XI 



SCIENTIFIC PAPERS 



POSTBELLUM REFLECTIONS ON THE PLACE OF 

 PALEONTOLOGY AMONG THE SCIENCES 



BY JOHN M. CLARKE 

 (Presented before the Paleontological Society, Washington, December 191 8) 



As we pressed into this late war and while in the midst of its 

 labors, we set ourselves to determine what service there lay within 

 us which could be turned to its ends and when we found such knowl- 

 edge or such competency, we laid it forthwith at the command of 

 our military establishment. I do not mean to ask how many of us 

 found ourselves possessed of a war-time serviceability, how far our 

 special knowledge was or could be adapted to the call of the time, 

 or how remote it may have been regarded in the bustling haste with 

 which the country enlisted in this all-absorbing enterprise. We 

 searched ourselves; we entered into every cranny of our storehouse 

 to discover where lay some hidden, perhaps forgotten potency which 

 might now be drawn into the country's service. 



The sword had been thrust in our hand; it was an unfamiliar tool 

 and the part for which we were cast was obviously to mend, not to 

 mar. Feverish with desire to serve, we turned to the uncounted 

 and incessant civilian activities essential to the great struggle. For 

 these we strained our thought and our help, for them we saved and 

 retrenched, while over and through, about and in all these activities 

 was the ever-present horror of a world submerged in a welter of crime 

 out of which rose the thundering approach of retributive justice. 

 Then suddenly the alert resounded and the great fight was done. 

 As if over night, it seemed, in the very heart of infinite preparations 

 and amid the blaze of uncounted miles of battle line, the powers of 

 darkness succtmibed. 



Now what was the first reaction upon you when the truth of 

 victory was secure? After the sigh of relief from overburdened 

 hearts had transformed itself into a shout of joy and the high pressure 

 was released, which way did your thoughts turn? I have heard a 

 paleontologist whose total energies had been given over throughout 



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