272 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1944 
those new fields that we can now clearly see. The task of organizing 
and managing the work, of devising and constructing the equipment, | 
and, above all, of leading those upon whose efforts success will in 
the end depend is one of absorbing interest. 
What the world will make of our efforts is a matter on which I 
regard it as unprofitable to speculate, at any rate here and at this 
time. I am an engineer in a world where good engineering, skillfully 
used, means survival and bad engineering means the end of what I 
believe to be a good way of living. So I am content for the time 
being to confine my efforts to the work in hand and to leave phil- 
osophic speculations on its value, on some absolute scale which I con- 
fess eludes me, to those who can find time or inclination for it. For 
this reason I have confined my attention primarily to research for 
aeronautics as used in war. There is another reason—I have spent 
the best part of my life on work with this as its first aim in the con- 
viction that it had to be done. 
But I am an incurable optimist. I believe that we shall succeed 
in our present effort—in which the share of research is to provide 
information by which aircraft and their equipment can be steadily 
improved and used to greater effect. When we have achieved our 
immediate aim, I do not doubt that much of our work will be put to 
uses that are more to my taste and to yours. 
In the end, however, it is with the scientific and technical advances 
in the means of flight that we are here concerned. So far we have 
had a mere 40 years in which to show what we can do. It has been my 
purpose to point, in the light of my experience, to what we must do 
now to discharge the responsibility that is laid on us so that those 
who will follow us may find a fair field in which to explore the end- 
less vista of opportunity which will le before them. 
