RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT 327 



of Government might conceive programs broader in their magnitude and 

 more daring in their conception than anything yet achieved. 



Independent scientific judgment. Scientists must be free to develop equip- 

 ment w^ithout request and, if need be, over the opposition of military services, 

 and they must be in a position to get it tested and evaluated sufficiently near 

 the top to insure an unprejudiced judgment of its merits. A number of the 

 most valuable of the OSRD developments were made in the face of Service 

 indifference. The demonstration of the usefulness of the completed device 

 to the satisfaction of higher officers was needed to overcome the opposition 

 of others. In some cases, however, OSRD completed projects and was unable 

 to get the necessary Service testing. In other cases, it was possible with large 

 expenditures of time and energy to blast through Service inertia to the 

 point where a test could be had. 



This does not mean that the scientist will always be right. He may well 

 be wrong, but he should not be blocked by the lack of imagination of an 

 officer in a key position, by the opposition of a Service branch which has a 

 pet project which it does not want to test against a proposed development, 

 or by the reasoning that what the scientist says he may be able to do is 

 impossible because the Service has already tried it and could not make it 

 work. 



Keeping the interest of top-flight scientists. Ways must be found to keep 

 the interest of top-flight scientists in miHtary problems during periods of 

 peace. The system of reserve officers is not adequate for this purpose. While 

 many able men will retain reserve commissions at the end of a war, many 

 of the more able will not continue those commissions for long because of 

 the competing demands upon their time and the intensity of their interest 

 in their peacetime activities. 



It all too frequently happens that the man who retains his reserve com- 

 mission is not the most able man in his field. Yet the operation of the 

 reserve system is such that when the reserve officers are called to active duty 

 in time of emergency, they receive rapid promotion as the armed forces 

 expand and they are placed in positions of much greater importance than 

 their relative ability merits. Scientists coming into the Services in time of 

 emergency find themselves subject to the orders of men who are recognized 

 as their inferiors from a scientific standpoint. The situation becomes increas- 

 ingly serious as the number of scientists called into uniform increases. If it 

 cannot be met within the Services, the machinery for effective co-operation 

 between civilian scientists and the Services becomes of even greater im- 

 portance. 



One way to keep from losing the interest of scientists is to make it easy 

 for them to work with the Services in the fields of their specialties. The 

 mechanics of civilian co-operation must be simplified, particularly in research 



