From the Editor

One of the topics that we wish to avoid in this column is politics. Although we find this an interesting subject for newspaper read­ing, we would prefer to keep the optical spectrum unrelated to the political spectrum. Nevertheless, we have in our editorial mailbox a few letters that border on political matters at least in the geopolitical sense, and perhaps we should mention them briefly.

One reader asks: "Could you please tell me why Russian optics journals, etc., are translated, when French articles are not translated?" He then goes on to inquire whether this some­how indicates the political leanings of the journal. Just before our journal first began we had long debates about whether we were to be an English-language journal serving fundamentally the American audience, or whether we should try to match the attractions of the new flood of "international" journals by accept­ing articles in other languages. Our sister journal, J. Opt. Soc. Am., had a long tradition of publishing only in English, but then J.O.S.A., unlike us, is the official organ of a national society. We were new, without established traditions and more amenable to experiment. We also had our eye on a recent statistic that 50% of the world's technical literature is now published in English, 16% in Russian, 12% in German, 10% in Japanese, and 8% in French. In spite of the fact that we all want to go to ICO meetings in Tokyo in September, we balked at Japanese: even our printer made an inaudible comment. We then went way out on a limb and voted to accept papers in English, French, German, and Russian. One of those voting crossed his fingers and reminded us that after all we were only saying papers may be submitted in these languages: we could still print them in English. Practically all of us studied French or German at some time in school, even though it now may be long forgotten, and the corner drug store has a counter full of such books as French at a Glance, or German without Tears, to restore your fluency quickly. You really should not grumble at these two languages. Mark Twain once related the doleful problem of an American student in Germany who carefully consulted his dictionary and memorized what he wanted to say in the store: "Ich will eine Waage; ich will etwas wiegen" (I want a balance; I want to weigh something), but said instead: "Ich will eine Wiege; ich will etwas wagen" (I want a cradle; I am about to try something venturesome). But ordinarily it is hard to go completely wrong. So far we have had a half dozen articles in French, two or three others from Frenchmen in English, and all of our German papers have been submitted in English.

Out of four Russian papers so far, one was submitted in English. On the other three we took note of yet another statistic: that only one American physicist out of 400 can read Russian. Since our three papers were not long, we translated them and ran the translation as a parallel column. We would like to add that all of our papers, in whatever language, are refereed to determine the suitability of the technical content for our journal.

We were once accused of being pro-Israeli in this journal. We could perhaps counteract this by running a cherished picture that we have of a group of us in the desert attired in Kaffiyehs, but we hesitate to do this because it is hard to tell in this particular picture which one is the camel and which is your Editor.

Have you read the Russian maser papers in OPTICS AND

SPECTROSCOPY?

We have a letter which takes exception to our publishing (in the October 1963 issue) an article by Paul Görlich on "Optics in the German Democratic Republic" without an editorial foot­note mentioning that there is more than one company claiming the use of the Zeiss name and trademarks, and that V.E.B. Carl Zeiss, Jena, located in the Soviet Zone of Germany, is not connected in any way with Carl Zeiss of Heidenheim, West Germany. Litigation between the West German and the East German firm is currently pending in the Federal District Court in New York and will determine the right to the use of the Zeiss name and the trademarks in the United States.

It is our own personal opinion that it is going to take another Nathan der Weise to resolve this puzzler. Until this matter is resolved by the courts we propose in this journal in papers from or references to either litigant not to use Zeiss by itself but to use (as the author prefers): Carl Zeiss, Heidenheim; Carl Zeiss, Oberkochen; Carl Zeiss, West Germany; to mean the firm located in the German Federal Republic (Bundesrepublik Deutschland); Carl Zeiss, Inc., to refer to the American representatives of the West German firm; and VEB Carl Zeiss Jena to refer to the Volks Eigener Betrieb (nationalized) firm located in the Soviet Zone of Germany, which calls itself the German Democratic Republic (Deutsche Demokratische Republik, DDR), which is generally referred to in the U.S. as East Germany. We hope this does not mislead any of our readers. We suspect that most of our readers are somewhat aware that there are East-West problems in this world, as well as North-South problems. These have re­placed the prime problems of medieval times, which were more of an up-down nature. Most scientists, however withdrawn, know that there are two Chinas and at least two Germanys, and if name, affiliation, and location of an author are given we do not feel that we should have to add a footnote concerning which one is the true and original. Pilate asked, "What is truth?" and waited not for an answer.

There is a story that Napoleon once visited the French Acad­emy and was introduced to Ampère, who shocked Napoleon's aides by not knowing who the visitor was. Napoleon merely laughed and said, "I'll teach him who I am", and the next day sent Ampère an invitation to dine with the Emperor. But on the appointed day Ampère's place was empty; he was in his laboratory working, having completely forgotten about the dinner. Nowadays it is somewhat harder to be so completely removed from the issues of the day, and the average scientist is perhaps smarter than he looks.

Finally, we have a letter from a reader wishing we would not accept papers originating from South Africa. What is common to all of these letters relative to Russia, Germany, Israel, or South Africa, is that certain readers wish us to make the accepta­bility of optics papers contingent on a variety of nonoptical con­siderations. Far be it from us to claim that we are without bias, either great or petty, but it is our feeling that we would get our­selves into much more trouble, unhappiness, and acrimony if we imposed such restrictions.

Problems of this sort are not new in scientific societies. Robert Hooke, in a memorandum of 1663, tried to indicate the areas the Royal Society should avoid: "The business and design of the Royal Society is . . . to improve the knowledge of natural things, and all useful Arts, Manufactures, mechanick practices, Engynes and Inventions by Experiments—(not meddling with Divinity, Metaphysics, Moralls, Politicks, Grammar, Rhetorick, or Logick) . . . " .

We would prefer to use, as the primary criterion for accepta­bility in this journal, whether or not the material is of interest to the optics audience.

JOHN N. HOWARD

992 APPLIED OPTICS / Vol. 3, No. 9 / September 1964