These are the brutal facts that would confront us were we to renounce the right to use A- and H-bombs as tactical weapons against armies in the field. As long as we retain that right, the chances are good that we could prevent global war, for no nation would be likely to risk such a war in the face of the possibility that the main bulk of its armies might be wiped out at the outset. If we give up that right, we would also prevent war—by surrendering in advance. Russia, of course, might figure that she could still make war, when she decides the time is ripe, taking the calculated risk that we would not use the A- and H-bombs against her armies for fear of her retaliation against our cities and industries. But whether she would consider that calculated risk worth taking would depend on how good our defenses were. Senator McMahon’s warning that an H-bomb attack “might incinerate 50,000,000 Americans ... in the space of a few minutes” would become a possibility only if we allowed ourselves to be surprised for a second time by a “super Pearl Harbor,” which, of course, is inconceivable. While it is generally agreed that it is impossible to decentralize our cities and industries, because of the tremendous cost (estimated at $300 billion) and the short time at our disposal between now and the ultimate showdown, when Russia is expected to be ready to make major moves at the risk of “accepting” war, we have many advantages not possessed by Britain and Germany during the last war as far as defenses against strategic bombing were concerned. Britain, as well as Poland, Holland, and Belgium—little, densely populated countries—were within very short range of Germany’s airfields. So was Germany, in her turn, within easy range from Britain. Radar, as compared with its modern types, was primitive in quality and inadequate in quantity. Automatic antiaircraft guns, interceptor planes, and night fighters were either nonexistent in the early days of the blitz or in a crude stage of development compared with present equivalents.
How vastly different is our situation today vis-à-vis Russia! Instead of a short hop across the English Channel she would have to cross the Atlantic or the Pacific to reach our continent, whereas we can reach her heartland from bases all around her borders. It is unthinkable that any of her bombers can cross either ocean without being detected hundreds of miles before they reach our shores. With modern radar devices, which are constantly being improved, and fleets of fast interceptors far in advance of anything Russia could develop, we would destroy them long before they would do us any harm. If she attempts to fly over the North Pole, she will still have to cross all of Canada before she can reach us, and if we and our Canadian friends are on the alert, as we must and shall be, any hostile planes could be detected and destroyed over the Arctic.
There is, of course, the possibility of exploding an H-bomb some distance off shore from a submarine or from a tramp steamer, but here, too, eternal vigilance will be the price of our liberties and our lives. There can be no question that we shall succeed in finding the answer to the detection of the Snorkel-type submarine and master it just as we mastered the earlier types. American ingenuity and superior technology have never failed yet in the face of an emergency, and it is unthinkable that they should fail now.
We often hear it said that an enemy could smuggle an A-bomb in small parts into this country and assemble it here. While such an operation is possible, its successful execution against a nation fully on guard is highly improbable. As for the H-bomb, it requires large quantities of liquefied gas, which must be kept in a vacuum surrounded by large vessels of liquid air. In addition it must have its A-bomb trigger and other complicated devices. All this makes its surreptitious smuggling into a country such as ours even more improbable.
We have had it dinned into our ears for so long that there is no defense against the atomic bomb, and that the only choice confronting us is “one world or none,” without anyone taking the trouble to challenge these two pernicious catch-phrases, that we have accepted them as gospel truth, particularly since they were uttered by some of our more articulate atomic scientists. That scientists should at last step out from their laboratories and classrooms to take an active interest in public affairs is highly commendable and welcome. But that does not give them the right to take advantage of the great respect and confidence the public has for them with utterances that serve only to create fear and hysteria and a sense of helplessness, while at the same time offering remedies they know to be unattainable.
The truth of the matter is that there can be and there is a defense against atomic weapons, as against any other weapon. Basically it is the same as the defense against submarines or enemy bombers: detect them and destroy them before they reach you. The difference is largely a matter of degree. Since the atomic-bomb carrier can do greater damage, the measures of defense against it must be correspondingly greater. With the aid of the vast stretches of the Atlantic and the Pacific, augmented by an effective radar and interceptor system, on the one hand; and with effective counter-submarine measures on the other, the odds would be against a single A- or H-bomb reaching our shores.
Faced with such an impregnable system of defense, and with a threat of the swift annihilation of its armies as soon as they begin marching for war, the Kremlin could no longer, unless its masters went completely berserk, regard war, or even a challenge to war, a risk worth taking. The cold war may get warmer, as it did in Korea, but as long as we keep our heads and don’t give way to fear and hysteria, trusting in God and keeping our H-bombs “wet,” it may never reach the boilingpoint.
And we have in addition a weapon even more powerful than the H-bomb or any other physical weapon, which instead of bringing misery and death would bring new life and new hope to hundreds of millions now enslaved. We have not yet even begun to fight on the battlefield of ideas, in which we can match freedom against tyranny, friendship against class hatred, truth against lies, a society based on the respect and dignity of the individual and the giving of full scope to human aspirations against a society modeled after the beehive and the ant-heap.
“Real peace,” former Assistant Secretary of State Adolf A. Berle, Jr., said in the New Leader, “is deeper than absence of war. That will be won in the realm of philosophy and ideas. Indeed, the great reason for preventing war is to permit ideas to meet ideas on their own merits.... The statesman’s business is to keep the conflagration at bay and give ideas their chance, relying on the moral strength of the ideals he represents to bring to their support the masses throughout the world.” In such a war of ideas, he adds, there could be no doubt about the outcome, as the West can oppose all its positives against Moscow’s negatives. We meet “a betrayed revolution, in a decadent, imperialist, dictatorial phase, building an empire on the negatives of human behavior. Such empires engage no permanent loyalties; they invariably break up. War would defeat this empire in any case. First rate statesmanship can avoid that war.”
In the words of General George C. Marshall, “the most important thing for the world today is a spiritual regeneration.... We must present democracy as a force holding within itself the seeds of unlimited progress for the human race. We should make it clear that it is a means to a better way of life within nations and to a better understanding among nations. Tyranny inevitably must fall back before the tremendous moral strength of the gospel of freedom and self-respect for the individual.”