has proved efficient in this present War and mustbe accounted one of the most remarkable advancesin wound treatment of late years.
SURGERY IN THE PRESENT WAR
The present War has been raging for more thantwo years. Realizing the need and opportunitiesfor research on certain problems the authoritieshave already arranged for special research units,and some useful information has resulted.
The bugbear of the surgeon is the streptococcus,deadly to human beings, often persistent and latentin wounds and sinuses and difficult to dislodge.A few years ago mankind was blessed by thediscovery of a drug which, given internally, wasable to diminish and often destroy the streptococ-cus wherever it might be in the body, except onthe surface of wounds. Recently Colebrook hasfound that this drug, sulphonilamide, when puton to the surface of an infected wound, has a directinhibitory or destructive effect on the streptococcus,and this discovery is full of promise.
The other discovery deals with the effect of blastupon the human body. Everyone is now awareof the terrible effect of the blast due to the burstingof a large high-explosive bomb .. A person maybe killed by this blast without any external markof injury being apparent, How this lethal effect isproduced and how it may be prevented has beenthe subject of a research by Zuckerman and byothers who have already obtained results whichare full of promise for the successful prevention ofinjury from the terrible injuring force.
INDIRECT RFSULTS OF WAR UPON SURGERY
War affects a nation otherwise than by directphysical damage. Food-supplies are oftendiminished to a level which is incompatible withhealth, and various diseases may find a chanceto flourish which could not gain a footing innormal times. This was shown by the statistics ofsurgical diseases as they occurred in one of thelarge Russian hospitals during the time of the Warof 1914-18 and the subsequent revolution. Thewhole social framework of the country was brokenfor a timE"and disease of every kind was rife. Star-vation and undernourishment were prevalent. Inthese circumstances it was noteworthy that thenumber of cases of appendicitis and cholecyst.itiadiminished almost to vanishing point, whileulceration of the stomach and duodenum increasedaltogether out of proportion. It is certainlysignificant that the most common surgical diseaseof the abdomen should almost disappear whenwar compelled drastic reduction in the diet scheme.It may well be that many other factors were con-cerned in this reduction, but on the face of it theremay be some indication as to the pathology ofappendicitis.
Every wise practitioner is taught by time andexperience that to prevent is better than to cure, orto speak paradoxically, prophylaxis is the betterpart of treatment. The best cure of wounds is toprevent them. So we may hope that futuregenerations may profit by the terrible experiencesof the present time and there may develop theperfect prophylaxis of the war disease--that forwhich all of us are longing-peace .
.. .PLANNING, SCIENCE AND FREEDOM
By PROF. F. A. HAYEKLONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE
THE last ten years have witnessed in GreatBritain a strong revival of a movement that for
at least three generations has been a decisive forcein the formation of opinion and the trend of socialaffairs in Europe: the movement for 'economicplanning' . As in other countries-first in Franceand then particularly in Germany-this movementhas been strongly supported and even led by men
., of science and engineers. It has now so far suc-ceeded in capturing public opinion that what littleopposition there is comes almost solely from a smallgroup of economists. To these economists thismovement seems not only to propose unsuitablemeans for the ends at which it aims; it also
appears to them as the main cause of that destruc-tion of individual liberty and spiritual freedomwhich is the great threat of our age. .If theseeconomists are right, a large number of men ofscience are unwittingly striving to create a stateof affairs which they have most reason to fear. Itis the purpose of the following sketch to outlinethe argument on which that view is. based .
Any brief discussion of 'economic planning' ishandicapped by the necessity of first explainingwhat precisely is meant by 'planning' . If the termwere taken in its most general sense of a rationaldesign of human institutions, there could be noroom for argument about its desirability. But
although the popularity of 'planning' is at leastpartly due to this wider connotation of the word,it is now generally used in a narrower, more specificsense. It 'describes one only among the differentprinciples which might be deliberately chosen forthe organization of economic life: that of centraldirection of all economic effort as against itsdirection by competition. Planning, in otherwords, now means that not only the kind ofeconomicsystem which we want to adopt should berationally chosen, but that we should chose onethat rests on 'conscious' or central control of alleconomic activity ... It is evidently in this sensethat, for example, Professor P. M. S. Blackettuses the term when he explains that "the object ofplanning is largely to overcome the results ofcompetition">. This narrow use of the term is ofcourse meant to suggest that only this kind ofeconomic organization is rational, and that there-fore it alone deserves to be called planning. It isthis contention which economists deny.
