 Millions upon millions of the world's population today are fearful of A-bomb attack. |
Millions upon millions of the world's population today are fearful of A-bomb attack. Hanging over our heads is the atomic sword of Damocles.
There are some things that we can do about this danger. That is the reason for this book. It tells the facts about the situation. Knowing the facts, all of us can face them more effectively. Unknown dangers are greatest.
Most important is a conviction that each of us must keep before him: Come what may, the world will continue in its orbit, peopled by human beings who will carry on the civilization so painfully evolved through the ages.
Great disasters have come to the earth from time to time. There was the Black Death of the Middle Ages, when bubonic plague was relatively more devastating than the bomb on Hiroshima. Each day a certain number of us are killed in automobile accidents, railroad and airplane wrecks, drown in the rivers and the seas. Some die lingeringly of cancer, others are murdered in conflicts among individuals. Never in recent history has there been a day on which war, big or little, widespread or localized, has not taken its toll. Some in China, India, and elsewhere are this minute dying of starvation, literally dying of not having enough food. Some of us in America are eating ourselves into an early grave.
Each generation is born, lives and dies. The A-bomb, if it comes, like any disaster, will prune human lives. Finally each of us must die. It is a question of timing.
Perhaps this book will save your life. Perhaps the world will work its way out of its present dangerous muddle without the use of A-bombs.
Poison gas was used in the First World War. It was not actually used in World War II because of a stalemate on gas, with both sides ready to use this form of warfare but both sides not willing to take the initiative. This may have been because of the fear of retaliation.
 If we can try to control human behavior through the United Nations, the falling of A-bombs may be prevented. |
A-bombs are merely one of the new potential tools of warfare that threaten our future. There are biological weapons, germ or bacterial warfare. There are newer kinds of poisons, such as "nerve" gases and the radiological weapons or "death dusts" that are A-bomb by-products. But A-bombs are probably the most powerful weapon of any world conflict to come. It is far easier to talk about such weapons as the A-bomb than it is to discuss, realistically, measures that might keep the world at peace and save us from the horrors of atomic war.
After a war must come peace. If we could break this chain in the future, the very real conflicts between communism and democracy might be resolved without the waste of devastating war. There would need to be realization on both sides that, short of unthinkable annihilation of all who differ with each other, the opponents must reconcile their conflicts.
This is the catch in the situation: We can control atoms so much more effectively than men's minds and emotions, particularly human behavior behind the iron curtain.
If we can try to control human behavior, through the United Nations, through as cool a war of ideas and words as possible, through mobilization of world opinion, as well as marshalling of our military strength, the falling of A-bombs may be prevented.
If A-bombs fall, it will be another failure in our civilization -- but most of us will live on even through such a disaster.
This book is designed to increase your chances of living.