Science and Civilization

Military security has terribly hampered Vannevar Bush's discussion of the prospect of future war and its effect on what he calls "our society of free men." Bush, who as wartime head of the Office of Scientific Research and Development probably knows as much about the impact of science on modern warfare as anyone, sets down a double thesis: that a forthcoming war will not be very different from World War II, and that a democracy should be capable of preparing itself to prevent such a war.

His case is weakened by the restriction on facts he can print to back it up. Bush details the changes in warfare since World War II, and those we can reasonably expect in the future. He describes how light, mobile, powerful weapons such as recoilless guns have swung the advantage in land warfare back to the defense; how the co-ordination of radar net, jet-aircraft, and guided missile should make things very tough for the high-altitude bomber; bow rockets and fast submarines will be advanced enough to chop up conventional naval vessels at long range. Bush tends to describe war as crystallizing into a stable pattern-he states that a future war will bring "no such burst of new devices" as appeared in World War II. The devices he cannot talk about may prove him very wrong.

The second half of Bush's thesis is more acceptable. His belief that science in a democracy is necessarily more creative than that in a totalitarian state is pretty suspect--at the end of the war Nazi scientist were well ahead of the Allies in the development of aircraft, guided missiles, tanks, and submarines, among other things. But his does not mean that we must be unprepared.

Bush feels that we must make democracy work to keep itself prepared for at least a generation, working at the same time to extend this democracy throughout the world. His definition of democracy is a broad one--it includes using our technical progress unselfishly to achieve economic as well as political freedom. This makes good sense indeed.