[wordup] Old Heinlein Piece on Atomic Weapons

[Adam Shand]

Via: Daniel Hasenstaub
From: http://www.baen.com/chapters/W200310/0743471598___6.htm

THE LAST DAYS OF THE UNITED STATES

FOREWORD 

After World War II I resumed writing with two objectives: first, to 
explain the meaning of atomic weapons through popular articles; second, 
to break out from the limitations and low rates of pulp science-fiction 
magazines into anything and everything: slicks, books, motion pictures, 
general fiction, specialized fiction not intended for SF magazines, and 
nonfiction. 

My second objective I achieved in every respect, but in my first and 
much more important objective I fell flat on my face. 

Unless you were already adult in August 1945 it is almost impossible 
for me to convey emotionally to you how people felt about the A-bomb, 
how many different ways they felt about it, how nearly totally ignorant 
99.9% of our citizens were on the subject, including almost all of our 
military leaders and governmental officials.

And including editors!

(The general public is just as dangerously ignorant as to the 
significance of nuclear weapons today, 1979, as in 1945—but in 
different ways. In 1945 we were smugly ignorant; in 1979 we have the 
Pollyannas, and the Ostriches, and the Jingoists who think we can "win" 
a nuclear war, and the group—a majority?—who regard World War III as of 
no importance compared with inflation, gasoline rationing, forced 
school-busing, or you name it. There is much excuse for the ignorance 
of 1945; the citizenry had been hit by ideas utterly new and strange. 
But there is no excuse for the ignorance of 1979. Ignorance today can 
be charged only to stupidity and laziness—both capital offences.) 

I wrote nine articles intended to shed light on the post-Hiroshima age, 
and I have never worked harder on any writing, researched the 
background more thoroughly, tried harder to make the (grim and horrid) 
message entertaining and readable. I offered them to commercial 
markets, not to make money, but because the only propaganda that stands 
any chance of influencing people is packaged so attractively that 
editors will buy it in the belief that the cash customers will be 
entertained by it. 

Mine was not packaged that attractively. 

I was up against some heavy tonnage: 

General Groves, in charge of the Manhattan District (code name for 
A-bomb R&D), testified that it would take from twenty years to forever 
for another country to build an A-bomb. (U.S.S.R. did it in 4 years.) 

The Chief of Naval Operations testified that the "only" way to deliver 
the bomb to a target across an ocean was by ship. 

A very senior Army Air Force general testified that "blockbuster" bombs 
were just as effective and cheaper. 

The chairman of NACA (shortly to become NASA) testified (Science News 
Letter 25 May 1946) that intercontinental rockets were impossible. 

Ad nauseam—the old sailors want wooden ships, the old soldiers want 
horse cavalry. 

But I continued to write these articles until the U.S.S.R. rejected the 
United States' proposals for controlling and outlawing atomic weapons 
through open skies and mutual on-the-ground inspection, i.e., every 
country in the world to surrender enough of its sovereignty to the 
United Nations that mass-weapons war would become impossible (and 
lesser war unnecessary). 

The U.S.S.R. rejected inspection—and I stopped trying to peddle 
articles based on tying the Bomb down through international policing. 

I wish that I could say that thirty-three years of "peace" (i.e., no A- 
or H- or C- or N- or X- bombs dropped) indicates that we really have 
nothing to fear from such weapons, because the human race has sense 
enough not to commit suicide. But I am sorry to say that the situation 
is even more dangerous, even less stable, than it was in 1946. 

Here are three short articles, each from a different approach, with 
which I tried (and failed) to beat the drum for world peace. 

Was I really so naif that I thought that I could change the course of 
history this way? No, not really. But, damn it, I had to try!  

"Here lie the bare bones of the United States of America, conceived in 
freedom, died in bondage. 1776–1986. Death came mercifully, in one 
stroke, during senility.
"Rest in Peace!"

