Abstract
THE developments of the past year have made the defence policy of Britain a matter of vital concern to the other partners in Western Union, and new to the United States of America. The broad issues of defence policy can no longer be determined in inolation. They must be intimately related to foreign policy, just as foreign policy in turn must be related to the effective resources of Britain for defence ; our commitments must be precisely related to the man-power and equipment we can deploy. While these are matters of politics and not of science, scientific men are directly concerned with certain aspects of defence policy discussed in the recent White Paper on defence*, in the subsequent debates in Parliament and in the report of the Select Committee on Estimates dealing with the defence estimates+. A constructive approach to the problem of defence involves, besides public understanding, the close co-operation of many sections of the professions and of the industrial community. Besides, the issues of secrecy and of man-power, to both of which considerable attention has been directed, touch scientific workers very closely, quite apart from their interest as citizens in the general issues on which these questions were raised.
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Scientific Man-Power and Defence. Nature 163, 505–507 (1949). https://doi.org/10.1038/163505a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/163505a0