DECEMBER 20, 1918] 
Holland and Switzerland. It is said that 
Nernst found Einstein living in a garret in 
Switzerland and had little difficulty in engag- 
ing him for the University of Berlin. It has 
been estimated that a third of the more noted 
German scientists were foreign born. Nearly 
all of these aliens soon become Teutonized and 
were thereafter regarded as German. No 
small fraction of the prestige enjoyed by Ger- 
man universities was due to imported talent 
and to that of the Jews who were treated al- 
most as aliens. The faculties of our univer- 
sities are undoubtedly too immobile. A freer 
transfer of instructors from one university to 
another and from foreign universities to our 
own will undoubtedly lead to better instruc- 
tion in them and enhanced prestige for them. 
"Technical men of ability of all nationalities 
found in Germany a welcome and a rich field 
of endeayor. Facilities for working out proc- 
esses were good and capital for developing 
manufacturing possibilities not difficult to ob- 
tain. A large fraction of the better known 
German manufactures originated in France, 
Italy, England or America, the inventor 
having gone to Germany to secure the op- 
portunity for development not available at 
home or foreign process having been adopted 
and developed. We have neither the cheap 
capital nor the cheap labor in this country 
but we have the raw material, cheap power and 
the market, with unequaled opportunities for 
industrial research in a wide variety of lines 
of manufacture. What we most need perhaps 
is a more perfect mobilization of our industrial 
resources to the end that fewer industrial pros-— 
pects of value are left unworked. With such 
we should be able, with improved processes 
and machinery to compete with cheaper capital 
or labor anywhere in almost any line of manu- 
facture. 
So much for those factors in Germany’s sci- 
entific and technical prestige more or less 
worthy of our consideration. There have been 
many other factors which we need only know 
to guard against. Plagiarism and piracy were 
common practises, and from personal knowl- 
edge I doubt whether a third of even the more 
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607 
eminent German scientists were free from this 
taint. Further, work of foreigners was taught 
as the work of Germans in both literature and 
science. Neither fairy tale nor scientific dis- 
covery, if in an obscure publication, was safe 
from adoption as their own while the mislead- 
ing of the young student was easy and com- 
mon. Our own faults are quite the reverse 
of these. If anything, in our own work we 
pay too little regard to the work of others 
and in our teaching we are rather inclined to 
magnify the work of foreigners and disparage 
our own. 
In short Germany’s scientific and industrial 
prestige was due chiefly to a better mobilization 
of forces; freer publication, better opportuni- 
ties for research, to ideas and talent imported 
from other countries and plenty of push and 
pride in achievement. What we need in 
America is a better mobilization all along the 
line. We possess plenty of talent, as a rule 
not well directed nor given much encourage- 
ment. We have plenty of universities and in- 
dustrial research laboratories of the highest 
grade, operating as uncoordinated individual 
units with very little team work to achieve 
large ends. We have many strong scientific 
and technical organizations each holding regu- 
lar meetings and supporting one or more 
journals. These organizations, like our uni- 
versities, are strongly individualistic and ex- 
hibit very little team work or cooperation to 
achieve broad purposes. Science is only just 
beginning to be popular in our schools and in 
the public press; we need to advertise and 
popularize not only scientific and technical 
work, but especially deep broad fundamental 
principles in every line of effort. Finally and 
most important of all we need vastly increased 
effort in living up to our possibilities. In 
habitual effort the Teutons excelled us by at 
least 30 per cent. and at least equalized their 
deficiency in originality. We might easily 
double our stress of achievement without 
detriment to ourselves. 
For some of these problems in securing our 
prestige and independence through achieve- 
ment, we have no solutions to offer; for others 
