270 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLIX, No. 1264 



gations, not forgetting the activities of the 

 •plant pathologist, there would be no difficulty 

 .whatsoever in making a case for botany of 

 which none of us need be ashamed. 

 • The botanists of the world apparently left 

 it to the Germans to devise the ultimate wa.y 

 in which a knowledge of plants could be 

 adapted for purposes of war. At least the 

 following incident given by a war correspon- 

 dent, which appeared in print but not vouched 

 for by me, may be accepted as an illustration 

 of a method of applying taxonomy, which, to 

 say the least, is capable of wide use. A man 

 in a German uniform was brought into a 

 German camp, suspected of being a spy. He 

 ■claimed to have come from a certain part of 

 the front and to be the bearer of an important 

 verbal message concerning the movements of 

 trooi 3, the ordinary methods of communica- 

 tion uaving been shot away. Immediately the 

 ■camp algologist was summoned and samples of 

 mud from the boots of the prisoner as well as 

 dirt from his finger nails were examined micro- 

 scopically. The botanist reported finding Con- 

 ferva utriculosa Kurtzing or Tribonema uiric- 

 ulosum Hazen, according to the nomenclatorial 

 code approved by the General Staff, together 

 with certain blue^greens and diatoms which 

 constituted a characteristic flora of a region 

 quite different from that from which the pris- 

 oner claimed to have come. In fact, by con- 

 sulting the charts prepared by botanists for 

 this purpose it was possible to indicate that 

 the man had been in Russia. Confronted with 

 this overwhelming evidence the victim of ap- 

 plied botany confessed that he was a Russian 

 spy and was shot at sunrise. 



The role that the ecologist might play in 

 connection with camouflage and the aeroplane 

 service was suggested at the meeting a year 

 ago and need not be amplified here, although 

 the temptation to do so is great. But with the 

 close of the war, which obviously was not ex- 

 pected at the time this symposiiun was ar- 

 ranged for, such things considered from th6 

 standpoint of military effectiveness seem more 

 or less out of date and we need to turn to more 

 vital matters. 



For the past four years and more, science 



has been subservient to war needs. The im- 

 portance of any investigation has been dis- 

 torted and magnified. A trivial piece of work 

 conceived and finished in a week might be 

 ■more useful in waging war than a lifetime 

 spent in producing fundamental results which 

 have no military value. Thank God, however, 

 we are not always at war. 



It is likewise well to bear in mind that one 

 should be cautious in citing too freely, as has 

 been common in the past, the supposedly favor- 

 able attitude which Germany has held for all 

 things scientific. May it not be that this 

 tendency held up as a model for all the world 

 and manifesting itself in most substantial sub- 

 sidations, was merely another form of propa- 

 ganda, or at least primarily for the purpose 

 of receiving every possible aid from every sci- 

 ence which could contribute in the slightest 

 way to building up a perfect wax machine? 

 In view of all that has transpired one is justi- 

 fied in questioning whether the underlying 

 idea of the Teutonic mind was not science for 

 science's sake — ^but science for war's sake. 



When the Botanical Committee of the iN'a- 

 tional Research Council was first formed it 

 was apparently expected by some that this ag- 

 gregation of botanical lights would assemble 

 and after solemnly mentalizing on the whole 

 situation would announce some discovery 

 which would illuminate the world and win the 

 iwar. IsTothing could have been more absurd. 

 So far as I know the only two suggestions 

 which were made along the line of using bo- 

 tanical weapons for the direct destruction of 

 life were rejected because they savored too 

 much of Teutonic barbarity. Naturally the 

 chief function of this or any other botanical 

 committee could only be to have referred to it 

 military problems requiring a knowledge of 

 plants and their possibilities, in order that the 

 most rapid and satisfactory solution be reached. 

 That this was not always done until much 

 valuable time was lost was not the faidt of 

 the botanists concerned, although it may have 

 been the result of the general attitude of 

 botanists, who, since they were freed from the 

 demands made by materia medica, have re- 

 garded the birth of any botanical idea of prac- 



