886 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXIX. No. 753 



take. Our statesmen and lawyers and 

 aldermen— even when they are honest and 

 well-meaning— are sadly lacking in knowl- 

 edge, except it be that little knowledge 

 which is proverbially so dangerous. 



For lack of wise engineering leadership 

 the public is being led to-day toward many 

 an unwise and wasteful expenditure. Men 

 are going up and down the land to-day 

 fostering fallacies and errors— errors which 

 will directly affect our national welfare 

 unless good sense and good judgment can 

 be invoked to correct them. 



No student of history can fail to be im- 

 pressed with the importance to a people of 

 able leaders. The prosperity of our own 

 favored nation rests no more certainly on 

 natural resources and on an intelligent and 

 law-abiding people than it rests on wise 

 leadership. The opportunity for leader- 

 ship is open to the engineer. His technical 

 ]mowledge is essential to the wise solution 

 of public problems. Can he couple with 

 his technical knowledge those other quali- 

 ties which are essential if the public is to 

 be safely guided^ 



And what are some of the qualities? 

 Well, I would name first of all what I may 

 term the judicial spirit. An engineer has 

 no business to be governed by prejudice or 

 partisanship. His sole object ought to be 

 to find where the truth lies. He must con- 

 stantly make choices in his daily work, and 

 sound judgment in such choices is a first 

 requisite. Of course he must have the 

 knowledge on which to base a judgment; 

 and yet when I am asked to recommend an 

 engineer for large responsibilities, I look 

 first of all for a man of broad mind, one 

 who is able to weigh matters fairly and 

 judge without prejudice. Even though 

 such a man be compelled to rely on others 

 for some part of the technical knowledge 

 required, he is a safer counselor by far 

 than a man of small caliber, though the 

 latter be loaded to the muzzle with facts 

 and theories. 



The public has some reason for distrust- 

 ing the judgment of so-called experts. If 

 your expert has been a man of one idea too 

 long, there is danger that his grasp of 

 broad principles may be deficient and that 

 his judgment may be warped. 



Can you develop in your students who 

 go out from this institution those qualities 

 of mind and heart and character which will 

 in later years ripen into sound judgment? 

 If they gain such development from their 

 college training they will gain something 

 much more rare and valuable than knowl- 

 edge of hydraulics or expertness in the 

 testing laboratory. 



Does it seem to you impossible to culti- 

 vate in your college course such personal 

 qualities as the judicial spirit? I grant 

 you that a proper mental equipment in the 

 student is essential at the start; but given 

 that, ought not the college years^the for- 

 mative period of a man's life — to be effect- 

 ive in cultivating just such qualities? Do 

 not our American colleges and universities 

 miss their highest opportunity if they fail 

 to develop in their students a broad out- 

 look, fair-mindedness, keenness to discern 

 error, love of the truth? 



I have emphasized the need of engineer- 

 ing leadership. But the essential to lead- 

 ership is the ability to deal with men. 

 Your engineer may be a master of profes- 

 sional knowledge. He may have even the 

 good judgment necessary for its applica- 

 tion; but if he can not meet men face to 

 face and hold his own with them, his 

 professional ability will not win him the 

 highest success. 



Every engineer of long experience knows 

 that the ability to write a clear report or a 

 sti'ong letter, to speak forcibly and con- 

 vincingly, either to one man alone or an 

 audience of hundreds— ability to do things 

 like these is as valuable to an engineer as 

 technical knowledge. Training in writing 

 and in speaking is being emphasized more 

 and more in our engineering courses. 



