If the depression which every-tone hopes is now lifting has done nothing else for the world besides eliminate the barrier which tradition formerly placed between the man of learning and the practical administrator, it has been worthwhile. The barrier has always been one of popular imagination rather than actuality. Because Newton is supposed to have boiled his watch instead of an egg and to have formulated the laws of gravity as a result of being fortultously hit on the head by a falling apple, his achievements have been put in the shade by those of the engineer who has put them to every-day application. Since experts have been called in to diagnose the ailments: of civilization and to prescribe a cure, how-fever, there has been a distinct change in the popular outlook; the scientist and research worker has been brought out of the obscurity of his laboratory and has at last taken his place in the sun, From his point of view this may not have been an unmixed blessing, since the gifts peculiar to the research worker are not always such as would shine in the demagogue. He has, therefore, had to take the middle course, alternating between the microscope and the telescope, reserving the proportion between the two without losing the value of either. How difficult this can bbe has been illustrated in the great social experiment sponsored by President Roosevelt and his "Brain Trust" in the United States. But that it is possible few will doubt, especially as there isa proof that can be done successfully in the Rockefeller Foundation, of which the report for 1933 has just been received.
The activities of the Rockefeller Foundation need no explanation. "They cover an enormous field and Jembrace nearly every country. In his introduction to the report the president shows that the problem of adjustment to meet conditions to-day has not been lost sight of. He says:
The period has been marked by economic, social, and political stress in many parts of the world, diving rise to pressing problems of national and international scope. A foundation dedicated to the wel fare of mankind, and which has conceived its function in the broad aid in the process of the ra~ enolization of life, can neither remain indifferent to' pressing cur~ Fent problems nor relinquish the support of the fundamentals on which, in the long run, the control of man's destiny depends. In its work for the year, the Rockefeller Foundation has been conscious of both types of needs, While the Foundation has continued during the year its activity in furthering the advance of knowledge in the elds of public health, medical science, natural science, social science, and the humanities, its work in these fields has been vitally changed in scope through selection, for intensive work, of those sub fields which contribute more directly to the general prolem of human behaviour, with the aim of controlling through under-Handing.
How this has been accomplish ed is very briefly outlined in the report itself. Sandwiched between the secretary's report and the treasurer's report are separate scctions dealing with the International Health Division, the Medical Sciences, the Natural Sciences, the Social Sciences, Emergency Grants, and the Humanities. In a report which has to be wieldy to be read, it is understandable that only the the membership lst.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.