advance. Perhaps in another session the real profiteers in professional crime may not fare so well as they have fared so far. Power from Sea Water S CIENTISTS and engineers have heard a great deal of late about an ambitious plan announced by the French scientist Georges Claude, who proposes to generate immense amounts of energy by taking advantage of the fact that in the tropics the surface water of the sea is warm and the bottom water is practically ice water. The plan has received considerable newspaper publicity, and the response of the average reader seems to vary all the way from serious acceptance to smiling dismissal. Yet it is, in our opinion, neither economical, on the one hand, nor chimerical, on the other. What Dr. Claude proposes to do is to erect an immense power plant on some tropical shore and extend large conduits to the bottom of the sea, reaching cold water at a few thousand feet depth. Through these conduits he would draw up water and use it to chill a mammoth steam condenser. This condensation of the contained steam would constantly create a vacuum, and in a vacuum water boils at ordinary room temperatures. Warm surface water would therefore be turned to steam or vapor. The steam produced would drive large turbines, and would then be condensed to maintain the vacuum as mentioned above. Thus the cycle would go on continuously. In theory the plan is utterly simple, and any physicist knows it would work. Claude himself is a distinguished physicist and already has to his credit several highly important industrial inventions. But Would It Pay? SOME OME of us may find it hard to believe that water can be boiled at such a low temperature (80° to 85° as an average for surface water in the tropics). This difficulty, however, exists only because we are so accustomed to think of water boiling in teakettles at 212° (at ordinary sea-level atmospheric pressure). Yet on a mountain water boils at a considerably lower temperature, which explains why cooking takes place so slowly there. Carry the reduction of atmospheric pressure much further, and we reach Dr. Claude's figures: steam at eighty-odd degrees. This steam would, however, have a pressure of only onehalf pound per square inch, compared with, say, 250 pounds in modern locomotive boilers. Therefore, to make up for this low pressure, a correspondingly greater volume of water must be converted to steam; and there, if anywhere, From original drawing by John Singer Sargent Professor Charles Sprague Sargent, internationally famed for his horticultural achievements is the rub the required installation would have to be very many times greater than those we now have, and the investment would be equally increased. Every second, in order to produce half a million horse-power-the capacity of a great steam power plant at the present day about 30,000 cubic feet of water would have to be boiled away into steam. Any engineer would consider that a staggering volume of water to evaporate each second; any engineer would whistle when told of it. Yet, given the money, there is nothing to prevent its being accomplished. But would it pay? Many are doubtful whether it would pay so long as we have coal. Yet Dr. Claude, who is now in this country, has never been the kind of man to propose half-baked ideas. Certain it is, at any rate, that the energy stored in sea water in the form of heat is almost unbelievably stupendous. To give a rough idea of the order of magnitude involved, it is known that the sun ment. He took an inadequate fund, a worn-out farm, a willing spirit, and "in a few years," as it seemed to him, transformed them into the greatest arboretum on earth. That it is the greatest is indicated by the fact that a few years ago a Chinese came there to make an exhaustive study of the trees of China. "The Silva of North America" is his monument. John Muir read it as he would have read a novel, and regretted that there was not more of it. It consists of only fourteen volumes! Thousands of gardens in America and in Europe are his monuments. They have been made lovely by the trees and plants which he searched the world for and propagated. The wooded sides of the Adirondacks are his monuments. He laid the foundation of the New York State forestry work and saved the mountain woods. The redwood forests of the Pacific coast are his monument. His was the leading spirit in the movement which saved the giant trees. Glacier National Park is his monument. He made the first proposal for the setting aside of that region as a park -thirty years before it was actually set aside. The multiplied millions of acres of National Forests are his monument. Establishment of the National Forest policy resulted from the study of the National Academy of Science Commission, of which he was chairman. He took the leading part in inducing President Cleveland to make the first reservation of 21,000,000 acres. Later, when pressure against the policy was heavy and President McKinley was ready to turn the Forest Reserves back into the public domain, he took the leading part in inducing the Chief Executive to change his mind. No monument that