With 25,000 scientific journals in the world in which to exhibit their new discoveries and theories, members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science rarely save breathtaking news for the annual meetings of that body. Nevertheless they find it helpful to assemble for a few days during the winter to take stock of themselves and their ideas. At such meetings the lay Press often gets first wind of things which Science has had on the fire for some time. Last week 3,000 U. S. and Canadian American Association members gathered in Boston for their 93rd meeting. They were welcomed by Massachusetts' Governor Ely and by Massachusetts Institute of Technology's President Karl Taylor Compton on behalf of M. I. T., Harvard and eight other Greater Boston institutions acting as hosts. Then in scores of sectional meetings the scientists settled down to read 1,500 papers. Among them:
War. Pacifists say that as civilization progresses, war should decrease. To prove that, in the past, the reverse has been true, a historical war chart was exhibited by two Russian expatriates. The chartmakers plotted the amount of war in the Occidental world from 500 B. C. to 1925 A. D. They surveyed 902 wars, gave each an index number based on duration, number of combatants, number of casualties, number of participating countries, proportion of combatants to noncombatants. From this they computed index numbers for each of the 24 whole centuries examined and for the fractional 25th.
The war curve receded from the ancient highs of Greece and Rome to the 12th Century, when the index number was 2.7. As Christendom, galvanized by the Crusades, moved toward the Renaissance, the war indices started to climb by leaps & bounds. The index of the 15th Century was 31.12. of the 18th, 567.5. There was a slight downswing in the tranquil 19th; but in the first quarter of the World War century the number was 13,735.98—eight times the total of all preceding centuries.
Corollary surveys of separate countries showed that a nation is most warlike in periods of territorial expansion and economic power, that when a nation is "great" it makes war. Holland, the chartmakers pointed out, long stagnant while other countries scrabbled for land & trade, has doggedly refused to fight since 1833. They concluded that bigger & worse wars are in store, that those who believe otherwise are believers in miracles.
Bespectacled Chartmaker Pitirim Alexandrovich Sorokin was born in Russia 45 years ago. His studies of violence have not been entirely academic. He was imprisoned thrice under the Tsarist regime for radicalism, thrice by the Bolshevists for conservatism. Sentenced to death, he was awaiting execution when the Communist Government relented, chased him out in 1922. Next year he came to the U. S., taught at the University of Minnesota, was naturalized in 1930, is now head of Harvard's Sociology Department. Chartmaker Nikolai Nikolaevich Golovine, 58, distinguished World War historian, was once a general staff officer of the Imperial Army and professor at the Imperial Military Academy. He makes his headquarters in Paris, has lectured at the French Military Academy, the U. S. War College.