the induction-coil, the transformer, the telephone, the radio, and a score of other important inventions. From these discoveries of Faraday's has come this wonderful age of electricity in which we now live.

But Faraday saw none of this. His only purpose was to add to the sum total of human knowledge. His was the pursuit of truth, for truth's sake. His chief interest was not in practical applications. It was knowledge of Nature and her ways which he sought. Simply to know the truth regarding the universe, was the supreme longing of his soul. That quest, we call pure research. Without the discoveries of such great scientists, there would have been no progress. We should still stand where the cave-man stood. Just now, the world, and America in particular, is slacking down in its pursuit of pure research. We have great industrial laboratories in abundance. Out of them come the mass production and the brilliant applications of science in this modern age. But the discovery of new truth which shall be the foundation for fresh advances in future generations, is not forthcoming as rapidly as needful. We are living on previous capital, without making the additions necessary for further advances. What the world needs to-day is scientists of the type of Faraday. As Huxley said, "a Faraday at a million dollars a year would be dirt cheap." Secretary Hoover recently said, "Our banking community does not do us the service in a year that the discoveries of Faraday do us daily."

THE NOBEL PRIZE IN PHYSICS IN December, at Stockholm, Sweden, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Dr. C. T. R. Wilson, of Cambridge University, England, and to Dr. Arthur H. Compton, of the University of Chicago.

Dr. Wilson has done much to increase our knowledge of the atom and its structure. A number of years ago, he devised a beautiful method of photographing the tracks of moving atoms by the trail of fog they leave in passing through moisture-laden air.

The work for which Dr. Compton has been honored deals with X-rays. For a considerable period following the discovery of X-rays in 1895, it was not known whether they are waves in the ether similar to light-waves, or a manifestation of some other form of energy. It seemed impossible to make them respond to the fundamental tests for light-waves. However, more refined experiments have brought success in each instance. Many of you will recall that it was the work of the Swiss physicist Laue,

described in the November issue of ST. NICHOLAS, which clearly established the fact that X-rays are very short waves in the ether. Dr. Compton now shows that the question as to the real nature of X-rays has not yet been entirely answered. X-rays produced at relatively low frequencies, that is, at less frequent rates of vibration, can be explained entirely on the basis of the wave-theory of light. But those of the very high frequencies can not. These higher forms seem to be due to rapidly moving particles, or corpuscles. Dr. Compton calls them "photons." In other words, X-rays seem to pass from a wave movement in the ether into a form of corpuscular energy, whose nature is not yet fully understood. It is for researches on this firing-line of science that Dr. Compton has been made a part-participant in this prize for 1927.

INTERESTING ITEMS

ONE of the most notable achievements of science during the last year is the explanation of a puzzle which has troubled astronomers for more than half a century. To understand it you must know that, whenever a substance in the state of incandescent vapor is viewed with a spectroscope, a spectrum of bright lines is obtained. a spectrum of bright lines is obtained. It is a remarkable fact, too, that each element gives a set of lines different from those of every other element. It is by the use of the spectroscope that the astronomer is able to analyze the stars and other heavenly objects, and to tell the kinds of elements of which they are composed. Now, for many years, the great nebula in Orion and some other nebulae have shown a set of lines not found in any element known here on the earth. Until recently it has been thought that these lines indicated the existence of a new element, named "nebulium." However, researches carried out at the California Institute of Technology show that these lines are due to the ordinary elements found in our atmosphere. No longer is there any ground for believing that anywhere in the universe are there different building blocks from those existing in our own planet.

lamps has doubled, and that of small lamps has tripled. Lamps of 10,000 watts for use in moving-picture studios and for aviation-field lighting, are increasing in production.

