New Britain herald., 1917-12-08
SECRETARY LANE
 MAKES HIS REPORT
Possessing Resources Alone Does
 Not End Wars, He Says

Lane, in characteristicallv striking phrases portrays the transition of a peaceful democracy into a nation or gan1zed for war. Possession of re- | sources alone he warns the country ooes not win wars and recountine the enormous progress made on every mana declares the physical stores of l the United States are almost com- ple'e1v at /command of the worlds needs.
 What can you do to serve mel" l quotes the secretary. "To that oues- ton each individual and each depart ment of the government must give answer. The answer of this depart ment Is that it has put every agency and activity which 1t has at the serv- Ice or those departments more di- rectly concerned with war making. Our men of scientific knowledge- metallurg1sts, chemists, engineers, to- pographers-have found new work at their hands. The homesteaders and the miners on the public lands have been released from their obligations if they go into the army or show themselves to be of greater service off their lands than on them. The Reclamation Service on & million and quarter acres of irrigated lands and the Indians on a hundred reservations joined in the campaign for more meat and more wheat. The Patent Office has been searched for new devices that could be brought into use to kill the submarine or limit it's destruc- tiveness, for the plans of heretofore unused lethal weapons and for the formulae of improved or unknown sources of power. Before war ac- tually came this department had com piled the data which showed the pow CT of the nation in mineral and chem lcal resources, our possible needs, and how they could be met at home or where abroad. Prepared lists of those men who had special knowledge or were of skill along the lines of our own activities enabled us to expand as the call was made.
 Under the imperative mandate of war that all things shall become sub ject to new classification according to their usefulness in carrying on the nations struggle. certain phases of our work have fallen into the back ground, while others have been brought into the high light of na- tional importance.
 But the making of war today is far more than a test of primal resources; it tests the full powers of the na- ton in every resource and capacity and especially along lines of scientific knowledge. And here again we find that the ways of peace have given ] something in the way of preparation ! for war. The scientific bureaus of 1 the government found themselves con- verted over night into adjuncts and auxilaries in the great international
  themselves as modestly useful only i'll the discovering and revealing of new sources of material strength found that their years of experience in the mountains and on the desert, in labor atories and in mines, called them at once into the thick of the European struggle.
 war forces nation to an inten- sive study of what 1t can do. Thought and work-these are the answers to the problems of material insufaciency. We of America have had no little to boast of through the quick century of our march across continent. And without doubt our ability to stand alone depending on ourselves for the things that make modern industrial nation. is something of which we may be proud, not so much because we have this land as because we have found out its worth and made it ours by putting 1t to use. But we soon realize when thrown into such g. l struggle as this war how far removed from entire independence we are. "A democracy making war is never 1 an agreeable sight, for it Is not in it's normal line of life. And those who sheer or jeer because 1t does not play 1 the game as we'll as might be, pay an unconscious compliment to the merits of free institutions. It takes time to accustom men to the short. hard words of command, and to the sur- render of personal Judgment. It Is l not easy, either for a nation to turn its back upon the conception of work where justice works out its ends by quiet processes, and in its 1 stand acome to the stern belief that l the ultimate court Is a battlefield. So 1 if there is wrenching and side-slip- ping and confusion there should be no surprise. The surprise to me has 1 been with what comparative ease the ] transition has been made, and how much unconscious preparation for the new work had been already made
 Now that our problem is to pro- duce more than ever before 1t is clear ly to be seen that the physical re- sources or the U Hll0O SCAteS are today almost completely at the command of
 the worlds needs. If, indeed, for the
 past forty years the nation has been
 planning to make war upon it's neigh
 bors, and to seize the continent for it.
 self, what more would have been done
 to make our resources available for
 such an adventure. This is, perhaps,
 the hardest test to which the prob
 lem of our internal development
 could be put. Yet the answer must
 be that very little more could have
 been done or would have been done by
 a people necessarily doing so much.