SILENT MEN WHO EARN NO V.C's.

NZ Truth, Issue 1050, 7 January 1926, Page 1

SILENT MEN WHO EARN NO V.C's.

Soldiers Of Science Set Their Lives At Stake CHRIST-LIKE SACRIFICES^ WIN FEW PLAUDITS

In the white heat of the clash of arms the splendid valor of the V.C. is born, and thereafter, m the eyes of an adulatory but inconsistent world, Heroism becomes his middle name. But the man who invente4tlie explosive or the mild-eyed professor who gave all his knowledge and his life m the perfection of the gas with which the hero was able to display himself as a hero, is taken to his burial place unhonored and unsung. This is because the world has not yet learned to recognize the greatest heroes of all —^the martyrs to science, the selfless and unspectacular men of knowledge who day by day and year by year offer up their lives oh a barren altar of pain that, other men might live m thankless safety. ; .

HERE are far more heroes than cowards m this complex world of ours, but . the devil - may - care . courage which blazes so spectacularly on the battlefield, m the | crash of the airman, and m , the rescue of a swim- , mer from the jaws of a shark — glorious and uplifting as these things are— are supremely outshone by the calm fearlessness of the quiet scientist who, without fuss or flurry, walks his laboratory m daily contact with agents of indescribable evil, all the more terrible because ' so many of them are unharnessed and unseen. . ALMOST UNKNOWN Have many people heard of Mr. Reginald Blackall? , -^•Ve^^^e^r:wtll r ,haveiv:-ih i a'e'e"d. > ' Vl 'JE3;te :: -h i ksbeen.decorated with ho Victoria Cross, but^ countless thousands of men arid women walking, m health, and strength to-day owe. their lives and ...their release from unimaginable agonies'" toMm. / • /,- .. /■ ; „:.... -....;; -„•■• : With Christlike heroism he maimed .himself that others might live unmaimed. But they' sing no panegyric to his name. They don't | even know about him! , Mr. Blackall was the pioneer X-ray research worker m the London. Hospital.' .:,:. For some time after the discovery of this ray, together with a realisation of its enormous propensities as an agent for human good, experimenters went along unwitting of: the fact that it would not only cure external cancer, but cause it. : ■■■:'* .' . ■' ' ■' ' \ ' \ As one of these, pioneers, Mr. Blackall saw a colleague of his lose an arm. He saw another lose his life. But Mr. Blackall stuck grimly to a job that had more terrors concealed m it than ever a . warrior faced on the field of battle. . , He was determined to discover the evil as well as the good of the mysteri-, ous ray — and he. did. ' FIFTEEN OPERATIONS His willing and unadvertised martydom cost him the suffering of 15 opera-: tions. , . ", He placed himself on a rack of agony for 20 years, and gave both-;'

his hands to the cause he had taksti up on behalf of his fellow-men. '- He found that the ray, like fire, is 1 a good servant' but ja frightful master. He died m his conauest of the' master element m order that the operators who followed him might be .immune from it. . ' . ' ■ . ''...■•■_. ; "Greater loye hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life i for his friends!" -. Nor is there greater heroism than the patient and unlauded heroism Of scientists such as Mr. Blackall.- . There is the instance of Professor. Lefroy, known to Australia for his research work regarding grain weevil, who. 1 . 1 quite recently^ was killed m ex-, perimenting with a gas to eradicate those unromahtic and unheroic sound -1 ing pests called bed-bugs. . There^v.i.sV nothing spectacular or , dragonTlfkpr'about bed-bugs. But. : there is ;s6mething magnicently , human about the man who will risk and finally gave his life to science and to such a small department of ; it. : . ■ ■■".■'": ■-". - : -■ .... , ■•.

