36 THE NEW WORLD OF SCIENCE 



attache, (Admiral Sims himself) chosen by the National Re- 

 search Council. The function of the scientific attache in Eng- 

 land, who was Dr. H. A. Bumstead, was to keep in touch with 

 all research activity in that country and to send back almost 

 daily reports to our office in Washington. Similarly, all re- 

 ports of work done on this side were sent by uncensored mail 

 or by cable to the offices of the scientific attaches in London, 

 Paris and Rome, and distributed from there to the research 

 groups in Europe. The navy cooperated heartily with this 

 plan from the start, and Admiral Sims aided it in every possible 

 way. As for the army, at the request of the General Staff, 

 the Secretary of War issued orders to all army officers who 

 were sent on scientific and technical missions to make duplicate 

 reports, one to the officer who sent them and the other to the 

 office of the scientific attache, so that there might be a central 

 agency through which an interconnection might be had between 

 all kinds of new developments. The actual functioning of the 

 Research Information Service had most to do with develop- 

 ments in the Physical Sciences. 



Furthermore, through the authority conferred by the Mili- 

 tary Committee, there was held in Washington at the offices 

 of the National Research Council a weekly conference of the 

 Division of Physical Sciences and of Engineering, which re- 

 viewed all the reports from abroad each week and put the 

 workers on this side into the closest touch with the develop- 

 ments on the other side. The whole plan was an admirable 

 illustration of the possibilities of international cooperation in 

 research. In the submarine field, for example, all anti-sub- 

 marine work in England, France and Italy which was reported 

 by cable and by uncensored mail immediately to the office of 

 the Research Council in Washington, was taken each Saturday 

 night to New London and presented in digested form to the 

 group of scientists which was working there continuously on 

 submarine problems. Similar arrangements were made with 

 the airplane research groups, sound-ranging groups, etc., so 



