NOVEMBER 2, 1916] 
NATURE 
171 
partment will become familiar with Governmental in- 
spection ; the engineering department with Government 
blue-prints and specifications; the firm with Govern- 
mental methods of business; and the shipping depart- 
ment will know how to crate and ship the finished 
article. 
The terms on which these contracts are to be 
made are significant. They are to be on a basis 
of cost plus a reasonable profit, or at a fixed 
dividend. There are to be no excess profits for 
anybody arising out of the national need, but the 
stockholders are to have a living wage, ‘‘since it 
is economically undesirable that the stockholders 
cease to have any dividend from their investment” ! 
In this way will be prevented any suggestion of a 
profit-interest in war, of a munition lobby, of a 
section of the community having an interest in 
forcing the nation into war. If there is a war 
every person in the nation must accept his share 
of the national sacrifice and turn in and work in 
whatever place his ability can be best applied. 
The third and final step in the programme is 
the enrolment of skilled labour in an “Industrial 
Reserve” in time of peace. Skilled mechanics in 
all lines of production must be kept from enrol- 
ment in the Army. Rather must bankers, clerks, 
shopkeepers, and professional men be sent. The 
skilled workers must be badged, and the only 
restriction imposed on them by the badge will be 
prevention of enlistment. Enrolment in the In- 
dustrial Reserve will be considered to carry with 
it honours equal to enrolment in the fighting 
forces. 
It is claimed that this plan is a most demo- 
cratic and American way of doing the job. It is 
cheap; it lays the ghost ot a munitions trust, with 
its dangerous interest in provoking war; it safe- 
guards labour from exploitation for excess profits ; 
it educates the manufacturers; and it is not only 
an insurance against war, but it has great advan- 
tages in peace. ‘ 
Direct organisation for peaceful competition is 
dealt with in another series of articles. The 
survey of national resources and their conservation 
includes significantly ‘our 22,000,000 children.” 
These must be trained, not only in the schools, 
but in the vital years between fourteen and 
eighteen, the waste of which has recently been 
pointed out by Mr. Galsworthy in the Press and 
Lord Haldane -in the House of Lords. The 
methods of intensive industrial efficiency which 
were coming into notice before the war must be 
continued and developed. 
Other articles deal with the disposal of the 
finished products—the careful preparation of the 
ground in foreign markets by personal inquiries ; 
by correspondence with consular agencies, 
chambers of commerce, and universities; by im- 
proved methods of packing and dispatch; and by 
cultivating the “human side of salesmanship.” 
Some of the devices described under this last | 
head would not commend themselves to British 
ideas; and are not perhaps very seriously urged. 
There is a thoroughgoing materialism in some of 
the utterances quoted which we could not accept. 
“‘Real immorality,” says Prof. Carver, of the 
NO. 2453, VOL. 98] 
| Economics Department of Harvard University, in 
a paper on the Conservation of Human Energy, 
“is nothing in the world except waste or dissipa- 
tion of human energy. Real morality is nothing 
in the world except the economy and utilisation 
of human energy. The reason why it is better 
to tell the truth than to lie is because a com- 
munity in which truth prevails will waste less 
energy than a community where lying prevails. 
. . . Honesty is one of the greatest labour-saving 
inventions ever devised. This may be said of any 
other form of morality which is genuine and not 
merely conventional.” 
There are things in our British life which we 
should not sell for all the markets in the world. 
But the treasuring of these ideals is not incon- 
sistent with sane preparation to meet the 
tremendous competition we shall have _ to 
encounter in the material sphere at the conclusion 
of the war. What this preparation should be, 
in the opinion of President Wilson, is indicated in 
the letter addressed by him to the editor of the 
Scientific American, directing attention to the 
articles which have since appeared in that journal. 
We think it worth quoting in full :— 
It will be a signal service to our country to arouse it 
to a knowledge of the great possibilities that are open 
to it in the markets of the world. The door of oppor- 
tunity swings wide before us. Through it we may, 
if we will, enter into rich fields of endeavour and suc- 
cess. In order to do this we must show an -effective- 
ness in industrial practice which measures up to our 
best standards. We must avail ourselves of all that 
science can tell us in aid of industry, and must use all 
that education can contribute to train the artisan in 
the principles and practice of his work. Our indus- 
tries must be self-reliant and courageous, because 
based upon certain knowledge of their task, and be- 
cause supported by the efforts of citizens in the mills. 
If scientific research and the educated worker go hand 
in hand with broad vision in finance and with that 
keen self-criticism which is the manufacturer’s first 
duty to himself, the fields will be few indeed in which 
American commerce may not hold, if it chooses, a 
primary place. 
The significant thing about this letter is that 
there is in it no allusion to Protection. The 
President is for open operations by an industry 
relying on its own efficiency, not for trench war- 
fare behind tariffs. Science, education, broad 
vision in finance, self-criticism—that is the pro- 
gramme. A nation which has imagination, 
courage, and honesty enough to depend on these 
can look forward without fear to whatever the 
future may have in store for it. J. ©. 
RHODODENDRONS AND LIME. 
ae a note in Nature of February 17, 1916 (vol. 
xcevi., p. 684), reference was made to Mr. 
Forrest’s discovery of rhododendrons growing on 
limestone rocks in N.W. Yunnan. In this connec- 
tion Lady Wheeler-Cuffe, writing from Maymyo, 
Upper Burma, informs the Editor that she found 
“a beautiful blush-white rhododendron growing 
actually wedged into a bare limestone crag on the 
very summit of Sindaung (6022 ft.), in the 
southern Shan States, a few years ago.” Mr. 
