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Salient: An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria College, Wellington, N.Z. Vol. 11, No. 11, September 22nd, 1948

Mobilizing Science—for Peace or War

Mobilizing Science—for Peace or War

The formation of a scientific defence corps has recently been announced and application forms and informatory circulars on it are already available. The scheme is made very attractive by the offer of comparatively high salaries and the opportunity for two years' post-graduate training. Five years' continuous employment is guaranteed and made obligatory. No guarantee, however, of future employment is given, no choice of subject is assured and the recruits are in all respects under the control of the service chiefs. Vague promises are made but those who worked on defence research know just how good are such promises made by the chiefs of staff and departmental heads. It is to be hoped that no scientist is under the illusion that he will be able to pursue serious scientific work for long under this scheme. As with other defence measures proposed by the Government, for example the conscription of the eighteen-year-olds, the scheme is quite superficial and amounts to anything but a serious defence measure.

On considering the whole question of defence research, let us look back a little to the experience of the recent war and see how research was organised in the various belligerent countries and see how efficient these systems proved to be. In Germany from 1933 research was on a war footing and was well subsidised. It is now well substantiated that even military research in that country lagged far behind that of Britain. America and the Soviet Union. Firstly, many men of rare genius such as Einstein. Haber and Planck, being "security risks" and guilty of un-German activities, were persecuted, shunned or humiliated. Secondly, most research was of a short term and technical character. Little attention was paid to most aspects of fundamental research and many flelds of science were completey neglected and even suppressed. Prolonged secrecy, excessive compartmentalisation, degeneration of the universities, etc., all contributed to the decline of German science. In Britain, however, before the war, research was directed more towards peaceful ends. The universities remained free and virile and although they received little financial assistance and were rather removed from the exigencies of every day life they did succeed in establishing a large body of highly-trained scientists perpetuating and extending the great traditions of empirical and theoretical science. It was only this atmosphere which laid the ground for successful work in radar, atomic physics, penicillin, etc. France and America followed a similar line and according to such scientists as Julian Huxley, J. G. Crowther and Eric Ashby, who have worked in and visited the Soviet Union, Soviet science consciously follows the best traditions of French and British science with their academic freedom and their strong bias towards fundamental research.

Universities Boost Research

Thus the two great opposing camps adopted very different research policies. In the preceding years of peace the Allies did have small groups of defence scientists working, but contrary to general expectations it was not until the university men were brought in that real progress was made in the military laboratories and the Axis countries were soon speedily outstripped. Even in New Zealand it was that only too microscopic group of men with the most thorough university research experience who made the most spectacular contributions to our effort. After six years of war research these men have almost exhausted their scientific resources and must return to the old conditions, if they are to continue making worthwhile contributions.

It is becoming more and more evident that American research is tending to follow the name trend as German research did in 1936.

Already the Federal Government spends 500,000.000 dollars on research under the direction of the War and Navy Department while only 125,000,000 is spent on all other aspects of research. These figures exclude secret research amounting to hundreds of millions and most of which is of a military nature. (See J. R. Steelman in "Science and Public Policy.") The results of American secret research are practically closed to the Dominions. France who made such strides in atomic energy receives nothing while England who gave America radar, receives a mere trickle.

We cannot allow these American trends to come to New Zealand. Such conditions will stultify science and eventually render our scientists ineffective In solving the real problems of defence when and if they arise as it did with the German scientists. While our Government continues in keeping the university laboratories in an impoverished condition, the formation of a scientific defence corps cannot be taken seriously as a defence measure. It is merely a political palliative and at best a means of recruiting scientists to the war laboratories of America and Britain.

P.A.