A SYNTHETIC air in which helium replaces nitrogen for use by deep-sea divers, is decreasing the risks of this hazardous calling. The helium is less soluble in the blood than nitrogen and more rapidly eliminated on coming to the surface. This sort of air also lessens the danger from "bends," a very painful condition which sometimes follows the high pressures to which divers are subjected. The record depth of deep-sea diving is 306 feet, made at Honolulu in 1915 in salvaging the F-4.

FOR many years the world's standard for measuring length has been the International Prototype Meter, as determined by the length of a platinum-iridium bar kept in the government archives at Paris. Of course, such a metallic bar changes its length with change of temperature and is subject to possible destruction. new international standard has been adopted. One meter is now defined as the wave-lengths of 1,533,164.13 waves of the red light emitted by luminous cadmium. In this, the world has a standard which will be entirely independent of any material change.

A

Pins,

Of the steel produced in this country, about forty per cent is used in the manufacture of small articles. Sixty tons of steel each year are used in the making of wrenches. This includes four million pipe-wrenches. Five hundred tons of steel a year are needed in the making of scissors. Needles require 400 tons, and pens nearly as much. The loose-leaf notebook calls for about 3000 tons. now made of steel instead of brass, demand 1400 tons. The buckles and fastenings of suspenders consume 250 tons. Toy cars and trucks use 15,000 tons of steel a year. The half-million pairs of barber's clippers made each year creates a demand for 62 tons. And there are scores of other similar articles, each making its appeal for this basic material of twentieth century progress.

THE first naked-eye comet to be reported for some time was discovered early in December by an amateur astronomer, at Melbourne, Australia. A rival, however, appeared by the end of the month, when Miss Anne Young, of Mount Holyoke College, told members of the American Astronomical Society that she had discovered another comet.

LINDE

NDBERGH flies to Mexico. Heads come off in China. This man must sit at the President's right at a dinner party and that one must not-or there may be a war in the Baltic States! And we watch-but we don't always know why. It's all a great international game. And you can't follow it any more than you could a game of baseball, if you didn't know how it was played.

Henry Kittredge Norton is going to be our interpreter, and every month he is going to give us the real meaning of the big international plays. He knows what they mean. He is a lawyer, was an officer in the air force during the war, and he has traveled around the worldnot sight-seeing on a tourist cruise, but digging out the

THE MONTH ABROAD N their desire to furnish reasons

The League of join the League of Nations, many peoNations ple have become very critical of the League itself. They have told us how the League has not done this and has not done that; how it has not done away with international friction nor brought about general disarmament. They would imply that because it has not done these things, the League itself is a failure.

The question whether the United States should join the League is one which the American people must decide on the basis of whether they can best serve the world's interests and their own by staying out or going in. For the present they have decided to stay out. But that should not prevent us from recognizing that the League has become a most important factor for the settling of disputes among the European nations.

hidden meanings of international tangles. Whether in China or Japan, in England, France, Germany or Italy, or in the countries of Latin America, he has tried to look at things as the people there do-to see the game from both sides. In doing so he has come to know personally many of the men who are now making history. They read his books and his articles because they respect his opinion.

Here is a chance to follow world events with an expert. He doesn't belong to any party. He is not for or against any other country. He asks us to ride no hobby of his. But he will show us what is happening in this wide world of ours, and what it means.

-EDITOR.

secured their independence from Russia. Both states claimed the city of

Lithuanians got it first, and the Poles were about to attack, when the other nations arranged an armistice until

the matter could be settled amicably. Two days later about 12,000 Poles led by General Zeligowski, seized Vilna and held it. The Council of Ambassadors, to whom the decision had been left, finally decided that the city should go to Poland. Lithuania refused to accept this decision, and insisted that she was still at war with Poland. She was too small to attack Poland, however, so she closed her frontier and shut off Polish trade.

There was constant irritation and talk of war, and finally Poland was considering invading Lithuania, when the League intervened. Both parties agreed to accept mediation to see if the problem could be solved without war. It is a difficult problem, and no solution is yet in sight, but

the League is entitled to full credit for averting another war. A war which is delayed, is likely never to start.

