36 PHYSICAL FORCE 



beyond that of fuel as the latter is beyond brute 

 energy will be eventually effected. 



It is unlikely, but not impossible, that such a 

 discovery might be made almost at once. A 

 magnificent scientific achievement it would be, but, 

 all the same, I trust it will not be made until it is 

 clearly understood what is involved. Let us suppose 

 that it became possible to extract the energy, which 

 now oozes out, so to speak, from radioactive materials 

 over a period of thousands of millions of years, in as 

 short a time as we pleased. From a pound weight of 

 such substances one would get about as much energy 

 as would be obtained by burning 150 tons of coal. 

 How splendid! Or a pound weight could be made 

 to do the work of 1 50 tons of dynamite. Ah ! there's 

 the rub. Imagine, if you can, what the present war 

 would be like if such an explosive had actually been 

 discovered instead of being still in the keeping of the 

 future. Yet it is a discovery that conceivably might 

 be made to-morrow, in time for its development and 

 perfection for the use or destruction, let us say, of the 

 next generation, and which, it is pretty certain, will 

 be made by science sooner or later. Surely it will 

 not need this last actual demonstration to convince 

 the world that it is doomed, if it fools with the 

 achievements of science as it has fooled too long in 

 the past. Physical force, the slave of science, is it to 

 be the master or the servant of man ? The cold logic 

 of science shows, without the possibility of escape, 

 that this question if not faced now can have only 

 one miserable end. 



From time immemorial man has boasted and 

 gloried in his physical prowess. He was a rude 

 animal, whose turbulent experience has preserved, 

 as a religion, this pride in force as the ultimate 

 arbiter. Christianity for two thousand years has 

 inculcated the opposite creed, but, while largely 



