A mordant response from Bertrand Russell, Human Society in Ethics and Politics (Simon and Schuster, New York, 1955), 43:

In universities, mathematics is taught mainly to men who are going to teach mathematics to men who are going to teach mathematics to ...  Sometimes, it is true, there is an escape from this treadmill.  Archimedes used mathematics to kill Romans, Galileo to improve the Grand Duke of Tuscany’s artillery, modern physicists (grown more ambitious) to exterminate the human race.  It is usually on this account that the study of mathematics is commended to the general public as worthy of State support.