"I—you're crazy, Doug. Crazy as a 1951 tax program. You've gotten bitter about things in the past, sometimes a little cynical. Hell, who doesn't. But you've always been the one man the people knew they could count on—and your fellow-workers, I can even add. If you try to come out with a thing like this—"
"A moment. Just a minute, Carl. I want to ask an easy one. It is really easy. How long before the next world war breaks out?"
"Easy, what d'you mean, easy? Tomorrow, next month, next year maybe. Maybe not until 1960. Nobody knows that—"
"I still say, easy. There's certainty it will be at least by 1960, and probably sooner. That's terrifyingly close enough, isn't it, when you're speaking in terms of the inevitable?"
"I see."
"The world is a pretty desperate place right now, wouldn't you say? Worse even than five or six years ago."
"Desperate, desperate—yes of course it's desperate. And you—you're going to make something of it, is that it? Doug, you're not being very original. I never thought—I never honestly thought the day would come when I'd hear you—"
"Give me a chance, Carl."
"If I do I don't think I'll ever broadcast another word of what you have to say."
"I'll take that chance. But first I'd better clear some things up. First of all, I'll tell you how much I've explained to the committee. I've pointed out to them that there is but one way open—and one way only—of offsetting the Soviets' superiority in arms production, and that's to shock the living daylights out of them. Shock them so that they'll be convinced we're—we're a nation gone mad, perhaps. As you think I've gone mad, this moment. But—what stomach would any foreign enemy have for fighting a madman, armed to the teeth with atomic weapons? They say a lunatic with a gun is a great deal more deadly than a sane man similarly armed.