September 26, 1919] 



SCIENCE 



291 



carrying on at Ryerson Laboratory on the 

 aibsorption of charcoal. In the Ordnance 

 Department too under the leadership of 

 Professor F. R. Moulton, of our depart- 

 ment of astronomy, new methods of com- 

 puting the trajectories of projectiles were 

 developed in collaboration with the meteo- 

 rological service, already referred to. New 

 sets of range tables were devised which 

 included corrections for the so-called ballis- 

 tic mnd. Without such corrections which 

 are altogether new in artillery practise, 

 firing by the map, which, in view of the de- 

 velopment of long-range guns and camou- 

 flage, represents a large fraction of all fir- 

 ing, becomes utterly impossible, for the 

 ballistic wind correction would often make 

 a difference of a half a mile in the point 

 of landing of the projectile. When it is 

 remembered that the biggest element in 

 the effectiveness of a modern army is its 

 artillery, and that the effectiveness in the 

 artillery is dependent entirely upon the 

 accuracy of these wind corrections, it will 

 be seen how incalculably valuable the 

 work of the trained physicist and mathe- 

 matician has proved to be to the practical 

 problems of modern war. 



Do not, however, let me give the impres- 

 sion that our groups in this country have 

 been more successful than have corre- 

 sponding groups in England and Prance. 

 The general method of attack has been the 

 same in all these countries, and the experi- 

 mental groups in them all have functioned 

 as a unit through the development of the 

 so-called Research Information Service, 

 which was financed by a grant of some- 

 thing like $150,000 which the President 

 gave from his emergency fund to the Na- 

 tional Research Council for the establish- 

 ment of four offices, one in Washington, 

 one in London, one in Paris and one in 

 Rome. The office in Washington was 

 headed by a group of three men : the chief 



of the Army Intelligence Service, the chief 

 of the Navy Intelligence Service, 'and the 

 chairman of the National Research Coun- 

 cil: the group in London by the naval 

 attache, who is Admiral Simms himself, 

 the military attache, and a new appointee 

 called the scientific attache, chosen by the 

 National Research Council. The function 

 of the scientific attache in England was to 

 keep in touch with all research activity in 

 that counltry and to send back almost daily 

 reports to our office in Washington. 

 Similarly, all reports of work done on this 

 side were sent by uncensored mail or by 

 cable to the offices of the scientific attaches 

 in London, Paris and Rome and distrib- 

 uted from there to the research groups in 

 Europe. At the request of the General 

 Staff, the Secretary of War issued orders 

 to all army officers who were sent on scien- 

 tific and technical missions to make dupli- 

 cate reports, one to the officer who sent 

 them and the other to the office of the sci- 

 entific attache, so that there might be a 

 central agency through which an intercon- 

 nection might be had between all kinds of 

 new developments. 



Furthermore, through the authority con- 

 ferred by the Military Committee of the 

 National Research Council, embracing the 

 heads of the technical bureaus of the Army 

 and Navy, Admirals Benson, Griffin, Earl 

 Taylor and Generals Williams, Squier, 

 Black and Gorgas, there was held in Wash- 

 ington at the office of the National Re- 

 search Council a weekly conference which 

 reviewed all the reports from abroad each 

 week and put the workers on this side into 

 the closest touch with the developments on 

 the other side. The whole plan was an 

 admirable illustration of the possibilities 

 of international cooperation in research. 

 In the submarine field, for example, all 

 anti-submarine work in England, France 

 and Italy which was reported by cable and 



