A SPECTATOR 'S NOTEBOOK
N--- 0 one, certainly, will grudge Sir Robert Watson- Watt and the other scientists. who helped in the discovery of radar the sums which the Royal Commission on Awards to Inventors has bestowed on them. Without radar we could not have won the Battle of Britain, and probably not won the war. Yet there is another side to the question which cannot be com- pletely ignored. Sir Robert and his associates worked whole- heartedly and without thought of monetary reward in the national interest during the war, and the fruit of their labours was what we know it to be. But no less could be said of the captain or crew of any minesweeper, or of a bomb-disposal squad, or of the airmen who lost their lives by thousands over Germany and Italy or the fields of Kent. They did their duty and died,, and their names survive in some war memorial on a village green. Others like them lived—by no more than chance —and got some modest war-gratuity at the end of it all. So, I suppose, it must be. There can be no full equality of sacrifice, and no equality of reward. It would appear that Sir Robert Watson-Watt himself took the view that nothing was due to him, and himself put in no claim for anything. Every- one will be glad he was rewarded without that. No award could be too high for work whose value is literally immeasur- able. Yet the problem I have indicated remains.
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