A STILL more dangerous matter in which the League was helpful, is the growing rivalry beFrance Tries tween France and to Calm Italy Italy. These two countries have never been very good friends. It was because of quarrels before the Great War that Italy entered into alliance with Germany and her old enemy, Austria. This alliance was broken when the war started, and Italy finally joined the Allies. The war friendship France continued for a time while Italy was engaged in disputes with Jugo-Slavia, the successor of Austria on the Adriatic Sea, the control of which Italy very much desires.

with

Meanwhile Italy had been brought under the Fascist influence, and the Fascist leader, Mussolini, was determined that Italy should be a great Power. Under his inspiration many Italians dream of great things, even such great things as restoring the Roman Empire. This would mean Italian domination, not only in the Adriatic, but in the Mediterranean Sea, in North Africa, and in the Balkans. But wherever Italy turned, France was before her and ready to oppose her new ambitions.

Late in 1926 Mussolini made a treaty with Albania, a little state on the eastern shore of the Adriatic, which granted Italy many privileges and greatly offended Jugo-Slavia. Imagine the Italian feelings, then, when they heard that on Armistice Day France and Jugo-Slavia had signed a treaty of alliance. They immediately made a new and closer agreement with Albania, but the resentment against France flared up again.

But the League Council was in session. M. Briand, the Foreign Minister of France, was there, and working hard for peace in all directions. He took the opportunity to say, while all the world was listening to what was said at Geneva, that he would be very glad to meet Mussolini and come to an agreement on all matters of dispute between France and Italy. It was a fine gesture of peace and may lead Italy, like Poland, to take the way of the League instead of the road to war.

FOR many generations England has had the greatest navy in the world. It was by her sea Who Shall Have power that Britain the Biggest built up the great Navy? British Empire. And to-day England feels that the ability to keep the seas open for her

ships in time of war, is the only way she can be sure of obtaining the food that is necessary to feed her people. It was in large part the threat of the

FULL FATHOM FIVE To the Men of the S-4

HE six men were in a long, narrow room, full of complicated machinery and shining cigar-shaped torpedoes. It was probably quite dark and, in addition, terribly cold. There were bunks in the room and on the bunks were blankets which may have kept the men warm. From time to time one of them rapped on the cold, black steel wall; these faint metallic sounds were picked up by another submarine and from there sent out to millions of people who are living in the sunlight and can talk to one another and can breathe.

At first the tap, tapping on the metal wall meant something. We were talking to them, cheering them, and they were answering back, "Please hurry." All one night this conversation went back and forth between men who were battling the heavy sea and spray that froze where it broke, and other men so far away that they might be, for all we could do to help them, on another planet.

At first the hammer in that frightful narrow room spoke words we could understand. Then it became inarticulate, merely a hammer against a steel wall.

Then it became fainter and fainter. . . and now it is silent.

It would have been small consolation for those six men to know that a whole nation was hoping and praying for them, that every one of us thought of himself in the long blind room full of machinery a hundred feet below daylight. As they lay huddled on the floor to breathe the last traces of oxygen, their agony and hopelessness were more terrible than anything we can imagine, even as their lonely courage passes imagination.

AN EDITORIAL FROM "THE
NEW YORK EVENING POST"

Germans against this British sea supremacy that led to war in 1914.

One of the results of that war was to make the United States perhaps the most powerful nation in the world. Another result was that the United States was building a navy which

would be larger than Britain's. When the United States offered at the Washington Conference, to cut down her navy to the same size as the British navy, the British accepted gladly. An agreement was made in regard to battle-ships, but some of the countries present refused to limit cruisers, so no agreement was made in regard to their number.

The people in England who want to continue to have the biggest navy, immediately began to build cruisers, and soon they had many more than the United States. President Coolidge asked them to meet at Geneva, in the hope that an agreement limiting the number of cruisers could be made. But the British "big navy" people prevented such an agreement, and now President Coolidge has approved a plan to build a large number of new cruisers for our navy.

