impossible to make an empty test to 9 miles, one could take a number 

 of other precautionary measures. For example, one could make a 

 cabin in forged steel designed with very high safety factors, well 

 checked by ultrasonic methods, and several empty trials of long dura- 

 tion down to 6 miles, since it is important to make sure of the strength 

 of the plexiglas. It seems to me that we could reply with an analogous 

 logic : in wartime it is impossible to avoid completely the dangers of 

 enemy fire;- is it therefore useless to take precautions in peacetime on a 

 rifle range ? 



Would it not have been more graceful and fairer to say simply that : 

 four countries, Belgium, France, Italy and Switzerland, participated in 

 a common effort to make headway in the sciences of peace and to open 

 up to oceanography a new world, thanks to the submarine free balloon, 

 the bathyscaphe. 



Without labouring the point, I am happy to note that my work was 

 viewed in another light at the Ministry, at Paris, the Head of the Tech- 

 nical Service of Naval Construction and Armament {Service Technique 

 des Constructions et Armes Navales) having again written to me on the 

 26th August 1954 in connection with the defects in the casting of the 

 cabin: '. . . You have my very warm thanks for the assistance that you 

 have given the Navy in this new project^ 



Brussels, 25th September 1954. 



[ 188] 



