toward discovering new ways of killing. And virtually, that improvement in warfare is already begun. In the laboratories of Europe,—just as the farseeing prophesied after Second Ypres—men are studying new ways to destroy life.
Scientific discovery involves the factors of leisure. To reach great things, a man cannot be hurried. War is all organized hurry. With both sides racing for victory, the savants of Europe had not the leisure to reach out toward the unknown. They worked with poison gas; that was already discovered, and merely needed improvement. Now, in the pause since the Armistice, they are venturing into the unknown. Let us take testimony again from the public and official remarks of General Swinton:
“. . . ray warfare. I imagine from the progress that has been made in the past that in the future we will not have recourse to gas alone, but will employ every force of nature that we can; and there is a tendency at present for progress in the development of the different forms of rays that can be turned to lethal purposes. We have X-rays, we have light rays, we have heat rays. . . . We may not be so very far from the development of some kinds of lethal ray which will shrivel up or paralyze or poison human beings . . . The final form of human strife, as I regard it, is germ warfare. I think it will come to that; and so far as I can see there is no reason why it should not, if you mean to fight. . . . prepare now . . . we must envisage these new forms of
