The scientist of today is
either a mixture of psychologist and inquisitor, studying with real
ordinary minuteness the meaning of facial expressions, gestures, and tones
of voice, and testing the truth-producing effects of drugs, shock therapy,
hypnosis, and physical torture; or he is chemist, physicist, or biologist
concerned only with such branches of his special subject as are relevant to
the taking of life. In the vast laboratories of the Ministry of Peace, and
in the experimental stations hidden in the Brazilian forests, or in the
Australian desert, or on lost islands of the Antarctic, the teams of
experts are indefatigably at work. Some are concerned simply with planning
the logistics of future wars; others devise larger and larger rocket bombs,
more and more powerful explosives, and more and more impenetrable armour-
plating; others search for new and deadlier gases, or for soluble poisons
capable of being produced in such quantities as to destroy the vegetation
of whole continents, or for breeds of disease germs immunized against all
possible antibodies; others strive to produce a vehicle that shall bore its
way under the soil like a submarine under the water, or an aeroplane as
independent of its base as a sailing-ship; others explore even remoter
possibilities such as focusing the sun's rays through lenses suspended
thousands of kilometres away in space, or producing artificial earthquakes
and tidal waves by tapping the heat at the earth's centre.
But none of these projects ever comes anywhere near realization, and
none of the three super-states ever gains a significant lead on the others.
What is more remarkable is that all three powers already possess, in the
atomic bomb, a weapon far more powerful than any that their present
researches are likely to discover. Although the