100 YEARS AGO

“I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong,” wrote the wise man. Writing in the same prophetic vein, M. J. de Bloch in the current Contemporary Review, and Mr. H. G. Wells in the Fortnightly for September, depict in graphic colours the transformation which the immediate future will witness in the methods of warfare. Both writers are convinced that the military tactics of the past are irretrievably dead. The effective soldier of the future will be a man whose capacity for individual action has been cultivated and developed... Mr. Wells takes into account the resources which modern science has made available for the business of war, and proceeds to anticipate the most likely directions that future advances will take. Of one thing he leaves his reader in no doubt, victory is bound to be with the nation that most sedulously attends to the education of its people in the scientific method. The great war of the future will be fought by citizens familiar with destructive instruments of precision, who have learnt to utilise all the accessory helps which science is gradually perfecting.

From Nature 5 September 1901.

50 YEARS AGO

According to Dr. Grantly Dick Read, the influence of fear on social structure is not well understood or appreciated... Practically the whole basis of human communal existence today, he suggests, is influenced by fear; man's mental and physical health vary as to his ability to remain balanced in the face of fear. Dr. Dick Read also suggests that children are not only emotionally influenced from the moment of their birth but even from the moment of conception. At fifteen weeks the reflexes of the foetus indicate individuality of behaviour. From birth the child is regularly subjected to stimuli which induce fear and lead to insecurity. According to its nature the child risks rebellion in violence or excessively anti-social behaviour, or resolves into that submissive state when even attempted activity of any sort, or any expression of its individuality, is paralysed by the deeply implanted fear of consequences. Dr. Dick Read believes that much of this unnecessary fear with its harmful effects on the individual and society would be eliminated if the fear of child-birth in women were eliminated.

From Nature 8 September 1951.