Page:Science and War.djvu/18

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human being with his powers magnified to those of a giant but destitute of moral sense. In setting the note of the horrors of this War the Germans have sought to imitate such a being—to deify Superior Force and to proclaim that it is all that is to be respected or to be striven for. That this National religion has brought them disaster is due to the fact that their supposed superiority was an illusion. Even with all the advantages of their long preparation and our unpreparedness we find that they had but little to teach us and that so soon as time had permitted us to organize our powers we were industrially and intellectually their equals if not their masters all along the line. But their conduct has taught us one lesson, viz. to put no faith in human perfectibility but to realize that in War one must be prepared to face the uncontrolled use of all the powers that Science, for good or evil, has given to mankind. There is no ground for thinking that from advance in knowledge there will come any increase in those restraining forces—call them 12