* * *

No expostulations, please. Let us not kid ourselves. The next war can 
destroy us, utterly, as a nation—and World War III is staring us right 
in the face. So far, we have done little to avert it and less to 
prepare for it. Once upon a time the United Nations organization stood 
a fair chance of preventing World War III. Now, only a major operation 
can equip the UNO to cope with the horrid facts of atomics and 
rocketry—a major operation which would take away the veto power of the 
Big Five and invest the world organization with the sole and sovereign 
power to possess atomic weapons.

Are we, as a people, prepared to make the necessary sacrifices to 
achieve a world authority?

Take a look around you. Many of your friends and neighbors believe that 
the mere possession of the atomic bomb has rendered us immune to 
attack. So—the country settles back with a sigh of relief, content to 
leave foreign affairs to William Randolph Hearst, the Denver Post, and 
the Chicago Tribune. We turn our backs on world responsibility and are 
now hell-bent on new washing machines and new cars.

 From such an attitude, with dreadful certainty, comes World War III, 
the Twenty Minute War, the Atomic War, the War of Final Destruction. 
The "secret" of the atomic bomb cannot be kept, the experts have told 
us repeatedly, for the "secret" is simply engineering know-how which 
can be developed by any industrial nation.

 From this fact it can be predicted that any industrial nation, even 
though small and comparatively weak, will in a few years be able to 
create the means to destroy the United States at will in one all-out 
surprise attack. What constitutes a strong power in the Atomic Era? 
Scientific knowledge, engineering skill, and access to the ores of 
uranium—no more is needed. Under such circumstances the pretensions of 
the Big Five to veto powers over the affairs of this planet are 
preposterous. At the moment there is only the Big One, the United 
States, through its temporary exclusive possession of the Bomb. 
Tomorrow—five to ten years—the list might include any of the many 
nations with the two requirements.

Belgium and Canada have the greatest known deposits of uranium. Both 
are small but both possess science and skill in abundance. Potentially 
they are more powerful than any of the so-called Big Five, more 
powerful than the United States or Russia. Will they stand outside 
indefinitely, hat in hand, while the "Big Five" determine the fate of 
the human race? The developments of atomic weapons and of rocketry are 
analogous to the development of the revolver in individual affairs—it 
has made the little ones and the big ones all the same size. Some fine 
day some little nation may decide she is tired of having us around, 
give us one twenty-minute treatment with atomic rocket bombs, and 
accept our capitulation.

We have reason to fear such an attack. We have been through one Pearl 
Harbor; we know that it can happen to us. Our present conduct breeds 
fear and distrust in the hearts of men all over the globe. No matter 
how we think of ourselves, no matter how peaceful and good hearted we 
think ourselves to be, two facts insure that we will be hated by many. 
We have the Bomb—it is like a loaded revolver pointed at the heads of 
all men. Oh, we won't pull the trigger! Nevertheless, do you suppose 
they love us for it?

Our other unforgivable sin is being rich while they are poor. Never 
mind our rationalizations—they see our wasteful luxury while much of 
the globe starves. Hungry men do not reason calmly. We are getting 
ourselves caught in a situation which should lead us to expect attack 
from any quarter, from whoever first produces atomic weapons and 
long-distance rockets.

* * *

Knowing these things, the professional gentlemen who are charged with 
the defense of this country, the generals and the admirals and the 
members of the military and naval affairs committees of both houses, 
are cudgelling their brains in a frenzied but honest attempt to 
persuade the rest of the country to follow this course or that, which, 
in their several opinions, will safeguard the country in any coming 
debacle.

But there is a tragic sameness to their proposals. With few exceptions, 
they favor preparedness for the last war. Thusly:

Conscription in peacetime to build up a reserve;

Emphasis on aircraft carriers rather than battleships;

Decentralization of cities;

An armaments race to keep our head start in atomic weapons;

Agreements to "outlaw" atomic weapons;

Consolidation of the Army and the Navy;

Buying enough war planes each year to insure new development;

An active military and foreign affairs intelligence corps;

Moving the aircraft industry inland;

Placing essential war industry underground.

