530 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. L. No. 1302 



tlie institution affords striking evidence at 

 once of the diversity of modern warfare and 

 of the ultimate practical value of recondite 

 researches. 



Although formal requests from the govern- 

 ment for services ceased nominally toward the 

 close of the calendar year 1918, they actually 

 continued imtil nearly the middle of 1919. 

 Thus, the optical work and the researches on 

 the concentration of nitrates for the War 

 Department did not end until June, 1919; 

 the information work of the Department of 

 Historical Research continued until mid- July; 

 some special work for the Navy was done by 

 the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism as 

 late as September of this year; while a few 

 other relations in government undertakings 

 still remain to be served. It is only recently, 

 also, that members of the institution in the 

 military and other services of the government 

 have returned to their posts; so that emer- 

 gence from the untoward conditions in which 

 we find ourselves has only fairly begun. 



ITaturally, this deflection of interest from 

 the normal activities of the institution has 

 led to many changes, to some dislocations, 

 and to the suspension, or even abandonment, 

 of a number of projects. The war, in fact, 

 hag brought some sinister consequences to the 

 institution as well as to most other organiza- 

 tions. Fortunately, of those who entered the 

 military and naval service only two lives were 

 lost, namely, Karl Edward Anderson and 

 Billings Theophilus Avery, both of the De- 

 partment of Experimental Evolution, who 

 died during the year 1918. Fortunately, like- 

 wise, while some members of the investigatory 

 staffs of the departments of research have 

 been drawn off, by reason of their abilities, 

 into industrial or other occupations, the 

 number of such is not only small but not in 

 excess of an inevitable and healthy exchange 

 between a progressive establishment and its 

 contemporaries. 



Detailed reports concerning the war activi- 

 ties of the institution, and particularly con- 

 cerning the work done by the departments *of 

 research, are on iile in the office of adminis- 

 tration ; so that if it should become necessary 

 to publish an account of these activities the 



essential data are at hand. The time for 

 publication of such an account does not ap- 

 pear to have arrived, since the government is 

 entitled to initiative and priority in all these 

 matters.^ Hence only the briefest references 

 to them are made in this and other parts of 

 the current Year Book. 



It should go without saying that the dis- 

 turbed conditions, social, industrial, economic 

 and governmental, under which the world is 

 now laboring are not without untoward effects 

 on the institution. Being a part of and not 

 apart from contemporary life, it must share 

 to a greater or less extent in the consequences 

 which follow from an imparalleled attempt 

 at national supremacy based on the desperate 

 doctrine of " dominance or downfall." But 

 obvious as these consequences are in the ab- 

 stract, there appear to be many outside and 

 some within the institution who think that it 

 may continue to expand regardless of the 

 limits of its income and regardless of the fact 

 that the purchasing capacity of this income 

 has diminished by one half during the past 

 decade. In line with these vagaries there is 

 a recrudescence also of the juvenile notion so 

 commonly held of the institution in its 

 earlier years, that it may play the role of 

 paternalism for other establishments and for 

 individuals, and that it may act generally as 

 a salvager in the wreckage of the world. 

 Similarly, just as in political affairs it is 

 often assumed that the prevailing scarcity of 

 necessities and the burdens of taxation may 

 be relieved by other means than by productive 

 labor, so it is assumed that the institution 

 may meet the increasing costs of its opera- 

 tions, not by appropriate restrictions and 

 economies, but by increasing appropriations 

 drawn from mythical sources. Thus the dis- 

 tribution of necessary disappointment, which 

 has been so large a part of the unproductive 

 business of the administrative office hitherto, 

 is now increasing, stimulated by two genera- 

 tions of men unaccustomed to the practise of 



2 A concise history of the production of optical 

 glass is given by Dr. Fred E. Wright (major, 

 Engineer Corps, TJ. S. A.), of the staff of the Geo- 

 physical Laboratory, in "America's Munitions," 

 published by the War Department in 1919. 