Nevertheless, there are no posthumous awards of valor to Professor Lefroy. .:..• - UNNAMED HEROES Now comes the news that to test finally and effectively the researches of- Dr. Gye concerning cancer, the disease most dreaded by man, six medical men, who have not even been named, have agreed to submit themselves to inoculation with the cancer germ. It is quite true that Dr. Gye has claimed that a mysterious &gent, without which the cancer germ is harmless, has been withheld from the inoculation, but that m no way . detracts from the extraordinary heroism of the men who have taken voluntarily the risk of contracting the hideous scourge. ' The six unnamed men—they are symbolic of the Unknown Warrior — :are heroes whose heroism, like that of hundreds of men who' have suffered at the shrine of science, is i so immeasurable that all acts com;*,i:rn i.ttpd ■ i n-^h c s,tress > a nd g I«\y- of '/ '■;• battle seem not so great at all by comparison. ;'•■•■ '■'■' These are men who are awake to the calamitous falct-r-as, unfortunately,** the public is hot— that the. agonizing horror of cancer is incr.easihg with such appalr ling rapidity that, the health of the civilized world is menaced by it. TERRIBLE MENACE 'In England alone m 20 years it has increased by: 200 per cent. In ' Australia ; to-day, of women between the ages of 42 and 56 years, one m every four will go down to cancer, and of men m the same age group, one m every .10, unless these unnamed soldiers of science who have entrusted their lives to Dr. Gye are able to prove his theories and bestow upon the world the boon of their discoveries or their martyrdom. It is this everydaj' heroism that 'is the very nerve force of human progress, and it reminds us that the need for courage and steadfastness will always find a man to hold the flag high. Our progress is built upon the martyrdom of those who go before us exactly, as the lives of the polyps who spread their arms, m the wash of. the coral reefs are based upon the millions of the dead of their race, which have built the thousand feet 1 of coral beneath them. '■ '. ■■••■•' • ■ ■■ ■ , DAILY HEROISM. There are doctors who face the germs, of disease daily. - .. > - However-schooled- they may be in-the art of taking care of themselves,, the risk is never absent. - ' ' In times of calamity, when epidemics race disastrously through' the land,' the doctor and- the-scientist step fearlessly forward to stem the. tide. It is their job. '' i

There is. the steeple-jack, who clambers about the dizzy eminence of the rising sky-scraper. He has been schooled to caution and t,o • care, but Death peeps up\ at him from far below. It is his job. ' And so does that airman consider it merely "his' job" who takes the new 'plane, from the factory to , test its workmanship and its stability m the high clouds that others might safely use it after him. There" are forgotten pioneers of aviation as heroic as the monk who, centuries ago, leapt' from his monastery tower to try the efficacy of a pair of wings he had made. These are the unremembered valiants who blithely gave their lives to teach their fellows what to do, what not to do, and what to do ' differently; , An early, experimenter m, gunpowder blew himself to fragments. He was not careless. He did not know that essential which his death promptly taught others to know. : _ ..... -v 'In laboratories air over the wqiiiil scientists,, are daily working among forces which hold potential powers of de§truptipn far more terrible than those, among which the experimenter m explosives Svorks. ! Their eagerness to. discover the Unknown has conquered man's primeval fear of the Unknown, but no \ ballads sing the glory of their unflinching heroism. There is the diver who daily drops below into the filmy green of an. element which m a thousand ways is; antagonistic to, man's invaspn of it. ■There is the man who walks steadily into,.the' surgery" and offers it pint of his blood, a few ounces of bone, an area of his skin, m order, that a fellow creature' might live. The crew of the submarine takes its job as a matter of course, and no man has been known to desert because Davy Jones a day pr two before claimed a sister vessel m some unfathomed reach of the ocean floor. . . WHY NOT AN AWARD? These are the everyday heroes, and they are countless.. Upon them the world does not bestow the laurel leaf of its praise because . the world is everyday, too. ' But it is time a higher award for valor than the Victoria Cross were instituted.. ■'..■"■■■" ' , It. should be an award of a nature ' that will bring to the intelligence of civilizaton that scientific heroism has built up that Christ was not the only, man who. gave his life to. M : save the world. ; On the Cross He set the example. But it is Science, which so many religionists would, claim is antagonistic to Him, that has best upheld His ideal' of the martyrdom of self for the upliftment.of all.. -