These are the progressive proposals. (Some still favor infantry and 
battleships!) In contrast, General Arnold says to expect war in which 
space ships cruise outside the atmosphere and launch super-high-speed, 
atomic-armed rockets on cities below. Hap Arnold tells his boys to keep 
their eyes on Buck Rogers. Somebody is wrong—is it Hap Arnold or his 
more conservative colleagues?

Compulsory military training—France had that, for both wars. The end 
was Vichy.

Aircraft carriers vs. battleships. Look, pals, the aircraft carrier was 
the weapon of this war, before Hiroshima. Carriers don't look so good 
against space ships. Let's build galleons instead; they are cheaper, 
prettier, and just as useful.

Decentralization of large cities—let's table this one for a moment. 
There is some sense to it, if carried to its logical conclusion. But 
not with half measures and not for $250,000,000,000, the sum mentioned 
by Sumner Spaulding, its prime proponent.

Bigger and better atomic weapons for the United States—this has a 
reasonable and reassuring sound. We've got the plant and the trained 
men; let's stay ahead in the race. Dr. Robert Wilson says that atomic 
bombs a hundred or a thousand times as powerful as the Hiroshima bomb 
are now in prospect. Teddy Roosevelt advised us to "Speak softly but 
carry a big stick."

It is a tempting doctrine, but the great-hearted Teddy died long before 
Hiroshima; his day was the day of the charge up San Juan Hill. A 
hundred obsolete atomic bombs could destroy the United States—if the 
enemy struck first. Our super bombs would not save us, unless we were 
willing to strike first, without declaring war. If two men are locked 
in a basement, one armed with a 50-calibre machine gun, the other with 
an 18th century ball-and-powder pistol, victory goes to the man who 
shoots first, not to the one with the better weapon. That is the logic 
of atomics and now is the time to learn it by heart.

Agreements to "outlaw" atomic weapons? Swell! Remember the Kellogg 
Pact? It "outlawed" war.

Consolidation of the armed forces: A proposition sensible in itself, 
but disastrously futile unless we realize that all previous military 
art is obsolete in the atomic age. The best pre-Hiroshima weapons are 
now no more than the sidearms of the occupying military police. Buck 
Rogers must be the new chief of staff. Otherwise we will find ourselves 
with the most expensive luxury in the world—a second-best military 
establishment.

Purchase of military aircraft in quantities to insure new 
development—we bought sailing ships-of-the-line in the 1880's. This 
makes the same sort of pseudo-sense. Airplanes are already 
obsolete—slow, clumsy, and useless. The V-2 is credited with a speed of 
3600 miles per hour. Here is a simple problem in proportion: The Wright 
Brothers crate at Kitty Hawk bears the same relation to the B-29 that 
the V-2 bears to the rocket ship of the coming war. Complete the 
equation by visualizing the coming rocket ship. Then stop wasting taxes 
on airplanes.

An efficient intelligence system—Fine! But no answer in itself. The 
British intelligence was quite efficient before this war. Mr. 
Chamberlain's desk was piled high with intelligence reports, reports 
which showed that Munich need never have happened. This has since been 
confirmed by high German General Staff officers. But Mr. Chamberlain 
did not read the reports. Intelligence reports are useful only to the 
intelligent. 

Moving the aircraft industry inland—excellent preparation for World War 
II. Move an industry which we don't need for World War III inland where 
it will be safe from the weapons of World War II. While we are about it 
let's put stockades around them to keep the Indians out. In the 
meantime our potential enemies will have plenty of time to perfect 
long-range rockets.

Placing key war industry underground—assembly lines underground are all 
very well, but blast furnaces and many other things simply won't fit. 
Whatever digging in we do, be sure we do it so secretly that the enemy 
will never suspect, lest he drop an earthquake-type atomic bomb 
somewhere nearby and bury all hands. Let us be certain, too, that he 
does not introduce a small atomic bomb inside the underground works, 
disguised as a candy vending machine, a lunch pail, or a fire 
extinguisher. The age of atomics is a field day for saboteurs; 
underground works could be colossal death traps.