The full argument which leads to the conclusionthat planning in the sense of central direction is infact an inefficient system cannot be reproduced in afewsentences. But the gist of it is simple enough.It is that the competitive or price system makespossible the utilization of an amount of concreteknowledge which could never be achieved orapproached without it. It is true, of course, thatthe director of any centrally planned system islikely to know more than any single entrepreneurunder competition. But the former could notpossibly use in his single plan all the combinedknowledge of all the individual entrepreneurs thatis used under competition. The knowledge whichis significant here is not so much knowledge of
.general laws, but knowledge of particular factsand the ever-changing circumstances of themoment-a knowledge which only the man on thespot can possess. The problem of the maximumutilization of knowledge can therefore be solvedonly by some system which decentralizes thedecisions. There is no possibility of a divisionbetween the general outline of the plan and thedetail of the execution-s-or at least no way for sucha. division has yet been shown. The reason forthis is that the general features are just the resultof an infinity of detail, and there are no principleswhich, without harm, can be laid down irrespectiveof the detail. Yet, in order that in a decentralizedsystem the individual decisions should be mutuallyadjusted to each other, it is ofoourse essential thatthe individual entrepreneur should learn aspromptly as possible about any relevant change inthc conditions affecting the factors of productionand the commodities with which he is concerned.Now-this is precisely what the price system bringsabout if compet.itionis functioning. It is in effect
a system under which every change in conditionsand opportunities is promptly and automaticallyregistered so that the individual entrepreneur canread off, as it were, from a few gauges and in simplefigures, the relevant results of everything whichhappens anywhere in the system with respect tothe factors and commodities with which he isconcerned.
This method of solving by an automatic decen-tralization a task which, if it had to be solvedconsciously, would exceed the powers of anyhuman mind, would have been hailed as one of themost marvellous inventions-if it has been in-vented deliberately. Compared with it the moreobvious method of solving the problem by centraldirection appears incredibly clumsy, primitive,and limited in scope. It is very significant thatthose socialist economists who have most carefullystudied the practical problems of a socialisteconomy have more than once re-discoveredcompetition and the price system as the bestsolution-only that unfortunately this systemcannot work without private property'. For thegeneral attitude towards the price system it has,however, been most unfortunate that it has notbeen deliberately invented, but that it has spon-taneously grown up long before we had learnt to
. understand its operation. It seems to offend adeep instinct of the man of science and particularlythe engineer to be asked to believe that anythingwhich has not been deliberately constructed but isthe result of a more or less accidental historicalgrowth should be the best method for a human end.Yet the contention is of course not that by somemiracle just that system has spontaneouslydeveloped which is best suited to modern civiliza-tion,but rather that the division of labour, whichforms the basis of modern civilization, has beenable to develop on a large scale only because manhappened to tumble on the method which madebhis possible.
