The Washington times., 1918-08-25

FEVER has civilized man, proud Of
M his achievements and confident in
his continually developing power, re-
ceived such savage and unanswerable re-
minder of his absolute subsection to the
vagaries of natural forces as that which
came to US like an arrogant slap in the
face last Winter. The same catastrophe
will happen to us again unless We make
provisions against it.
At the great crisis in the worlds his
tory, when we needed to use all our pow.
ers and capacities at their maximum of
efficiency, we found ourselves held in the
merciless grip of srost-ships tied up.
railroads blocked, factories chokeds high
ways made impossible, rivers and harbors
choked, reservoirs frozen, pipes and con-
duits split by ice, cities buried IN snow
banks, communications broken, fleets and
armies arrested industries paralyZed, and
q whole nation shivering with cold and
threatened with hunger
We fight the cold by burning wood and
coal But what will we dc when the wood
and coal are exhausted2 The situation
that will then confront MS is vividly and
brutally presented by the terrible dilemma
in which the simple arrest of the distri-
button of coal threw our industries and
our home life, to say nothing of our ma
tional affairs. If there we're no coal
whatever to distribute, even an ordinary
Winter would suffice 10 reduce us 10
similar condition. and there would be no
escape from it at the end OF a few weeks
no
freeze-out every Winter except inside the
the tropics.
Just as he first burned up practically
his whole supply of wood, so now civilized
man-the child of tempered Winters
burning M his whole supply of coal. And
when that is gone he knows not where to
90 for something to take its place But
he must find or invent that something, or
else not only will civilization perish, but
three-quarters of the human race will also
perish. since the tropics cannot hold them.
while untempered Winter in the higher
zones would freeze out their energies.
Two lines of solution are suggested;
first. the discovery of new forms Of fuel,
or new methods of producing thermal
energy, and, second. the conservation OF
heat already furnished by nature. Let us
take uB the last first. To suggest BADLY
that we might cOntrive something resem-
bling in its operation, though not in It's
form, a gigantic thermOs bottle by means
of which the solar heat of Summer could
be stored up and released where and when
wanted in Winter. cannot make much ap-
neal to minds accustomed to deal only
with scientific realities, but it must have
a charm for the more imaginative type and
might be fertile Suppose. for instance.
that we attack the problem in this way:
When a gardener wishes to start his plants
before the Winter chill has left the air he
covers the ground in which they grow with
a mantle of glass.
This lets in freely Ine bright sunshine.
which warns the ground, and at the same
time prevents the escape of the obscure
heat waves from the warmed ground. The
result is that he makes a reservoir Of hea'
which has come primarily from the sun,
and thus he defeats the season which. but
for his ingenuity, would freeze his plants.
So. in the Spring he can artificially hasten
the coming of solar heat, and in the
Autumn he can prolong its stay-over
limited area. Within that area he is mas
ter of the situation. Even in mid-Winter
a room may be considerably warmed by
letting plenty of sunshine enter through
large, tight-fitting glass windows and i'm
prisoning its heat there.
Now take another step, guided by facts
well known. AS the glass Of the hot
house imprisons captured thermal rays de-
rived from the sun, so the earth's atmos-