No one wants this new war, no sane men anywhere. Yet we are preparing 
for it and a majority, by recent Gallup polls, believe it will come. We 
have seen the diplomats and prime ministers and presidents and foreign 
affairs committees and state departments manage to get things messed up 
in the past; from where we sit it looks as if they were hell-bent on 
messing them up again. We hear the rumble of the not-so-distant drum.

What we want, we little men everywhere, is planetary organization so 
strong that it can enforce peace, forbid national armaments, atomic or 
otherwise, and in general police the globe so that a decent man can 
raise his kids and his dog and smoke his pipe free from worry of sudden 
death. But we see the same old messing around with half measures.

(If you want to help to try to stop the messing-up process, you might 
write Congressman Jerry Voorhis, or Senator Fulbright, or Senator Ball, 
or Beardsley Ruml, or Harold Stassen. Or even the President himself.)

* * *

If things go from bad to worse and we have to fight a war, can we 
prepare to win it? First let us try to grasp what kind of a war it will 
be. Look at LIFE, Nov. 19, 1945, page 27: THE 36-HOUR WAR: Arnold 
Report Hints at the Catastrophe of the Next Great Conflict. The first 
picture shows Washington, D.C., being destroyed by an atomic rocket 
bomb. The text and pictures go on to show 13 U.S. cities being 
destroyed the same way, enemy airborne troops attempting to occupy, the 
U.S. striking back with its own rockets from underground emplacements, 
and eventually winning—at a cost of 13 cities and at least 10,000,000 
American lives.

Horrible as the picture is, it is much too optimistic. There is no 
reason at all to assume that the enemy will attack in too little force, 
destroying only 13 cities, or to assume that he will attempt to occupy 
until we have surrendered, or to assume that we will be able to strike 
back after we are attacked.

It is not safe to assume that the enemy will be either faint-hearted or 
foolish. If he follows our example with Japan, he will smash us until 
we surrender, then land. If his saboteurs are worth their blood money, 
our own rocket emplacements may be blown up by concealed atomic bombs 
just in advance of the attack.

Atomic rocket warfare has still another drawback—it is curiously 
anonymous. We might think we knew who had attacked us but be entirely 
mistaken.

You can think of at least three nations which dislike both us and 
Russia. What better joke for them than to select a time when suspicion 
has been whipped up between the two giants to lob just a few atomic 
rockets from a ship in the North Atlantic, or from a secret emplacement 
in the frozen north of Greenland—half at us, half at Russia, and with 
the attack in each case apparently coming from the other, and then sit 
back while we destroyed each other!

A fine joke! You would die laughing.

Don't think it can't be done, to us and to Russia.

* * *

What can we do?

The first thing is to get Congress to take a realistic view of the 
situation. The most certain thing about LIFE's description of the 
coming war was the destruction of Washington. Washington is the prime 
military target on earth today for it is the center of the nervous 
system of the nation that now has the Bomb. It must be destroyed first 
and it will be destroyed, if war ever comes. Your congressman has the 
most dangerous job in the world today. You may live through World War 
III—he can't. Make yours realize this; he may straighten up and fly 
right.

What we want him to work for is world order and world peace. But we may 
not get it. The other nations may be fed up with our shilly-shallying 
and may not go along with us, particularly any who believe they are 
close to solving the problems of atomic weapons. We may have to go it 
alone. In such cases, is there anything we can do to preserve 
ourselves?

Yes, probably—but the price is high.

We can try for another Buck Rogers weapon with which to ward off atomic 
bomb rockets. It would need to be better than anything we have now or 
can foresee. To be 100% effective (with atom bombs, anything less is 
hardly good enough!) it should be something which acts with much 
greater speed than guns or anti-aircraft rockets. There is a bare 
possibility that science could cook up some sort of a devastatingly 
powerful beam of energy, acting with the speed of light, which would be 
a real anti-aircraft weapon, even against rockets. But the scientists 
don't promise it.

