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McDougaH^ Science Policy Task Force, page 9 



of R&D, and protective tariffs. In the end Britain relied on dipilDmatic 

 alliances to safeguard her Empire and remained Free Trade until the 

 Great Depression. 



Still, Britain declined: the years around 1900 proved to be her 

 climacteric. Is the U.S. today facing its moment of decline? I suspect that 

 this question, perhaps subconsciDusLy, is in our minds as we discuss 

 science pcQicy. But the causes cf Britain's decline, hence the lessons to 

 be learned, are not dear. Britain, for instance, did not lack for R&D: it 

 • led the world in research until the 1930s, and was still a healthy third in 

 R&D into the 1960s. Nor were British scientists inferior: the troubLe was 

 that their inventions were exploited abroad and not by British business. 

 Indeed, Britain helped to create her own competition by exporting capital 

 and technology to industrializing countries like Germany and the U.S. But 

 she cannot be blamed for that: Britain needed the foreign markets, and 

 was contributing to wodd economic growth. In the same fash ion the U.S. 

 helped to create its competition through the Marshall Plan. 



In short, counting dollars ^3ent on R&D or patents and Nobel 

 prizes won (in a kind of intellectual Olympic Games) are not useful 

 measures of where one stands. Nor is protectionism a solution to foreign 

 competition. For such a reversal of pdicy by the leading Free Trade and 

 financial power would not only betray our principles, but reduce the 

 volume of trade for all countries and erode the unity of the West far 

 more than any failure to cooperate in science. This is the lesson of the 

 1930s. A crack-down on tech transfer through refusal to cooperate and an 

 impositiDn of secrecy might also be counter-productive. As angry aa we 