We do not need a larger navy than Britain's, but we do feel that we should have one just as large. As there is no other power that has one anywhere near as big as Britain at present, we should like to make an agreement by which both the British and the American navies would be limited to a small number of ships. The problem is to get the British "big navy" men to consent to this. It may be that when they see the United States building a huge fleet, a fleet larger than Great Britain can afford, they will withdraw their opposition. But there is grave danger in such a course, for they may persuade the British people that the Americans are building a fleet to cut off their food-supply, and thus bring into existence the same kind of rivalry that led England and Germany to

war.

WHILE this naval competition is giving concern to the government in No More War Washington, it is also considering another matter which has a more peaceful aspect. Some time ago M. Briand said France would be willing to make a treaty with the United States by which they would agree never to go to war against each other.

Such a suggestion has a strong appeal for Americans. Certainly we do not want another war with anybody if we can help it. However, desirable as such an agreement seems, we can hardly go into it without giving due consideration to all its possibilities.

Would such a treaty ever prevent us from protecting ourselves or from helping some one else who was being wronged? Suppose Germany had proposed such an agreement, say in 1908. No more could have been

said against it than can be said against such an agreement with France now. If we had made it, we should not only have had to endure the destruction of our ships and the killing of our citizens by the German submarines during the World War, but we should have had to endure much more serious outrages which the German warlords in their desperation, and knowing that we would not go to war, would have perpetrated.

If we had had such a treaty with Spain before 1898, we could not have freed Cuba from her intolerable oppression, for we tried every other

possible means to relieve it before we finally did go to war. It is not always possible to foresee all such questions, and by making an absolute agreement not to go to war with France or any other country, we should tie our hands when circumstances might arise in which we should very much want them to be free. In the present organization of the world, war is still the instrument of right as well as of wrong. The necessary steps should be taken to keep the way to right and justice open, before we give up even so undesirable an instrument as war. H. K. N.

THE MONTH AT HOME THE Seventieth Congress of the United States is now in session,

The State of the Union

having been convened on December sixth. Nicholas Longworth again wields the gavel in the House of Representatives, while Vice-President Dawes, of course, presides in the Senate. The speakership in the House is a highly-prized honor; in the Senate, the Vice-President finds it his duty, prescribed by law, and, therefore, something of a burden.

President Coolidge's message was read, since he does not choose to follow the custom, revived by Woodrow Wilson, of presenting his report on the state of the Union in person. The nine months that had intervened since the sixty-ninth Congress adjourned, had been peaceful, except for our policing of Nicaragua and sending marines and sailors to China, where, fortunately, they were not involved, save in the Battle of Socony Hill, at Nanking.

At home the Mississippi had done as much damage as an invading army, though the loss of life, thanks to the promptness of the Red Cross and Mr. Hoover's efficient aids, was gratifyingly low.

New England, particularly Vermont, had likewise been visited by floods, with disastrous results and many casualties. Our army proved itself a worthy weapon for peace in both

Tax reduction was a succulent subject. Messrs. Coolidge and Mellon wish to go slow in the matter. Congress, and many outside, including the influential Chamber of Commerce of the United States, want generous slices of "cake." With remarkable speed the House passed the tax bill, lopping off some two hundred and eighty millions, or sixty-five more than Mr. Mellon stipulated. The bill now goes to the Senate for conference, and by the time it is patched and mended, it

Mr. Coolidge's attitude on farmrelief did not strike any deep note of approval in the West. His sojourn there last summer, with all its hearty welcome, evidently did not change his opinion in respect to the farm problem. And in this connection the opinion of "The Kansas City Star," a notably independent and intelligent newspaper, is worth repeating:

"The McNary-Haugen bill is not the only solution to the farm problems. There are other measures that might be fostered by the Government