54S 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLII. No. 1086 



every department of the fighting armies, 

 from the Bed Cross service to the manu- 

 facture of guns and explosives, involves in- 

 cessantly chemical knowledge and — still 

 more chemical knowledge. 



But do not imagine that this is the first 

 chemical war : The art of killing and rob- 

 bing each other became "chemical" the 

 day gunpowder was invented ; at that time, 

 however, the existing knowledge of chem- 

 istry, was just of pinhead size. Napoleon 

 knew very well how to use adroitly exact 

 knowledge and chemistry for furthering his 

 insatiable ambition to dominate the world ; 

 so he surrounded himself with the most able 

 chemical advisers and scientists, and, for 

 a while at least, he placed himself at a de- 

 cided advantage over his many enemies; 

 incidentally, he thus helped to lay the 

 foundation for some very important 

 branches of chemical industry. 



"Les chiens ont appris quelquechose, " 

 exclaimed the Corsican conqueror when he 

 realized that his enemies began to adopt the 

 same means which had given him tem- 

 porary mastership over them; but those 

 whom he called so contemptuously "the 

 dogs" finally beat him at his own game. 



Ever since then, science, technology and 

 chemistry in particular have played a role 

 of increasing importance in the armament 

 of nations. This accounts perhaps for the 

 strange fact that the really great military 

 inventions have practically all emanated 

 from civilians and from non-military na- 

 tions like our own. If the men of the mil- 

 itary class, essentially conservative in all 

 countries, had been left to their own de- 

 vices, they would probably still be fighting 

 with bows and arrows, or perhaps with 

 the traditional sling. Nor should the pa- 

 cifist blame the chemist if the latter 's most 

 beautiful conquests in science, if his proud- 

 est discoveries, have been turned into 



means of relentless destruction and human 

 slaughter. Do not reproach chemistry with 

 the fact that nitrocellulose, of which the 

 first application was to heal wounds and to 

 advance the art of photography, was stolen 

 away from these ultra-pacific purposes for 

 making smokeless powder and for loading 

 torpedoes. Do not curse the chemist when 

 phenol, which revolutionized surgery, 

 turned from a blessing to humanity into a 

 fearful explosive, after it had been discov- 

 ered that nitration changes it into picric 

 acid. 



As well might you curse written speech 

 or language or the art of printing — by 

 which the most noble thoughts of the human 

 race have been expressed, disseminated and 

 preserved — if it has been used also to dis- 

 tribute the vilest lies and the most damna- 

 ble errors. 



Knowledge is like a knife. In the hands 

 of a well-balanced adult it is an instrument 

 for good of inestimable value; but in the 

 hands of a child, an idiot, a criminal, a 

 drunkard or an insane man, it may cause 

 havoc, misery, suffering and crime. 



Science and religion have this in common, 

 that their noble aims, their power for good, 

 have often, with wrong men, deteriorated 

 into a boomerang to the human race. Our 

 very successes will threaten to devour us 

 as long as all of us have not yet become 

 imbued with the truth that greater knowl- 

 edge, like greater possession of wealth or 

 power, demands a greater feeling of respon- 

 sibility, greater virtues, higher aims, better 

 men. 



Let us hope, in the meantime, that war 

 carried to its modern logical gruesomeness, 

 shorn of all its false glamor, deceptive pic- 

 turesqueness and rhetorical bombast, ex- 

 posed in all the nakedness of its nasty 

 horrors, may hurry along the day when we 

 shall be compelled to accept means for 

 avoiding its repetition. 



