THE INEVITABLE DECISION

...As for the Japanese, I say: feed them but don't educate them...

...As for the prosecuting attorneys, women's clubs and eager clergymen who must get their sex by cable from Rome—to them we say, "Long live Marconi and Stromboli...

...Richard Armour...

...Stromboli ami Marconi THE ROMANCE which began on Stromboli has penetrated virtually every hamlet on the globe...

...Among them, the martinis (or is it Maderia?— we'll have to consult our chart on what highbrows drink) flow driest, for Ingrid, and the function of the new criticism, the real nature of Gaullism, and the latest preachment from Saint Dean of State rate not an olive...

...Hence the inevitability of President Truman's decision...

...We've gotten where we are—our impasse with Russia—because people like Defense Secretaries Forrestal and Johnson and their ilk had no love for Russm...

...In one fell swoop, that triplethreat genius, Eros, has written, directed and produced a thriller which even Cecil B. deMille could scarcely conjure up...

...People who normally extend their passions to nothing more shattering than canasta have, on this issue, taken violent sides...

...The intelligentsia, we are happy to announce, have not remained indifferent to this issue...

...It might be worthwhile sacrificing the automobile if only the tank and similar weapons would disappear at the same time...

...American and western science and technology are a far better shield for the free world than any rash reliance on Soviet good faith—a quality that has often been put to the test and almost always found wanting on issues big and small...

...It carries us back to the days when the sight of a woman smoking a cigaret in public was sufficient to catapult a dignified dowager into action with a jet-propelled parasol...

...But, while the individual may get a second chance, the human race cannot hope for anything of this kind...

...It is safe to say that no arms limitation agreement has ever been fully enforced when one of the signatories has been determined to evade it...

...But we are living in the world of 1950 and we must face coolly and rationally the hard decisions that are forced upon us...

...The quality of western civilization has deteriorated appallingly during the last thirtyfive years...

...That first question, which ought to puncture a good deal of breast-beating oratory about the horrors of the hydrogen bomb Is: Would wo be safer without it...

...But Stromboli has sent us all leaping to man, or to lay siege to, the breastworks of Morality...

...Would failure on our part to proceed with research and development with this or any other deadly weapon cause the rulers of the Soviet Union to adopt a similar self-denying attitude...

...It's good to have our taxea hidden...

...It is also the one that, in the nature of things, cannot be satisfactorily fulfilled...

...Who could insure, for instance, that the Soviet Union would put all its cards on the table, wquld reveal its entire stockpile of atomic bombs for inspection...

...It is possible, although by no means certain, that the Baruch Plan would have furnished adequate safeguards against an atomic arms race before the Soviet Union had detonated its first bomb...

...Communiques pour forth with the staccato regularity, and the dramatic impact, of reports from a fighting front...

...Senator Gl«ft H. Taylor, of Idaho...

...Now any American agreement to disarm itself in atomic weapons in return for Soviet promises of acceptance of international control and inspection would be a dangerous trap and might well be an irretrievable betrayal of the security of the United States, and of the entire free civilized world...

...The answers to these questions era obviously No...

...We might not, otherwise, have rkiden...

...Even the celebrated Edward VHI-Wally Simpson affair ran its appointed course without upsetting organized society...

...What system of international-control could prevent the building of some formidable installation in the recesses of Siberia or Central Asia, constructed Wfth slave labor and concealed from every foreign eye...

...Councilman James Coffey, opposing the admission of a Japanese parliamentary delegation, approved and sponsored by General Mac Arthur, to the deliberations of the Boston City Council...

...And groups which might profitably devote hemselves to establishing peace or ending white supremacy, have dedicated themselves to driving from the screen a film imported from sunny Italy which to them symbolizes the torrid dominance of sex...

...After this, what can Bergman offer on the screen to rival her matchless offstage effort...

...Idiot's Delight Dept...

...for that' institution, in claiming the newborn Rossellini-Bergman foundling, reacted with an aplomb that is immortal and a sense of humanity that is arresting...

...And how can Rossellini's Poison, Open Cityf and even Stromboli, compare with the living story he directed?—or failed to direct...

...We may wish that we could live again in a world where totalitarian methods were unknown, where international law was not a fiction, where even the worst governments paid some regard to the pressures of public opinion...

...The main features of this Plan were international ownership of all atomic installations, facilities for adequate inspection and the elimination of the veto in taking measures against an offender...

...Wa never dreamed we paid a sunt < Like this for driving to and from...

...The consistent record of bad faith and bad will displayed by the Soviet rulers, the totalitarian nature of their regime, the vast size and inaccessibility of their empire—all these things lead, to one inescapable conclusion...

...Meut Item...

...And dozens of other sensational events concerning celebrities passed on and off the front pages, if memory serves, without accomplishing more than making the tabloid a permanent feature of our lives...

...IGNORANCE IS YOU KNOW WHAT It cost Americans close to four billion dollars in taxes to operate cars in 1949...

...Where the News Ends The Inevitable Decision By William Henry Chamberlin GIVEN the present state of international relations, President Truman's decision to proceed with the construction of the hydrogen bomb was inevitable...

...But then, perhaps giving up a Hollywood crown is of deeper significance than abandonment of a real one...

...Let us, first of all, grant what should be obvious to any rational human being, that we are living in a very grim and terrible age...

...We are noising about like a collection of ancient Victorians—and perhaps therein lies the real meaning of L'Affaire Bergman...

...THE DISCUSSION of the hydrogen bomb, like.the announcement of the Soviet atomic explosion last autumn, has inspired suggestions for a "new approach" to the Soviet Union, for a weakening of the conditions embodied' in the Baruch Plan...

...The affair, however, has dealt a blow to art for which we cannot forgive it...

...In retrospect, although quite lawful The take for cars seems really awful...

...Years ago this could not have happened...

...It is mere fantasy to imagine that the clock could be put back, that any scientific discovery, however capable of shameful abuse, can be put in cold storage...

...Men and women cease fretting over their own children to lick up, with hungry ardor, the latest word from a Roman hospital...

...We may justifiably feel great bitterness against those individuals who, by their crimes and their perverted fanaticism or by their folly and weakness in the face of crimes and perverted fanaticism, made the world of 1950 what it is...

...What was not inevitable, what might well have been spared, was some of the breast-beating, the wishful thinking, the lapse into a dream world of illusions, that preceded and accompanied the President's brief and simple announcement...

...with a minimum of dangerous and futile illusions...

...Of these three conditions the second is most important...

...If there were any conceivable means by which it would be possible to insure that no atomic bomb, no hydrogen bomb would ever be used by any power, I, along with more than ninety-nine per cent of the American people, would be enthusiastically for it...

...The nineteenth century dream of steady progress toward the sure goals of a more prosperous, more peaceful and more humane society has dissolved in the screaming nightmares of two frightfully destructive world wars and the apocalyptic threat of harnessing the tremendous forces unloosed by science to still more terrific enterprises of mass destruction...

...What independent Soviet editor would denounce a violation of an atomic disarmament convention...

...Personally I would go farther than that...

...IT WOULD BE WONDERFUL if we could recreate the world of 1913 exactly as it was, with all its faults and blemishes and technical inefficiencies, and see if the human race, given a second chance, couldn't do a better job...

...While we are dispensing Oscars, we must certainly nominate the Catholic Church for one...

...They are probably here taking pictures of fortresses and trying to learn all they can about the A-bomb...

...I would be willing to renounce the benefits of aviation if we could only be sure that the horrid threat of armadas of bombing planes would disappear forever...