uickly would be at work here upon new means of repelling the
invaders," Mr. Edison said; "I would be at it, myself."

Secretary of the Navy Daniels thereupon wrote to Mr. Edison a
congratulatory letter, saying: "I think your ideas and mine coincide
if an interview with you recently published in THE NEW YORK TIMES was
correct." He added:

One of the imperative needs of the navy, in my judgment, is
machinery and facilities for utilizing the natural inventive
genius of Americans to meet the new conditions of warfare as
shown abroad, and it is my intention if a practical way can
be worked out, as I think it can be, to establish at the
earliest moment a department of invention and development,
to which all ideas and suggestions, either from the service
or from civilian inventors, can be referred for
determination as to whether they contain practical
suggestions for us to take up and perfect....

What I want to ask is if you would be willing, as a service
to your country, to act as an adviser to this board, to take
such things as seem to you to be of value, but which we are
not, at present, equipped to investigate, and to use your
own magnificent facilities in such investigation if you feel
it worth while.

The consequence was Mr. Edison's appointment to head an advisory board
of civilian inventors and engineers for a Bureau of Invention and
Development created in the Navy Department. After a conference with
Mr. Edison Secretary Daniels on July 19 wrote to eight leading
scientific societies asking each of them to select two members to
serve on the Naval Advisory Committee, and as a first fruit of the
movement it was announced on July 23 that at the request of Mr.
Edison, the American Society of Aeronautic Engineers had been formed
with Henry A. Wise Wood as President and Orville Wright, Glenn H.
Curtiss, W. Starling Burgess, Peter Cooper Hewitt, Elmer A. Sperry and
John Hays Hammond, Jr., as Vice-presidents.

Hudson Maxim on Explosives

THE NEW YORK TIMES _on July 11 printed an interview with Hudson Maxim,
the inventor of explosives, in which Mr. Maxim said:_

Modern war is a warfare of explosives. The highly developed methods of
defense, designed especially against explosives, are practically proof
against everything but them.

Attacking forces must disemburrow the defending forces; they must be
blasted out of the ground. This