TO grant comparatively small
sums for conducting research which
will ultimately result in bettering
social conditions. A mere pittance
is granted to a man like Luther Bur-
bank, who performs the miracle of
creating plants more useful to man
kind than the vegetation of nature;
but a princes ransom is set aside to
conduct a scientific investigation into
the effect of new explosive at a
range of five miles. Advocates OF
eugenics do their best to arouse the
public conscience to the need of race
improvement, to the folly of permit.
ting the insane, the epileptic, the so.
cially unfit to reproduce their own
kind; but the armies of the world
take the flower of humanity ant
leave behind only human dregs.
No doubt there is a good psyche
logical reason for this frightfu
anomaly. But when this hugest o.
wars is over, when we have counted
the dead and wounded. when we have
reckoned the dreadful cost in none!
of the millions of rounds fired. wheT
we have tolled off the brilliant intel
lects that have been blotted out anC
that could i'll be spared. and ther
reckon up what we have left il
money and human material to con
tinue the constructive work so un
/ necessarily interrupted, will th'
anomaly be perpetuated? Will reich
stays. congresses and parliament
grudgingly allot $4,000 to discover
the cause OF some new mysterious
wheat blight and 100000 to discov
er a better kind OF bomb that ma!
be dropped from a dirigible airship,