OCEANOGRAPHY 29 



Mr. Secretary, you brought up the subject of priorities and I am 

 very conscious of the debt that actual science owes to the Navy because, 

 as you said in your statement, you are the largest contributor toward 

 research in the way of grants and other means of aiding the study of 

 the marine sciences. It is that very thing that kind of concerns me 

 because you have a responsibility for priority not only for the type 

 of ships you construct, whether they should be for guided missiles or 

 for basic research, but when you get down to your allotment of en- 

 couragement of oceanography, is there not a priority of the mili- 

 tary needs and requirements as against the purely basic scientific 

 needs of our country ? I think that, if this program is controlled by 

 the military, it is going to probably underemphasize basic scientific 

 needs as against military needs. 



Could you comment on that ? 



Mr. Wakelin. Mr. Pelly, I would appreciate a chance to comment 

 on that. 



I think the Navy has been outstanding throughout the last 15 or 16 

 years in recognizing the importance of basic research. This has been 

 a continuing effort within the Navy from the establishment of the 

 Office of Research and Inventions in 1945 and then the establishment 

 of the Office of Naval Research by congi-essional action in August 

 of 1946 until now. 



We were the only coordinated single Federal agency, following 

 Dr. Bush's OSRD effort during the war, concerned with the support 

 of basic research throughout the country as a federally sponsored 

 program until the establishment in 1950 of the National Science 

 Foundation. 



I think the Navy has obtained so many marvelous results from this 

 sponsorship of basic research in the Office of Naval Research that I 

 would doubt if the Navy itself would deny basic research sponsorship 

 a place on the priority listing of its efforts. 



Mr. Pelly. I noticed that, for example, last year when we were 

 hearing testimony on a bill to expand the limits in which the Coast 

 and Geodetic Survey could work, that the Na\^' resisted it. In other 

 words, I feel that possibly the military will not give the full encour- 

 agement to some of the other agencies of Government that have a 

 vital interest in this same subject. I think that is something that we 

 ought to consider at least, but I would be the first one, as I said before, 

 to pay my tribute to the Navy for the work that has been done. Had 

 it not been for that, I do not know where our country would be today. 



Mr. Wakelix. Could I comment just a moment on that? 



We in the Navy are verv happy that this restriction has been re- 

 moved. I think the feeling now in the Navy is, and was prior to 

 your action on the bill, that there was enough work in the survey field 

 in the open ocean area for everybody. 



Mr. Pelly. '\^^len you come to the location of a data center, I do 

 not believe that, for instance, the scientists who are working in maybe 

 the commercial fisheries field are going to be too happy to see it 

 located in the Navy. I think they would feel more free if it . ould 

 be in some more civilian type of Government department. 



That is another aspect that we have to think about. 



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