It is now sometimes argued-s-often by the sametype of people who by their propaganda againstcompetition have contributed largely towards itsprogressive suppression-that although all this is.quite true, and although it would be desirable tohave competition if it were still possible, techno-logical facts prevent this, and that thereforecentral planning has become inevitable. This,however, is just one of the many myths which, likethat of the 'potential plenty', are taken over byone propagandist work from another until theycome to be regarded as established facts, althoughthey have little relation to reality. There is nospace here to discuss this point at any length, andit must suffice to quote the conclusion at which themost comprehensive recent investigaton of thefacts has arrived. This is what the final report of
the investigation on the "Concentration of doubt about the validity of their arguments. ButEconomic Power", by the American Temporary attempts to advance the social sciences by a moreNational Economic Committee, has to say on the or less close imitation of the methods of the naturalpoint: "It is sometimes asserted, or assumed, that sciences, far from being new, have been a constantlarge scale production, under the conditions of feature for more than a century. The samemodern technology, is so much more efficient than objections against 'deductive' economics, the samesmall-scale production that competition must proposals to make it at last 'scientific', and, itinevitably give way to monopoly as large establish- must be added, the same characteristic errors andments drive their smaller rivals from the field. primitive mistakes to which natural scientistsBut such generalization finds scant support in any approaching this field seem to be prone, have been,evidence that is now at hand"". Indeed few people repeated and discussed over and over again bywho have watched economic development during successive generations of economists' and socio-,the last twenty years or so can have much doubt logists and have led precisely nowhere. All thethat the progressive tendency towards monopoly progress in the understanding of the phenomenais not the result of any spontaneous or inevitable which has been achieved has come from theforce, but the effect of a deliberate policy of the economists patiently developing the technique whichGovernments, inspired by the ideology of 'planning'. has grown out of their peculiar problems. But inThe really remarkable fact is the vitality of com-: their efforts they have constantly been em-petition, which in spite of the persistent attempts barrassed by famous physicists or biologists pro-towards its suppression is ever again raising its nouncing in the name of science in favour ofhead-only to encounter new measures designed schemes or proposals which do not deserve seriousto stifle it. consideration. It was expressing a common
It is a serious thing that in this situation men of experience of all students of social problems whenscience and engineers should so frequently be found an American sociologist recently complained thatleading a movement which in effect merely serves "one of the most terrible examples of unscientific,to support the unholy alliance between the monopo- , mindedness is frequently an eminent natural, i.e.,listie organizations of capital and labour, and that physical or biological scientist speaking on societalfor a hundred men of science who attack eompe- matters".tition and 'capitalism' scarcely one can be found As the dispute on central planning has become'who criticizes the restrictionist and protectionist so closely connected with the dispute on thepolicies which masquerade as 'planning' and which scientific validity of economics, it has been neces-are the true cause of the 'frustration of science'. sary briefly to refer to these matters. But thisThat this attitude should be so common among must not draw us away from our main theme. Thenatural scientists can scarcely be fully explained technical inferiority or superiority of centralby that characteristic bias for anything consciously planning over competition is not the sole or evenconstructed and against anything which has merely the main problem. If the degree of economicgrown up, to which I have already alluded. It is efficiency were all that is at stake in this centro-at least as much due to the antagonism of so many versy, the dangers of a mistake would still be smallnatural scientists towards the teaching of econo- compared with what they really are. But justmics, whose methods appear to them unfamiliar as the alleged greater efficiency of central planningand strange, and whose results they often either is not the only argument used in its favour, so thedisregard or, like Prof.L. Hogben, even violently objections do not rest solely on its real inefficiency.attack as "the medieval rubbish taught as econo- It must indeed be admitted that if we wanted tomics at our Universities" t. This conflict over the make the distribution of incomes between indi-methods proper to the pursuit of the study of viduals and groups conform to any predeterminedsociety is an old one and raises exceedingly complex absolute standard, central planning would be theand difficult problems. But as the prestige which only way in which this could be achieved. Itthe natural scientists enjoy with the public is so could be argued-and has been argued-that itoften used to discredit the results of the only would be worth putting up with less efficiency ifsystematic and sustained effort to increase our thereby greater distributive justice could beunderstanding of social phenomena, this dispute obtained. But unfortunately the same factorsis a matter of sufficient importance to make in this which make it possible in such a system to controlcontext a few words of comment necessary. the distribution of income also make it necessary
If there were reason to suspect that the econo- to impose an arbitrary hierarchical order COID-
mists persist in their ways merely from the force prising the status of every individual and the placeof habit and in ignorance of the methods and of practically all values of human life. In short,techniques which in other fields have proved so as is now being more and more generally-recognized,eminently successful, there could indeed be grave economic planning inevitably leads to, and is the
cause of, the suppression of individual liberty andspiritual freedom which we know as the 'totali-tarian' system. As has recently been said inNATURE by two eminent American engineers, "theState founded on dictatorial authority . . .andthe planned economy are essentially one and thesame thing?".
