122 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



The editor of Scientia, through the medium of Nature (January 25, 1917), 

 informs this country that the " peaceful penetration " accomplished by Germany in 

 pre-war days for her commerce has also been put in practice for her science. By 

 flooding the market with scientific publications of her own productions, she has 

 tried to create for herself a monopoly which reacts deleteriously on science itself — 

 which should obviously acknowledge no nationality. The wrong motive in this 

 desire of quantity versus quality has already borne fruit in the marked deteriora- 

 tion in the scientific value of these German publications. "To take from Germany 

 its scientific hegemony, one of the most suitable, efficacious, and prompt means is, 

 it seems, the creation in each of the principal branches of science of ' Archives,' 

 ' Year-books,' and ' Journals ' in general, which are international in so far as 

 collaboration and content are concerned, but which are edited and published in 

 the countries of the Entente. . . . The projected Entente publications must, then, 

 in the first place, print less and select better. Then they must direct their 

 attention to both synthesis and analysis. . . . They must take account even of 

 those researches which come from isolated thinkers. . . . Lastly, they must put 

 the various writings into their correct plane by publishing at length the most 

 important ones, giving long summaries of those which are less important, and 

 merely announcing the results of researches which are not too restricted or 

 evidently unfruitful." 



The Australian Manufacturer (December 23, 1916) comments on Britain's 

 waste of coal in her industries, and hints that she is not justified in exporting 

 about sixty-three millions of so precious a mineral in view of the fact that it may 

 be exhausted in a few centuries. A suggestion is made for the substitution of 

 electrical power, the gain from which would justify the expenditure of the initial 

 outlay. 



As phrases such as " The Freedom of the Seas " have a knack of being 

 repeated by the general public, while they are really understood only by the few, 

 an article bearing this title by Ramsay Muir, in Scientia (April 191 7), is of value, 

 for it explains the true significance of the phrase, traces its history, differentiates 

 between the freedom of the seas in war and peace, and suggests that "nations will 

 be ill-advised if they allow all their attention to be concentrated upon the com- 

 paratively minor question of the freedom of the seas in time of war and forget the 

 vastly more important issue of the freedom of the seas in time of peace." "There 

 are only two ways," he says, "in which the freedom of the seas can be permanently 

 secured for the whole world. One is that it shall be under the guardianship of a 

 world-government, or of a common authority respected and accepted by all States ; 

 and we are very far from that. The only other way is that naval supremacy shall 

 be in the hands of a power which, in the first place, cannot hope for supremacy on 

 land, and, in the second place, is secure against the danger of destruction by any 

 land power however strong." 



Mr. Dugald Clark, D.Sc, F.R.S., M.Inst.C.E., in his address, entitled The 

 Stability of Great Britain, delivered at the opening meeting of the 163rd Session 

 of the Royal Society of Arts, London, on November 15, 1916, says "Commerce is 

 not a war. Some . . . imagine a prosperous Great Britain in a poverty-stricken 

 world. ... It will be found, on the most careless examination, that wealth in- 

 creases simultaneously in industrial nations. . . . We must not even forget that 

 a poverty-stricken Germany and Austria would react upon the whole world. 

 Punish the Germans and Austrians- by all means — they thoroughly deserve it — 

 but do not imagine that by cutting those nations out of the world's commerce the 

 other nations can be rendered more wealthy. . . . All their (Germany and 



