The Alaska daily empire., 1916-07-26
teY FRANKLIN K. LANE) Secretary Of the Interior

No American need feel sense of dismay at the scientific prowesS or Europe in the present war as an in- dication that it's science is superior To ours. On the other hand, many or the most important weapons and pro cesses with which Europe is amaz' ing civilization are the products and developments of American invention.
 Take away from Europe today the things that trace to an Ameri- can origin, and the war would be fought along entirely different lines. Take American inventions away from Europe in time of peace, and European civilization would go back for generations.
 The rapid fire guns, Che armor. turrets and other essential features of the dreadnought, the submarine the flying machine-these are lew of the weapons of modern warfare supplied by American ingenuity. In our Civil War we were the first to use fixed balloons for military ob- .seryation. The most remarkable new appliance developed by the Eu- ropean war is the Lewis gun, an American invention This weapon shoot 600 times a minute without recoil. and yet 1t is so light that a man can carry It. It is used on aeroplanes.
 War Would Challenge Inventive
 Skill.
 There is no estimating what might be produced by our inventors should our country be plunged into war. Any hostile nation would at once challenge the inventive skill of the United States which has lain practically dormant so far as de- yising engines of war is concerned. since our Civil War. If necessity spurred us, we would devise greater and more deadly weapons and eX- plosiyes than the world ever knew, and greater than Europe has pro- duced daring this war. because we have a resource of inventive genius superior to that 0f any other peo- pie. We know this because when challenged by the competElon or peace our inventors have producSa more than those of any other two or three nations.
 According to a compilation of patents in the United States patent office of the worlds epoch-making inventions for the last fifty years; thirty-fye are American inventions; fourteen are the inventions of the rest of the world.
 The American scientiest may not have the plodding mind of the Ger man which is content Co eXperi- ment tirelessly for years and years in-deyeloping some abstruse pro- cess. but the American genius lies along mechanical lines Whatever the world wants done in making science serve human need, the Ann erican mind finds some way to do it. The American has more skill in applying science and more cur iosity of the sort that breeds inven- ton and discovery than any other nationality AS a people we look at things with fresh mind like that of Benjamin Franklin. whose activities ranged from drawing lightning on kite strings to starting universities and public libraries and developing modern paving, street lighting and cleansing systems.
 Could Exist If Isolated.
 As a result our inventiveness has been at work supplying the den- ciences revealed to us by the pres ent war. We are developing a dye industry Our industry is becoming complex; we are no longer content Co sell our vast resources as raw materials for other nations to per feet for human use. We are now finished manufacturers, and we are beginning to utilize our by-products which formerly went to waste. We have made the start toward produc- ing our own supply of nitrogen and potash, taking the nitrogen from the exhaustless air and the potash from the fumes of our smelters and kllns. With these additions, pro- vded for us by our science, we now produce every mineral we need even tungsten. Our farms sup ply what we can eat.
 Thanks largely to our scientific attainment, we can now close every port, stop all ingress and egress for a thousand years, and the United States would not lack a single thing needed for sustaining life and in- dustry No other nation can claim ac rnffeh