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Otago Daily Times, Issue 19147, 15 April 1924, Page 6

Scikxce is always reminding every-day folk that there are more tilings in heaven and earth than arc dreamt o f in their philosophy. Mr Grinnell Matthews, whose inventiveness was of value to the British navy during the war, claims to have discovered the means of producing by electrical energy a ray of astonishing power. The cabled messages have been so expansive on the subject as to suggest, at ail events, that the investigator is not much concerned about secrecy as regards tho general nature of his discovery. Accounts of the triumphs of science heralded in this manner have generally to be received with a certain amount of caution. But if the claims which are advanced by Mr Grinnell Matthews will admit of substantiation, it can only bo concluded that a weapon of revolutionising power is being produced. A ray that can bring down an aeroplane in Hight or explode an ammunition dump at a distance is likely to be possessed of rather appalling possibilities By way of demonstration, the inventor is said to have turned a ray upon a mouse seventy yards away with fatal results, and to have put a tnotor cycle out of action at a similar distance. These, of course, were but trifles, for ho claims that by using a powerful enough plant he could 'sweep the heavens clear in ton minutes of as many aeroplanes as might try to bombard London. More amazing still, the ray is expected to be' found capable of intercepting and exploding a shell at any point in its trajectory. And if ammunition dumps are to be vulnerable to it, what, about the magazines of warships? Its penetrating power on the battlefield will be more thorough, it is suggested, than that of poison gas or shrapnel. Mr Matthews apparently believes that the Germans have had some success in experimenting along similar lines, but that ho has out-distanced them. If such an agent of destruction was bound to come, it is as well that Great Britain rather than some other nation should first possess it. But modern armaments are not designed to stand up against retaliation on finch a basis. If invention has made the giant stride that is now hinted at, they are likely to go largely to the melting pot. In that event, however, merely arising out of man’s increased command over the forces of destruction, the world will have litUe reason to breathe more freely.

Thk conference on Christian JK/litics, economics, and citizenship opened at Birmingham last week, with the Bishop of Manchester as president, promises to familiarise the nation with a new symbol. It is the hope of those who have faith m this movement that C.O.P.E.C. will become as intelligent and well-known a designation asY.M.C.A. orW.E.A. Some illumination respecting the origin and motive of the conference may be drawn from an address on the subject by tho Rev. R. F.

Horton, D.D. “It springs,” we read, “from a conviction, widely spread to-day, that the Christian faith, if it were understood and practised, wiild solve all ,’ae problems of our time: a conviction that it is the neglect of the social ethics of Christianity in the Church that has produced the present uneasy and restless condition of mankind.” The conference is described as, in a word, a discoveiy of a much neglected part of the Christ'in religion and the Christian gospel—the social and practical side of life, and the need to learn how to apply thereto the positive and all-powerfnii principles of Christianity. How the conference will endeavour to proceed to correct the mistake involved in the neglect of soci il ethics that is alleged to be a cause of failure on the part of the Church is not precisely indicated, but the gathering at Birmingham is more than a casual assembly of some hundreds of delegates turning their attention for the first time to the questions before them. Tire preparations for the conference were far-reaching. Groups of supporters of the movement throughout the country gave tneir attention for some time to the problems to bo considered. The findings of the groups have apparently been combined and presented to the conference which is to seek a practical solution from such a widespread and concentrated effort to find the truth. The task before it is certainly no light one, as the trend of discussions which have already been reported sufficiently indicates.