UTAH ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 167 
Advisory Board—which will really be a governmental Ad- 
visory Board—and on a small scale by the services of trained 
observers, organizers and engineers, experts in various lines. 
Our cousins across the waters have found the futility of 
entrusting big enterprises solely to men of the lawyer— 
capatalist—governmental class, and have come to rely large- 
ly upon the advice of trained specialists. |The call comes 
to us as scientists. Are we ready to meet it? That this 
is no dream of a professional scientist, but is shared by 
men who direct practical affairs is shown by our conclud- 
ing paragraph, taken from an address delivered by Sec- 
retary F. K. Lane, Department of the Interior, before one 
of the sections of the Pan-American Scientific Congress 
recently : 
“T fancy that if Christopher Columbus is able at this 
time to survey this world and see what is happening that 
he is well pleased at his venturesome voyage. While the 
nations of the world that he left have their knives at each 
other’s throats the peoples of this new world have sent 
their most learned men, their philosophers, their scientists, 
inventors and engineers to talk with one another as to how 
this new land may become wiser, richer and be made more 
useful. This is surely a contrast. It is a condition for 
which my knowledge of history offers no parallel. 
There are times I know when nations who believe in 
themselves must fight. But let us not delude ourselves 
with the notion that civilization is the product of arms. The 
only excuse for war is to secure peace, that men of thought, 
resourcefulness and skill may have opportunity to make 
themselves masters of the secrets of nature. 
For the real battle of the centuries is not between men 
or between nations or between races. The one fight, the 
enduring contest, is between man and physical nature. 
There is no denying the fact that we live in a world 
that is hostile and secretive. It is organized to destroy 
us if itcan. Our enemies have cunning and ferocity. We 
have but to fold our arms and the beasts, the flies, the 
rats, the mosquitoes and the vermin would make us their 
