.Si 6 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE 



SCIENCE AND THE WAR 



One of the most serious aspects of 

 the war is the diversion from scien- 

 tific work which it involves. Should 

 the contributions to pure and applied 

 science in the course of the next ten 

 years be reduced to one half, the loss to 

 the world in life and wealth would be 

 far greater than that caused directly 

 by the destruction of war. It may be 

 guessed that in the course of the past 

 hundred years the death-rate has been 

 reduced to one half in the more civil- 

 ized nations and the annual production 

 of wealth has been increased by a hun- 

 dred billion dollars. If a comparable 

 advance would have been made in the 

 next ten years apart from the war 

 and this should be reduced to half as v. 

 result of the war, the loss would be so 

 great as to be almost incredible. Thus 

 the death rate in England has been re- 

 duced from 23 per thousand to 14 per 

 thousand in the course of fifty years. 

 If by the advances of science and civ- 

 ilization in the course of ten years the 

 death rate would have been reduced 

 to 12 per thousand and as the result of 

 the war the reduction should be only to 

 11, so that for a period of ten years 

 the death rate is one per thousand 

 larger than it otherwise would have 

 been, the deaths in England chargeable 

 to the war apart from those directly 

 caused by it would be in the neighbor- 

 hood of 400,000 and in the civilized 

 world of 4,000,000. There would be a 

 corresponding excess of ill--health and 

 disease over what would have been suf- 

 fered had there been no war. 



In like manner it may be calculated 

 that if the increased production of the 

 world's wealth which might have been 

 expected from new applications of sci- 

 ence should be decreased to one half 

 by the war for a period of ten years 

 the economic loss would be in the 



neighborhood of fifty billion dollars. 

 These calculations are, of course, sub- 

 ject to a very large probable error. 

 We may hope that the advance of sci- 

 ence will not be checked to the extent of 

 one half for a. period of ten years. Tt 

 has been said that it will be a genera- 

 tion before the nations involved will re- 

 gain the position they now hold, but it 

 may, on the contrary, be the case that 

 the loss will be far less than is as- 

 sumed as the basis of these calculations. 

 It depends on the length of the war 

 and on many other conditions of which 

 we are ignorant. 



But figures such as these, even 

 though they have but small reliability, 

 may impress on us the magnitude of 

 the value of science for the world and 

 the injury done by an interruption 

 to its progress. A loss of four million 

 lives and of fifty billion dollars from a 

 slackening in scientific work due to the 

 war is greater than the destruction 

 which will be directly caused. While 

 we are helpless in presence of the di- 

 rect destruction from the war, this is 

 not equally the case with the loss due 

 to the failure in scientific research and 

 the applications of science. We 

 should in this country do what we can 

 to carry forward the work which will 

 1 e dropped by the disabled nations. 



THE DISTRIBUTION OF SCIEN- 

 TIFIC MEN AMONG THE 

 DIFFERENT NATIONS 



Some idea of the relative contribu- 

 tions to science by the different na- 

 tions may be gathered from the num- 

 ber of scientific men recorded in 

 "Who's Who in Science," an inter- 

 national biographical directory edited 

 by II. H. Stephenson and published 

 here by The Macmillan Company. In 

 this compilation there are recorded 

 1 .678 scientific men from the United 



