Social Implications

The first speaker was Dr. Alan Morton, a plant physiologist. He pointed out that last year's Conference was only the crowning point of a 20-year-old controversy, that the 700 scientists present were specialists and experts in their own fields—biology, agronomy, etc.—and that they were not ignorant of classical genetical theory, having in fact all been trained in it. Further, they almost all realised the social significance of the questions they were discussing. The world faces something of a crisis in agriculture and food production—particularly the capitalist world. With Socialism firmly established in the Soviet Union the order of the day is now "On to Communism." Communism requires the full satisfaction of all our material requirements and the key to this problem is agriculture. This problem the USSR faces with confidence and Dr. Morton contrasted the pessimism of a recent American book "Road to Survival" with the optimism permeating the report of the' Lenin Academy proceedings.