326 ORGANIZING SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH FOR WAR 



available to it so that rapid expansion in the use of civilian research facilities 

 would be possible without loss of time if it should become necessary. 



The remarks on the succeeding pages will hold regardless of the form 

 adopted for the organization co-ordinating and directing research, although 

 the phraseology in which they are expressed might be different if that form 

 were known at the time of writing. 



Scientific advice at a high level. In preparation for modern war it is 

 essential that the possibility of new weapons be considered in strategy; that 

 from the very first, persons with adequate and continuing background in 

 science participate in strategic planning. The plans should be made in the 

 light of what is possible today or may be possible tomorrow, not in the light 

 of what was in existence when a two-, three-, four-, or five-star general or 

 admiral went to school. Science moves so fast that only the specialist can 

 keep up with it. It is too much to expect an Army or Navy officer, no 

 matter how brilliant, to maintain continuing and understanding contact 

 with the latest developments in science. It is not too much to expect the 

 Services to recognize their limitations in this respect and to build their plans 

 for the defense of the country around such recognition. 



Introduction of science at a high level of planning should serve another 

 purpose as well. The amount of scientific talent available for military re- 

 search will always be limited. In times of emergency in particular, none of 

 it should be wasted. Unless the scientific high command is conversant with 

 military planning, some part of the scientific effort will be wasted unneces- 

 sarily upon projects of marginal utility when it could be more effectively 

 used in other directions. The number of devices which can be invented far 

 exceeds the number which can be used. Effort should be concentrated on 

 those which have the best chance of use. This means that the scientific high 

 command must know what to develop and that it must have the courage 

 to pull reluctant scientists off less important work for the benefit of the more 

 important. The decisions involved are of such importance that they should 

 be made only after serious consideration by both the military and the scien- 

 tific high commands. 



OSRD experience confirmed the ease with which scientists can become 

 immersed in and pleaders for their specialties. The result was a number of 

 truly remarkable developments in the field of those specialties. There was 

 lacking in the over-all military research picture, however, any kind of a 

 scientific council with members drawn from different fields of science and 

 relieved of all responsibility for administration whose sole function would 

 be to let their imaginations run free in an attempt to foresee the scientific 

 and technical possibilities of modern war and to advise the Government on 

 steps to realize upon those possibilities. Such a group completely conversant 

 with scientific developments and scientific research programs in and out 



