ision
of the National Research Council, in its report for 1918, showed work of
national significance by the scholars in physics, mathematics, and
allied fields toward the solution of no fewer than sixty-eight
different problems, every one of which needed for its solution men with
training and knowledge and vision. At the outset, who among us had the
slightest conception of the complexity of the adaptations to warfare of
what was known to modern scholarship? We knew that the war was mounting
into the air, but who had any realization of the adjustments which this
involved? Fifteen fundamental problems based on pure physics promptly
arose with reference to instruments for airplane operation. For example,
at night and in the clouds, the aviator must have before his eyes a dial
which will indicate the slightest deviation from his course. Seven
problems had to do with airplane photography. As the art of camouflage
advanced, for instance, color filters had to be devised for its
detection from above. Seven additional problems had to do with factors
of construction and maintenance, as fuel efficiency. Nine others
affected ballooning; and the balloon, as the war developed, came to be
of greater and greater importance. Eleven studies were in signalling:
one, for example, a device for secret daylight signalling, with a range
of five miles or more. And please remember that all these were the task
of one branch of one organization within the field of pure science. By
common consent, the dullest branch of physics was held to be acoustics,
but since 1914 the whole question of sound-ranging has been in the hands
of experts in acoustics. A device developed by American physicists gave
our men nineteen seconds in which to take cover from cannon fired four
miles away. The most brilliant work in this field was that of a former
student of the Columbia School of Mines.

If I were to pick out one field in which the scholarly attitude has been
most brilliantly rewarded, it is that of medicine. If our army surgeons
and sanitarians had been confined to the practical family doctors, who
cannot be bothered with all this new-fangled stuff, our men would have
died like flies from disease, as they did in the Spanish-American War.
It was the laboratory man, the theorist, the highbrow if you like, who
made our health record a matter of national pride and congratulation. It
was the knowledge of a scholar, coupled with his instinctive
understanding of the