can be erected will equal the least of these, for, as commemorating the achievements of such a man, Marble is dust, Cold and repellent, A Libeler of Religion he ironically called "Christian Inquirer," published an attack on the "God of the Bible." A reader found the language so offensive that he made complaint to the King's attorney, on the ground that the publication was in violation of a law against blasphemous libels. The accused was tried, convicted, and sentenced to imprisonment, with deportation recommended. As thus stated in its barest outline, this incident seems like a reversion to That the publisher of this statement Drowned Towns F so on through the complicated details of preparing for the lake, even to the utmost personal minutiæ. But a more complicated question is whether municipalities, and even other States, are entitled to compensation for the diversion of water which has habitually been regarded by them as of value chiefly to "flush the sewage" dumped into the natural watercourses, not because that is the best means of disposal but because, up to the present, it is the "cheapest" method. Representative O'Connor, of the town of Palmer, Massachusetts, has asked for "protection against the cost of a sewer system in case the loss of water may require its construction." It has even been seriously suggested in Connecticut that the proposed diversion of tributary waters may menace the public health. Officials of the State assert that "the flood waters of the Connecticut River are depended upon to flush the bed of the river" of the accumulated sewage sludge and débris of civilization. The answer is, not to attempt to interfere with the machinery which seeks to allocate the public waters to their highest use, but to modify as speedily as possible such existing practices of waste and sewage disposal as are likely to complicate life. Joseph Lister's Centennial IVE towns and villages in the central THE fifth of April is the centennial of part of Massachusetts are leisurely planning to yield to an artificial flood which will completely drown them and will submerge important parts of other towns, all to insure continued health and prosperity to a distant but far larger population. Boston must have more water for drinking and for manufacturing. Investigations have determined that the best source is the Swift and Ware Rivers. To make this supply available a lake of approximately 40,000 acres will be created. Two thousand people are to be dispossessed; 1,000 buildings will be razed; the purity and quantity of water will be insured; the bill will be $60,000,000. A study is now being made of the equities involved. Compensation for personal property and for consequential damages to the town tradesmen and others who will suffer loss of livelihood must be determined; even the removal of cemeteries must be arranged for. Furthermore, the 1,800,000 people of the metropolitan district of Boston may well expect to pay the town and county taxes upon the property submerged, in order that the town and county taxable assets may not be unduly depleted; and the birth of Joseph Lister, whose introduction of antiseptic methods to surgery had "saved more lives by the end of the nineteenth century than all the losses of life through war in the eighteenth century." Yet the celebration of this hundredth anniversary, which is engaging the Royal College of Surgeons in England for two or three days, is inconsequential in comparison with the triumphal recognition which Baron Lister received for more than thirty years prior to his death in 1912. It was at the time of the American Civil War that Joseph Lister began his work of defeating the infection that accompanied a frightfully large proportion of wounds and surgical operations. Then, as still a young man, he had laid the brilliant foundations of his career as a surgeon. He was Professor of Surgery at the University of Glasgow. But even the most accomplished surgical practice was nearly futile, for "blood poisoning," or gangrene, or erysipelas, or tetanus, followed frequently and could not be stayed. After the surgeons' skill had done its utmost, recovery depended, without antisepsis, entirely on chance. As house surgeon of the University College Hospital in London Joseph Lis ter had earlier made penetrative studies of an outbreak of gangrene. He had assured himself that the cause was local in the wounds of the patients. The fact that ordinary bone fractures healed without fever, whereas fractures which broke the skin frequently caused death, was further material for his productive course of thought. Reading one of Pasteur's papers on "germs" as the cause of putrefaction resolved Lister's study into definite action. He experimented for himself, and concluded that the way to prevent festering was to keep away from wounds the germs which were in the air. To do that Lister tried applying dressings soaked in carbolic acid, which had been used at Carlisle, in England, to allay the foul odors of sewage, and which he rightly concluded therefore destroyed germs. He was thus successful in saving compound-fractured limbs, which previously