The reasons why the adoption of a system ofcentral planning necessarily produces a totalitariansystem are fairly simple. Whoever controls themeans must decide which ends they are to serve.As under modern conditions control of economicactivity means control of the material means forpractically all our ends, it means control overnearly all our activities. The nature of thedetailed scale of values which must guide the plan-ning makes it impossible that it should be deter-mined by anything like democratic means. Thedirector of the planned system would have toimpose his scale of values, his hierarchy of ends,which, if it is to be sufficient to determine the plan,must include a definite order of rank in which thestatus of each person is laid down. If the plan isto succeed or the planner to appear successful, thepeople must be made to believe that the objectiveschosen are the right ones. Every criticism ofthe plan or the ideology underlying it must betreated as sabotage. There can be no freedomof thought, no freedom of the Press, where it isnecessary that everything should be governed bya single system of thought. In theory Socialismmay wish to enhance freedom, but in practiceevery kind of collectivism consistently carriedthrough must produce the characteristic featureswhich Fascism, Nazism and Communism have incommon. Totalitarianism is nothing but con-sistent collectivism, the ruthless execution of theprinciple tl;iat 'the whole comes before theindividual' and the direction of .all members ofsociety by a single will supposed to represent the'whole'.
It would need much more 'space than can begiven to it here to show in detail how such asystem produces a despotic control in everysphere of life, and how in particular in Germanytwo generations of planners have prepared the soilfor Nazism. This has been demonstrated else-where'. Nor is it possible here to show why plan-ning tends to produce intense nationalism andinternational conflict", or why, as the editorsof one of the most ambitious co-operative volumes
•• on planning discovered to his. sorrow, "most'planners' are militant nationalists'". We mustturn here to a more immediate danger which thepresent trend in Great Britain creates. It is thatof a growing divergence between the economicsystems here and in the United States whichthreatens jto make impossible any real economic
collaboration between the two countries after theWar. In the United States the present develop-ment is well described by the programme forrestoring competition developed by President.Roosevelt in the message to Congress of April1938, which, in the President's words, is based onthe thesis "not that the system of free privateenterprise for profit has failed in this generation,.but that it has not yet been tried"". Of GreatBritain, on the other hand, it could be rightlysaid about the same time that "there are manysigns that British leaders are growing accustomedto thinking in terms' of national development bycontrolled monopolies">'. This means that we are.following the paths on which Germany has ledand which the United States is abandoning because".as states the report on the "Concentration of
. Economic Power" to which the President's messagegave rise, "the rise of political centralism is largelythe result of economic centralism"». The alterna-tive is, of course, not laisser-faire, as this mis-leading and vague terril is usually understood.Much needs to be done to ensure the effectivenessof competition; and a great deal can be doneoutside the market to supplement the results. Butby the attempts to supplant it we deprive our-selves not only of an instrument which we cannotreplace, but also of an institution without whichthere can be no freedom for the individual.
Nothing in this situation deserves to be studiedand pondered so much as the intellectual historyof Germany during the last two generations. Whathas to be realized is that the features which madeher what she is are largely the same as those whichmade her admired and which still exert theirfascination; and that the corruption of theGerman mind came largely from the top, theintellectual and scientific leaders. Men, un-dosbtedly great in their way, made Germany anartificially constructed State-'organized throughand through', as the Germans prided themselves.This provided the soil in which Nazism grew andin which representatives of State-organized sciencewere found among its most enthusiastic supporters.It was the 'scientific' organization of industrywhich deliberately created the giant monopoliesand represented them as inevitable growths fiftyyears before it happened in Great Britain. Thevery type of social doctrine which is now sopopular among some British men of science beganto be preached by their German counterparts inthe seventies and eighties of last century. Thesubservience of the men of science to whateverbecame official doctrine began with the _greatdevelopment of State-organized science which is:the subject of so much eulogy in Great Britain ..It was the State in which everyone tended to.become a State employee and in which all pursuits
for profit were held in contempt which producedthe disregard and final destruction of libertywhich. we now witness.
I shall conclude with an illustration of what Ihave said about the role of some of the great menof science of Imperial Germany. The famousphysiologist Emil du Bois-Reymond was one ofthe leaders of the movement anxious to extendthe methods of natural sciences to social phenomenaand one of the first and most effective advocatesof the now so fashionable view that "the historyof natural science is the real history of mankind">.It was also he who uttered what is perhaps themost shameful statement ever made by a man of'soience on behalf of his fellows. "We, the Univer-sity of Berlin," he proclaimed in 1870 in a publicoration as rector of the University, "quarteredopposite the King's palace, are, by the deed ofour foundation, the intellectual bodyguard of thehouse of Hohenzollern">, The allegiance of theGerman scientist-politicians has since changed,but their respect for freedom has not increased.And the phenomenon is ~ot .confined to Germany.Has not Mr. J. G. Crowther recently, in a bookwhich develops views so similar to du Bois-Reymond's, undertaken to defend even inquisition
because, in his view, it "is beneficial to sciencewhen it protects a rising class"J5? On this viewclearly all the persecutions of men of science bythe Nazis after they came to power could bejustified-for were not the latter then a "risingclass" ?
