This chapter discusses the history of science and scientists in the Great War. Few historians have tried to deal with the implications of scientific mobilisation for understanding of the conflict and its consequences. The Great War created opportunities for the systematic application of a new vocabulary of warfare, a new set of professional specialities, a new emphasis on the role of women and minorities, as well as a new politics of science. Scientific internationalism was one of the casualties of the war for civilisation. The war produced many changes in science and its relationship to society. At the same time, the war gave new depth and meaning to the relationship between science and the military. If people are to read it correctly, they must revisit those four years when scientists across the world chose to serve the political order they had helped to create.

The Cultural Revolution confirmed the close relation between artistic creation and political life, but also showed that variations in the relation were possible. Severe ideological attacks on particular writers and the complete reorganization of the cultural bureaucracy almost suffocated literary life. This chapter describes the political interference in literary life and the changes in the literary system. For political and ideological reasons, including those provided by the Shanghai Forum, the Cultural Revolution was hostile to literary creation. The ideological criticism of Wu Han and Teng T'o appeared to be a political instrument to eliminate the political enemies of Mao Tse-tung and Lin Piao. Because of internal dissent and external pressures, the Cultural Revolution Group never had the authority to give effective guidance to literary and artistic production and, except in the case of the promotion of modern Peking Opera on revolutionary themes, its interference in artistic life led nowhere.