had customarily been amputated, and that with many fatal... results. This satisfactory treatment led Lister to extend the application of carbolic acid to abscesses and surgical wounds, with the same vastly beneficent outcome. Soon hospitals which had been devotedly clean houses of death became modern, antiseptic infirmaries. Joseph Lister, soon to be Sir Joseph Lister, extended his work to the study of means of closing wounds. The silk or flax then used in stitching often became a center of infection. Lister tried silk which had been soaked in carbolic acid. Festering ceased; but still he found that the thread remained in the body as a source of irritation. He saw the need of a sewing material which could be absorbed by the tissues of the body. Consequently he, first, used "catgut," which is prepared from one of the constituents of the small intestine of sheep. So the unfettered scientific thinking of a young Quaker surgeon carried on the flame of knowledge, given him by Pasteur, to the liberation of surgery, to the alleviation of suffering, and to the preservation of life. A Nation's Hero in Need 'o people who amuse them or supply them with luxuries Americans give lavishly; but to people who have sacrificed much to save them from suffering, disaster, and that worst of evils, haunting, paralyzing fear, Americans are too often indifferent. They pay their entertainers well, but neglect their benefactors and heroes. That, at least, seems to be true in many cases, if not in all, and is particularly true in the case of those who risked death and worse to wipe out the scourge of yellow fever. the nineteenth century yellow fever visited the United States seventy-seven times. In one instance, out of 1,500 soldiers yellow fever killed 1,411. It is impossible to imagine what this enemy of mankind did to sear the hearts and lives of Americans as long as it remained uncontrolled because mysterious. Those who can think best in terms of money may imagine what it cost the United States when the fact is stated that one epidemic alone is estimated to have cost $100,000,000. The story of the conquest of this scourge is too long to tell here. It is one of the most dramatic stories in American history. But the part that one man played can be sketched. In 1900 the theory that yellow fever was transmitted by a certain kind of mosquito was unsupported by scientific evidence. Two doctors voluntarily submitted to the bites of infected mosquitoes. One survived, the other died. There was still lacking proof, however, that the mosquito was the sole culprit. So Major Walter Reed, of the United States Army Medical Corps, called for volunteers. Among the first was John R. Kissinger. He and one other, when accepted, were offered money remuneration. They refused it. Major Reed, addressing these two privates, said: "Gentlemen, I salute: you." Later he wrote of them: "In my opinion, this exhibition of moral courage has never been surpassed in the annals of the Army of the United States." John R. Kissinger was the first to be submitted to the test. He was stricken with yellow fever. His case proved the theory. He recovered; but since that day he has not been a thoroughly well man. To-day he is living in straitened circumstances. It is true, Congress in 1911 granted him one hundred dollars a month. Earlier he had received for a while a pension of twelve dollars a month, but afterwards (1922) that was taken from him and a demand was made upon him that the total amount of that pension paid to him from 1911 to 1922 be repaid to the Government. Congress, fortunately, saved the country from the disgrace of enforcing that demand. There is a plan on foot to supply him and his faithful wife (who is about to undergo a serious operation) with a home. The sum of $5,000 is needed for this, not only to save him from homelessness, but also to provide some other hero with a home later. For putting that plan into practical effect honor is due to a biology teacher, Mr. James E. Peabody. Checks sent to the John R. Kissinger Relief Fund, in care of the American Association for Medical Progress, Inc., 370 Seventh Avenue, New York City, will be acknowledged and applied to this purpose. A much larger sum, for the benefit of other martyrs to science and humanity, can be used to advantage. We hope our readers who can afford to pay some slight tribute to what this man has done for them and their country will be generous. Wars and Rumors of I-Russia Wins in China T HE end of a period is being recorded in the civil war in China -the period of trade and missionary enterprise under agreements affording special privileges to foreigners. The sweep northward of the Nationalists from Canton has proved to be more than a drive against the militarists of the North. It is also a concerted drive against alien residents in Chinaprimarily against the British, but also against Americans, French, and most other Westerners, and against the Japanese. What the next period of relations with China will be like no one can say. But it seems certain that the old arrangements are gone beyond recall. The immediate duty of our Govern |