ENGINEERING BEFORE AND AFTER WAR 59 



owing to the great enlargement of the Laboratory the 

 total estimate of the Research Department for this service 

 during the current year is I54,65O/. 



Another important part of the work of the Department 

 has been to foster and to aid financially Associations of 

 the trades for the purpose of research. Nine of these 

 Associations are already at work; eight more are ap- 

 proved, and will probably be at work within the next two 

 months; and another twelve are in the earlier stage of 

 formation. There are also signs of increased research by 

 individual factories. Whether this is due to the indirect 

 influence of the Research Department or to a change in 

 public opinion and a more general recognition of the im- 

 portance of scientific industrial research it is difficult to 

 say. 



The possibility of the uncontrolled use on the part of a 

 nation of the power which Science has placed within its 

 reach is so great a menace to civilization * that the ardent 

 wish of all reasonable people is to possess some radical 

 means of prevention through the establishment of some 

 form of wide and powerful control. Has not Science 

 forged the remedy, by making the world a smaller arena 

 for the activities of civilization, by reducing distance in 

 terms of time? Alliances and unions, which have suc- 

 cessfully controlled and stimulated republics of hetero- 

 geneous races during the last century, will therefore have 

 become possible on a wider and grander scale, thus unit- 

 ing all civilized nations in a great League to maintain 

 order, security, and freedom for every individual and for 

 every State and nation liberty to devote their energies to 

 the controlling of the great forces of Nature for the use 

 and convenience of man, instead of applying them to the 

 killing of each other. 



4 For instance, it might some day be discovered how to liberate 

 instantaneously the energy in radium, and radium contains two 

 and one-half million times the energy of the same weight of 

 T.N.T. 



