Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 55.djvu/571

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T is probably not too much to say that the true measure of the intelligence and efficiency of a government is the extent to which, in the various spheres of activity which it controls, it recognizes the authority and adopts the methods of science. There is one department of Government—the remark might be applied to nearly all civilized governments, and very pointedly to our own—in which science receives a large and serious recognition, and that is the Navy Department. We have lately had a striking exhibition, which the world at large has watched with great interest, of the high state of efficiency to which a navy can be brought in a comparatively short space of time. If the question is asked how it was done, there is but one answer: it was done by recognizing science and working on scientific lines. To work on scientific lines is simply to study carefully, in the light of the best available knowledge, the means for accomplishing a desired end, and having found the best means, to adopt them in practice. Our naval administration has fortunately been able to repel if not wholly, at least to a remarkable extent, the intrusion of "political" influence, and has consequently been able to apply itself without serious distraction to the accomplishment of its own special tasks. It has called science to its aid not only as regards purely physical questions, but as regards questions of organization; and the result is that it has succeeded in giving the nation not only ships and guns, but the men who are fitted by knowledge, by training, and by discipline to make the best possible use of the ships and guns.

Next to the navy in the recognition accorded to science, but yet a long way off, comes the army. We are speaking now, of course, of our own army; and what the "long way off" meant in waste of money and of human life, in the suffering and misery of brave men, is a too familiar tale. Had science governed the operations of the land forces and presided over their whole organization to the same extent that it did over the operations and organization of the navy, a certain recent page of history would have borne a very different record, and would not have been so burdened as it is with shame and heartache to patriotic citizens.

Killing and being killed are serious matters, and everybody understands that the business can not safely be trifled with. That is why science is allowed to have its own way almost entirely in the navy, and to exercise a large measure of control in the army, with the effect of rendering the first a nearly perfect machine, and giving to the latter a high degree of efficiency for its own purposes. But have we not here object lessons which ought to be applied to other departments of the Government? Is it only in the matter of killing that the aid of science is required? Can the public at large not rise to the conception that, if science can make splendid killing machines, it might also, if allowed fair play, make excellent administrative machines for peaceful purposes? We have departments which deal with such important matters as currency and finance, agriculture and statistics, the administration of justice, the control of railway traffic, the erection of public buildings and the improvement of waterways, the carrying out of geodetic and geological surveys, the representation of the