We would need the best anti-aircraft devices possible, in the meantime. 
A robot hook-up of target-seeking rockets, radar, and computing 
machines might give considerable protection, if extensive enough, but 
there is a lot of research and test and production ahead before any 
such plan is workable. Furthermore, it could not be air tight and it 
would be very expensive—and very annoying, for it would end civilian 
aviation. If we hooked the thing up to ignore civilian planes, we would 
leave ourselves wide open to a Trojan Horse tactic in which the enemy 
would use ordinary planes to deliver his atomic bombs.

Such a defense, although much more expensive and much more trouble than 
all our pre-War military establishment, would be needed. If we are not 
willing to foot the bill, we can at least save money by not buying 
flame throwers, tanks, or battleships.

We can prepare to attack. We can be so bristlingly savage that other 
nations may fear to attack us. If we are not to have a super-state and 
a world police, then the United States needs the fastest and the most 
long-range rockets, the most powerful atomic blasts, and every other 
dirty trick conceived in comic strip or fantastic fiction. We must have 
space ships and we must have them first. We must land on the Moon and 
take possession of it in order to forbid its use to other nations as a 
base against us and in order to have it as a base against any enemy of 
ours. We must set up, duplicate, and reduplicate rocket installations 
intended to destroy almost automatically any spot on earth; we must let 
the world know that we have them and that we are prepared to use them 
at the drop of a diplomat's silk hat. We must be prepared to tell 
uncooperative nations that there are men sitting in front of switches, 
day and night, and that an attack on Washington would cause those 
switches to be thrown.

And we must guard the secrets of the locations and natures of our 
weapons in a fashion quite impossible for a normal democracy in peace 
time. More of that later.

Decentralization we would have to have. Not the picayune 
$250,000,000,000 job which has been proposed—

("Wait a minute! Why should we disperse our cities if we are going to 
have that Buck Rogers super-dooper death ray screen?")

We haven't got such a screen. Nor is it certain that we will ever have 
such a screen, no matter how much money we spend. Such a screen is 
simply the one remote possibility which modern physics admits. It may 
turn out to be impossible to develop it; we simply don't know.

We must disperse thoroughly, so thoroughly that no single concentration 
of population in the United States is an inviting target. Mr. Sumner 
Spaulding's timid proposal of a quarter of a trillion dollars was based 
on the pleasant assumption that Los Angeles was an example of a 
properly dispersed city for the Atomic Age. This is an incredible piece 
of optimism which is apparently based on the belief that Hiroshima is 
the pattern for all future atomic attacks. Hiroshima was destroyed with 
one bomb. Will the enemy grace the city of the Angels with only one 
bomb? Why not a dozen?

The Hiroshima bomb was the gentlest, least destructive atomic bomb ever 
likely to be loosed. Will the enemy favor us with a love tap such as 
that?

Within twenty miles of the city hall of Los Angeles lives half the 
population of the enormous state of California. An atomic bomb dropped 
on that City Hall would not only blast the swarming center of the city, 
it would set fire to the surrounding mountains ("WARNING! No Smoking, 
In or Out of Cars—$500 fine and six months imprisonment") from Mount 
Wilson Observatory to the sea. It would destroy the railroad terminal 
half a dozen blocks from the City Hall and play hob with the water 
system, water fetched clear from the State of Arizona.

If that is dispersion, I'll stay in Manhattan.

Los Angeles is a modern miracle, an enormous city kept alive in a 
desert by a complex and vulnerable concatenation of technical 
expedients. The first three colonies established there by the Spaniards 
starved to death to the last man, woman, and child. If the fragile 
structure of that city were disrupted by a single atomic bomb, those 
who survived the blast would in a few short days be reduced to a 
starving, thirst-crazed mob, ready for murder and cannibalism.

