NATIONAL DEFENSE RESEARCH COMMITTEE I7 



a particular matter was one of primary concern to national defense, the 

 Committee would be guided by the Army and the Navy. The resolution 

 was also released for publication in order that scientists might become 

 acquainted with the Committee's policy. 



The initial decision hmiting the scope of NDRC acdvities is believed to 

 have been sound. In a period of total war it becomes difl&cult to say what 

 part of the economy is not related to national defense. It would have been 

 easy for the NDRC to have construed its charter as opening a much wider 

 field of activities. In view of the liberality with which funds were appro- 

 priated during the war years, it is quite probable that the Committee would 

 have been able to obtain funds to support a broader program. In practice, 

 the limiting factor upon the Committee was always that of manpower. 

 Widening the scope of the Committee's activities would not have added to 

 the number of men available to work on the program. It would have 

 resulted in a dilution of effort which might have obtained significant results 

 in other areas, but in all probability only at the expense of work bearing 

 more immediately on weapons. By deliberately confining its efforts to a 

 relatively narrow field, the Committee was able to concentrate manpower 

 in those areas which seemed most likely to be productive of the best results. 

 It may be charged that by refusing to enter certain lines of activity, the 

 Committee was responsible for delay in obtaining answers to other impor- 

 tant problems confronting the nation. The easy answer to such a charge 

 would be to point to what the Committee did with the available manpower 

 and inquire whether the diversion of that manpower to the other problems 

 would have been in the over-all national interest. The members of the Com- 

 mittee never had any doubt as to the accuracy of the original decision to 

 limit the scope of NDRC activities. 



The decision was adhered to in practice with minor exceptions. Some 

 work in the field of metallurgy, for instance in connection with armor plate, 

 was obviously within the Committee's scope; but once a division had been 

 established to work on metallurgical problems, its activities tended to ex- 

 pand to include some of a more general nature which might well have 

 been excluded. Similarly, at the request of the Quartermaster Corps, the 

 Committee undertook a number of studies on Quartermaster problems with 

 considerable reluctance. While it was felt that the problems should have 

 been handled elsewhere, they were undertaken by the Committee because 

 there appeared to be no other way of handUng them in time to be most 

 useful to the war effort. 



One result of the strict limitation of activities adopted by the NDRC 

 was the later estabhshment within the War Production Board of an Office 

 of Production Research and Development with which NDRC maintained 

 cordial relations. 