1 P. M. S. Blackett and others, "The Frustration of Science", Allen andUnwin (1935), p. 142.
'H. D. Dickinson, "Economics of Socialism", Oxford UniversityPress (l939); o. Lange and F. M. Taylor, "On the EconomicTheory of Socialism", University of Minnesota Press (1938);F. A. Hayek, Economiea, N.S., 7 (1940). .
• Final Report of the. Temporary National Economic Committee("T.N.E.C."), U.S.A., 77th Congress, 1st Sesslon,SenateDocumentNo. 35, 89.
• L. Hogben, "Education for an Ago of Plenty", British Iuatitute ofAdult Education (1937), p, 10.
• R. Bain, Socia; Philosophy, 230 (April; 1939).'F. R. Jewett and W. R. King, NATURE, 146, 826 (1940).'.W. Lippmann, "The Good Society", Little, Brown and 00. (1937);
M. Polunyl, "The Contcmpt of Freedom", Watts and Co. (1940);w. Sulzbach, Ethics,50 (April, 1940); F. A. Hayek, "Freedom
. and the Economic System", University of Chicago Press (1989).I I,. Robbins, "Economic Planning and International Order" ,
Macmillan (1937).• F. Mackenzie (ed.), "Planned Society", Prentice Hall (1937), p. xx
10 Final Report of the T.N.E.C., p. 20.11 Specl11.tor, 337.<March 3, 1939).l~inal Report of the T.N.E.C.,lI. 5."Emil du Bols-Revrnond, "Kulturwlssenschaft und Naturwissen-
schaft," (1879).H_"A Speech on the German War", Delivered on .AUgust 3, 1870,
before the University of Berlin, by Emil du Bois-Reymond, atthat time Rector.. London, Rd. Bentley (1870), p. 31.
•• J. G. Crowther, "The Social Relations of Science". Macmillan(1940), p. ~33.
THE SCIENTIFIC APPROACH TO COLONIALDEVELOPMENT*
By THE RIGHT HON. LORD HAILEY, G.C.S.I., G.C.M.G., G.C.I.E.IN discussing colonial conditions, I shall in the
main Iimit myself to those prevailing in theBritish Colonies. The character of the Britishcolonial empire was modified all a result of theexpansionist policy of the latter part of the lastcentury. The Indian Empire and Burma have, ofcourse, never been ranked as colonies. Up toabout the eighties of last century, therefore, theColonies comprised mainly Ceylon and a smallpart of Malaya in the eastern hemisphere, anumber of trading settlements on the coasts ofAfrica, and in the western hemisphere, the oldBritish possessions in the West Indies. The periodof expansion added in Africa alone an area roughlyequal to that of British India, together with parts
.of Borneo, an extended area in Malaya, and someof the Southern Pacific islands. The new terri-tories were' largely tropical in character; but,what is more important, the majority of theirpopulations were at a stage at which they hadneeds, both material and social, far greater thanthose of some of the older dependencies. Judged
• Snbstance of a paper read at the Conference on ScIence land WoridOrder on September 27.
in terms of approach to our own type of civiliza-tion, they were far more backward. On the otherhand; we had then available to us the result ofmuch previous experience of colonial development;above all, we had by this time at our service an'amount of knowledge regarding the employmentof the applied sciences in social developmentwhich was far in advance of that possessed by ourpredecessors. We had another advantage. Earlierin the last century, tropical products (excluding,of course, certain of the minerals, and the preciousmetals) were in demand only in the luxury marketof the more highly. developed countries. But therapid growth of standards of living in thosecountries has' made the luxuries of our grand-fathers the necessities of whole populations to-day.Such things as cocoa, the great range of vegetableoils, coffee or bananM are typical of the tropicalproducts which have become essential to thegeneral population Of Europe and. America, andthus can assist the tropical peoples in financingthe social services needed to improve their stan-dards of life.