No, if we are to defend ourselves we must not assume that Los Angeles 
is "dispersed" despite the jokes about her far-flung city line. The 
Angelenos must be relocated from Oregon to Mexico, in the Mojave 
Desert, in Imperial Valley, in the great central valley, in the Coast 
Range, and in the High Sierras.

The same principles apply everywhere. Denver must be scattered out 
toward Laramie and Boulder, while Colorado Springs must flow around 
Pike's Peak to Cripple Creek. Kansas City and Des Moines must meet at 
the Iowa-Missouri line, while Joplin flows up toward Kansas City and on 
down into the Ozarks. As for Manhattan, that is almost too much to 
describe—from Boston to Baltimore all the great east coast cities must 
be abandoned and the population scattered like leaves.

The cities must go. Only villages must remain. If we are to rely on 
dispersion as a defense in the Atomic Age, then we must spread 
ourselves out so thin that the enemy cannot possibly destroy us with 
one bingo barrage, so thin that we will be too expensive and too 
difficult to destroy.

It would be difficult. It would be incredibly difficult and 
expensive—Mr. Spaulding's estimate would not cover the cost of new 
housing alone, but new housing would be the least of our problems. We 
would have to rebuild more than half of our capital plant—shops, 
warehouses, factories, railroads, highways, power plants, mills, 
garages, telephone lines, pipe lines, aqueducts, granaries, 
universities. We would have to take the United States apart and put it 
back together again according to a new plan and for a new purpose. The 
financial cost would be unimportant, because we could not buy it, we 
would have to do it, with our own hands, our own sweat. It would mean a 
sixty-hour week for everyone, no luxury trades, and a bare minimum 
standard of living for all for some years. Thereafter the standard of 
living would be permanently depressed, for the new United States would 
be organized for defense, not for mass production, nor efficient 
marketing, nor convenient distribution. We would have to pay for our 
village culture in terms of lowered consumption. Worse, a large chunk 
of our lowered productivity must go into producing and supporting the 
atomic engines of war necessary to strike back against an aggressor—for 
dispersion alone would not protect us from invasion.

If the above picture is too bleak, let us not prate about dispersion. 
There are only three real alternatives open to us: One, to form a truly 
sovereign superstate to police the globe; two, to prepare realistically 
for World War III in which case dispersion, real and thorough 
dispersion, is utterly necessary, or, third, to sit here, fat, dumb, 
and happy, wallowing in our luxuries, until the next Hitler annihilates 
us!

The other necessary consequences of defense by dispersion are even more 
chilling than the economic disadvantages. If we go it alone and depend 
on ourselves to defend ourselves we must be prepared permanently to 
surrender that democratic freedom of action which we habitually enjoyed 
in peace time. We must resign ourselves to becoming a socialistic, 
largely authoritarian police state, with freedom of speech, freedom of 
occupation, and freedom of movement subordinated to military necessity, 
as defined by those in charge.

Oh, yes! I dislike the prospect quite as much as you do, but I dislike 
still more the idea of being atomized, or of being served up as a roast 
by my starving neighbors. Here is what you can expect:

The front door bell rings. Mr. Joseph Public, solid citizen, goes to 
answer it. He recognizes a neighbor. "Hi, Jack! What takes you out so 
late?"

"Got some dope for you, Joe. Relocation orders—I was appointed an 
emergency deputy, you know."

"Hadn't heard, but glad to hear. Come in and sit down and tell me about 
it. How do the orders read? We stay, don't we?"

"Can't come in—thanks. I've got twenty-three more stops to make 
tonight. I'm sorry to say you don't stay. Your caravan will rendezvous 
at Ninth and Chelsea, facing west, and gets underway at noon tomorrow."

"What!"

"That's how it is. Sorry."

"Why, this is a damned outrage! I put in to stay here—with my home town 
as second choice."

