DISCOVERY 



A MONTHLY POPULAR 

 JOURNAL OF KNOWLEDGE 



Vol. Ill, No. 30. JUNE 1922. 



PRICE Is. NET. 



DISCOVERY. A Monthly Popular Journal of Know- 

 ledge. 



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

 Northampton, to whom all Editorial Communications 

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

 act as Scientific Adviser.) 



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 London, W.i, to whom all Business Communications 

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Editorial Notes 



\\"e feel sure that a consideration of certain aspects 

 of the Genoa Conference will not be out of place here. 

 The particular political and economic questions which 

 have been deliberated at Genoa — the treaty of Rapallo, 

 for instance, or the problem of Russia's pajTnent of 

 her debts to ourselves and France — are not the concern 

 of these notes. \\'hat does concern us is the historical 

 significance of the Conference. Whatever its eventual 

 results, the Conference will have been s^anptomatic of 

 a steadily growing international consciousness. On 

 more than one occasion we have commented on this 

 striking tendency of the new era upon which we believe 

 we are entering. What lies at the back of these 

 conferences, of these attempts by the great nations to 

 harmonise their conflicting interests ? An idealism, 

 surely, matured by two \-ital realisations — that the 

 nations of the world, and in particular the United 

 States of Europe, to use a term coined by Mr. H. G. 

 Wells, are so closely bound together by financial and 

 economic ties, that open co-operation between them is 

 essential ; and that another great war using ten times 

 the destructive material of the last may deal a death- 

 blow to our already sorely wounded and slowlv recover- 

 ing civilisation. 



To state these two realisations to-day is almost to 

 state two platitudes. Especially is this true of the 

 second realisation, which, however, as a scientific 

 journal we desire to consider from a particular angle. 

 This is the question of the part likely to be played by 

 scientists in the next war on a grand scale. In certain 

 quarters there is a semi-conscious hostility towards 

 " scientists " in general for the horrors which they 

 contributed to the recent war. Yet, setting aside 

 the first emplo\Tnent of gas by the Germans, how- 

 far can they be considered as responsible for these 

 horrors ? As the war continued the younger active 

 men of every nation found themselv-es defending their 

 own country according to the best of their mental 

 and physical abilities and thus necessarily acting as 

 cogs in the general machinery of destruction and 

 violence. It is very questionable whether you can 

 blame the man who in\-ented a new deadly gas more 

 than the man w-ho despatched it to the enemy's lines 

 in a shell. In the mental turmoil of war both believed 

 that they were acting for the best, in the interests of 

 their country, or in those of civilisation. 



We are conscious that the ethical point here raised 

 is e.xceedingly deep and difficult of decision. \\'hat is 

 certain, however, is that circumstances originally 

 caused by mer are eventually stronger than men them- 

 selves. .\ wTiter stated 1 some months back: "It 

 would be a very inspiring sight if the scientists of all 

 civOised peoples w-ere to become ' class-conscious ' to 

 the extent of laying a ban of excommunication from 

 their academic and professional unions on any one of 

 their number w-ho, in peace or war, should aid a 

 government to prepare or carry out its acts of mass 

 murder. We can just conceive the passing of some 

 such resolution at an international scientific congress, 

 but we should doubt the probability of its observance 

 when the strain of nationalist passion w-as felt, and 

 we should expect, at the least, that the ' blacklegs ' 



' See article on The Conscience of Science in The X.\tion 

 AND THE .\THEXiEUM for September 17, 1921. 



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