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DISCOVERY 



A MONTHLY POPULAR 

 JOURNAL OF KNOWLEDGE 



Vol. Ill, No. 25. JANUARY 1922. 



PRICE Is. NET. 



DISCOVERY. A Monthly Popular Journal of Know- 

 ledge. 



Edited by Edward Liveing, B.A., Rothersthorpe, 

 Northampton, to whom all Editorial Communications 

 should be addressed. (Dr. A. S. Russell continues to 

 act as Scientific Adviser.) 



Published by John Murray, 50A Albemarle Street, 

 London, W.i, to whom all Business Communications 

 should be addressed. 



Advertisement Office : 34 Ludgate Chambers and 32 

 Ludgate Hill, London, E.C.4. 



Annual Subscription, 12s. 6d. post free ; single numbers, 

 15. net ; postage, zd. 



Binding cases for Vol. \1, 1921, are now ready. Price 

 2s. 6d. net each ; postage y^d. 



Editorial Notes 



With this number our journal enters upon its third 

 year. The fact that it has survived the lapse of two 

 difficult years, in which many sections of our community 

 have found it necessary to abandon magazine-bujang 

 as an unpermissible luxur\', and has found a wide and 

 permanent reading-public, speaks for itself. There is 

 obviously room for a magazine that attempts to keep 

 abreast of contemporary developments and discoveries 

 in the ever-increasing spheres of human activity and 

 intellectual endeavour. In these the year 1921 has, 

 indeed, been very rich. 



of intemationahsm will grow apace, and a great flood 

 of human energy and financial resources will gradually 

 be diverted from destructive into constructive charmels. 

 Of vast importance, too, to our own Empire is the 

 agreement between the United Kingdom and Ireland. 

 Both events should greatly assist in re-establishing our 

 prosperity and, what comes particularly near to the 

 hearts of the readers and writers of Discovery, in 

 ushering in a year of renewed progress in the arts and 

 sciences, and their application to life. 



***** 



From the amount of correspondence that reached the 

 Editor's table as the result of Professor Douglas Knoop's 

 article in our November number, it is obvious how 

 great a diversity of thought has been roused by the 

 problem of unemployment. \Vhile keeping our corre- 

 spondence column open to all shades of opinion on the 

 question, we do not intend to pronounce any judgment 

 on it in these notes. At the same time, we cannot 

 refrain from calling our readers' attention to the 

 extremely interesting and largely successful methods 

 that are being employed to combat the difficulty in 

 Germany. The most important feature of the com- 

 plicated system, which Germany has put into force, is 

 that of the Umschulung. A detailed description of it 

 appeared in The Nation and the Athencsum on Novem- 

 ber 5 of last year. We have not space to do more 

 than outline it here. 



Apart from advances in scientific knowledge, an 

 event occurred towards the end of last year which is 

 likely so to affect the year 1922 and, in fact, the whole 

 of the twentieth century', that we cannot afford to dis- 

 regard it in our pages. This was the opening of the 

 Disarmament Conference at Washington. \\'hether 

 this conference succeeds or fails, it will have expressed 

 in a very forcible way the tendencies in international 

 desires matured by the late war. If it fails or only 

 succeeds partially, its expression of an intense popular 

 feeling will have a marked influence on the thought and 

 activities not only of our generation, but of many 

 subsequent ones. If it succeeds, and an honest collabo- 

 ration Ln following the paths of peace ensues, the spirit 



The Umschulung — the industrial training of adults — 

 was instituted by a decree of the Reichsarbeitsministerium 

 of April 9, 1920. Though it has had to be both 

 modified and amplified by various circumstances, its 

 general methods have remained the same. Its purpose 

 in the main is to transfer workers from overcrowded or 

 obsolescent industries to those in need of employees, 

 and at the same time to supply the necessary financial 

 assistance to employers and employed during the period 

 of transfer. So far as the individual worker is con- 

 cerned, it guarantees to train any worker of good 

 character, who has been thrown out of employment 

 through no fault of his own, in a trade in which 

 workers are in greater demand. The training allowance. 