The deputy shrugged. "So did everybody else. But you weren't even on 
the list of essential occupations from which the permanent residents 
were selected. Now, look—I've got to hurry. Here are your orders. Limit 
yourself to 150 pounds of baggage, each, and take food for three days. 
You are to go in your own car—you're getting a break—and you will be 
assigned two more passengers by the convoy captain, two more besides 
your wife I mean."

Joe Public shoved his hands in his pockets and looked stubborn. "I 
won't be there."

"Now, Joe, don't take that attitude. I admit it's kinda rough, being in 
the first detachment, but you've had lots of notice. The newspapers 
have been full of it. It's been six months since the President's 
proclamation."

"I won't go. There's some mistake. I saw the councilman last week and 
he said he thought I would be all right. He—"

"He told everybody that, Joe. This is a Federal order."

"I don't give a damn if it's from the Angel Gabriel. I tell you I won't 
go. I'll get an injunction."

"You can't, Joe. This has been declared a military area and protests 
have to go to the Provost Marshal. I'd hate to tell you what he does 
with them. Anyhow, you can't stay here—it's no business of mine to put 
you out; I just have to tell you—but the salvage crews will be here 
tomorrow morning to pull out your plumbing."

"They won't get in."

"Maybe not. But the straggler squads will go through all of these 
houses first."

"I'll shoot!"

"I wouldn't advise it. They're mostly ex-Marines."

Mr. Public was quiet for a long minute. Marines. "Look, Jack," he said 
slowly, "suppose I do go. I've got to have an exemption on this baggage 
limitation and I can't carry passengers. My office files alone will 
fill up the back seat."

"You won't need them. You are assigned as an apprentice carpenter. The 
barracks you are going to are only temporary."

"Joseph! Joseph! Don't stand there with the door open! Who is it?" His 
wife followed her voice in.

He turned to tell her; the deputy took that as a good time to leave.

At eleven the next morning he pulled out of the driveway, gears 
clashing. He had the white, drawn look of a man who has been up all 
night. His wife slept beside him, her hysteria drowned in a triple dose 
of phenobarbital.

That is dispersion. If you don't believe it, ask any native-born 
citizen of Japanese blood. Nothing less than force and police 
organization will drive the peasants off the slopes of Vesuvius. The 
bones of Pompeii and Herculaneum testify to that. Or, ask yourself—will 
you go willingly and cheerfully to any spot and any occupation the 
government assigns to you? If not, unless you are right now working 
frantically to make World War III impossible, you have not yet adjusted 
yourself to the horrid facts of the Atomic Age.

For these are the facts of the Atomic Age. If we are not to have a 
World State, then we must accept one of two grim alternatives: A 
permanent state of total war, even in "peace" time, with every effort 
turned to offense and defense, or relax to our fate, make our peace 
with God, and wait for death to come out of the sky. The time in which 
to form a World State is passing rapidly; it may be gone by the time 
this is printed. It is worthwhile to note that the publisher of the 
string of newspapers most bitterly opposed to "foreign entanglements," 
particularly with Russia, and most insistent on us holding on to the 
vanishing "secret" of the atomic bomb—this man, this publisher, lives 
on an enormous, self-sufficient ranch, already dispersed. Not for him 
is the peremptory knock on the door and the uprooting relocation order. 
Yet he presumes daily to tell our Congress what must be done with us 
and for us.

Look at the facts! Go to your public library and read the solemn 
statements of the men who built the atomic bomb. Do not let yourself be 
seduced into a false serenity by men who do not understand that the old 
world is dead. Regularly, in the past, our State Department has bungled 
us into wars and with equal regularity our military establishment has 
been unprepared for them. Then the lives and the strength of the common 
people have bought for them a victory.

Now comes a war which cannot be won after such mistakes.

If we are to die, let us die like men, eyes open, aware of our peril 
and striving to cope with it—not as fat and fatuous fools, smug in the 
belief that the military men and the diplomats have the whole thing 
under control.

"It is later than you think."