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450 ADDRESS BY HOWARD HANSON [J. S. M. P. E.
they have accomplished to an amazing degree. It seemed to me as I listened to the results of Doctor Fletcher's experiments that the time has come when sound reproduction can itself become creative — that science may produce tonal beauty of a quality which has no counterpart in the sounds of the musical instruments and ensembles which we know today. This seems to me to be a legitimate goal.
But there is something else which is much closer to my heart today. I have the uncomfortable feeling that you as scientists are too good for us — that you have given us tools which are beyond our ability to understand and to use wisely. The terrible condition of the world today is all too vivid an illustration of what I am saying. Science gives us the airplane with which we can annihilate space and bring mankind closer together. We convert the airplane into a bomber and use it to kill our fellows. The sciences of chemistry and of medicine give us the blessed means of easing human pain. We divert the same scientific inventiveness to the production of gases which burn out men's lungs. Science puts into our hands magnificent tools but we are so spiritually unprepared for these miracles that we are quite likely to use them for the purpose of committing physical and spiritual suicide.
Does the scientist have any responsibility in all of this moral chaos? Is his task only to produce the tools and to allow us to misuse them as we will? I do not believe so. It seems to me that those of you who are creating the mechanisms which the rest of us are to use must be interested in the use to which they are put. You can not remain aloof to the manner in which these products of your hands and brain serve humanity for good or ill.
I have spoken with enthusiasm of the work which you have done in the field of sound and 1 say again, you have been too good for us. In the field of radio, for example, you must at times have the feeling that all of us — composers, performers, scientists, and technicians — are banded together for the high and noble cause of selling soap. Now I have nothing against the selling of soap. Certainly from the amount of time devoted to it we must be the cleanest nation in the world. The women of America must have the softest of hands and the whitest of teeth or our efforts have been in vain. All this is doubtless important but it was certainly not for this that you have labored.
In the field of the motion picture too often the same condition obtains. Magnificent invention is used to serve a cause which is too