Repository: UIHistories Project: Dedication - New Chemistry Building [PAGE 37]

EXTRACTED TEXT FROM PAGE:

from the house. It has let in the light. It has renewed our eyes as they have worn out. Through telescope and microscope it has shown us the greatest and the smallest things of the universe. It has bottled our drinks and held our lights. Every year still adds new service, just in proportion as experiments add new knowledge. To-day we hear of a new glass permeable to ultraviolet light, glass opaque to X-rays, and glass for cooking utensils. Not one of these little increments will ever be lost, but will continue in use, so how highly should we value them? Why did we delay so long in coming thus far, and how far or fast may we still go? Research is preparation. It is preparing in one decade for the problems and the necessary work of the next. There are various kinds of preparedness. We are hearing a great deal about one of them nowadays-—immediate preparedness for national defense. But there is a more far-sighted preparedness that no one has adequately described and of which the building of new laboratories is a token. This type is the very best kind of preparedness for national defense, if begun in time. The continued study of the secrets of nature, the uncovering of buried treasures which always seem buried just deeply enough to develop the diggers—these are the criteria of a strengthening nation. Research presents a way, and the only certain one, of insuring peace, of preparing successfully for defense, and of being successful in war. It is the lasting, undeviating factor which has always dominated. This may sound bold and entirely inconsistent in itself. It is all true. Can we learn to see it? From the military expert to the anthropologist, thinking men recognize that for over 100,000 years war has been almost continuous on the earth. The inventors of chipped flint successfully fought those inferiors who had not experimented with flint. There were then no better arms. These also got their game even when it was scarce and other means failed, and so they cont'nued to survive. This little and early example of survival was repeated a great many times before our present complex world conditions were reached, and will as surely continue to be repeated. The fundamentals were always the same. A 42 cm. gun is only a better flint. Trinitrotoluol is only a more modern sling. Arms and ammunition have changed, but just so have also changed the myriads of other important acces(34)