Evening star., 1950-12-29
Dr.. Smyth's Proposal


scientist member OF the Atomic Energy Commits
sion and author of the famous report on the
wartime development of the A-bomb has come
forward with proposal that deserves the care
full attention OF all who are responsible for the
short-range and long range preparedness of this
Nation.
The proposal-made in an address to the
current meeting of the American Association for
the Advancement of Science-is predicated on
the bleak but not unreasonable assumption that
the world has entered upon "a 20-year period of
tension with the possibility of major or minor
wars occurring at any time in that period" 1t
is based, too, on the realistic belief that when
and if a gobal conflict breaks out, the United
States and it's allies will be able to win it "only
by being cooler, cleverer and more skillful than
our enemies, and by using the resources at our
command with foresight and judgment"
Among the most important of those re-
sources are our scientists-the veteran ones, the
younger ones, and the ones who have yet to
develop their talents in college. AS Dr.. Smyth
has rightly described them, they constitute "a
major war asset'-an asset to be husbanded and
enlarged "if the country is to excel in the tech
niqueS and weapons of modern war over the next
20 years" But there are by no means enough
of them now, properly organized, for either our
short-range long-range defense effort. AL
the field of private nterprise-notably the
chemists in the cosmetics business and the
physicists in the television industry-much more
will have to be done if our scientific prepared
ness is to be as good as our national security
demands.
So Dr. smyth has proposed plan for the
"stockpiling and rationng" of our men of science.
The plan calls for the establishment of civilian
but compulsory Scientific Service Corps to be
directed by Scientific Manpower Board. The
board would have supervision over all scientists
who have completed their education, not over
those in the student category At this stage,
only scientists of military age would be required
to join the corps, and the board-which would
be responsible to the President, not to the De-
Tense Department-woud have extraordinary
powers to get the right persons in the right jobs
and to keep them out of the armed services or
put them in. AS for students Dr. Smyth has
suggested the separate formation of a kind of
junior scientific corps in which enrolment would
begin in the freshman year and continue
through graduate training, with membership
limited to talent of the highest order.
In proposing all this, DR.. Smyth has en-
phaSized the Importance of making better use
of our actual and potential scientific branpower
than was made during the Second World War.
During that period basic research was brought
to virtual standstill, special talents in many
instances were not employed as effectively as
they could have been, and there was almost
complete halt in the training of new scientists.
To let the same thing happen again would be
merely to encourage waste that We can i'll
afford at a time when the strengthening and
bud-up of our science has direct bearing on
the safety of the Nation
DR.. Smyth, of course, has advanced his plan
merely as suggestion, on tentative basis. He
realizes that it is anything but 1awless and
that it may in fact be found to be inoperable
on close inspection. Yet its objective is sound,
and something similar to it, but perhaps less
sweeping, may well have to be adopted in the
kind of world we have-a world in which our
survival may depend on how wisely we stockpile
and ration our science.