A World Safe for Living
BRADLEY, GENERAL OMAR N.
A World Safe for Living by GENERAL OMAR N. BRADLEY This article is adapted from an address given by General of the Army Omar N. Bradley at St. Albans, a private school in Washington, D.C. We are...
...Admittedly, the problem of peaceful accommodation in the world is infinitely more difficult than the conquest of space, infinitely more complex than a trip to the moon...
...The teacher is the real soldier of democracy...
...It failed before, it can fail again...
...Our plight is critical and with each effort we have made to relieve it by further scientific advance, we have succeeded only in aggravating our peril...
...We can't sit about waiting for some felicitous accident of history that may somehow make the world all right...
...Should this situation come to pass, we would have but one single thin thread to cling to...
...We are publishing it because we believe this is an extraordinary statement by one of the nation's most celebrated soldiers —we remain convinced of this despite General Bradley's affirmation, in a letter to the Editor of The Progressive, that the views expressed below "in no way compromise my position regarding the need for present equality or superiority over Russia in scientific achievements...
...But what are we doing to prevent the Sputnik from evolving into just one more weapons system...
...Others can defend it, but only he can make it work...
...For we have defiled our intellect by the creation of such scientific instruments of destruction that we are now in desperate danger of destroying ourselves...
...As a result, each year we suffer an appalling waste in the very human resources on which our salvation depends...
...If I am sometimes discouraged, it is not by the magnitude of the problem, but by our colossal indifference to it...
...And I believe it because I have acquired in my lifetime a decent respect for human intelligence...
...How can we assume that reason will prevail in a crisis when there is ordinarily so little reason among men...
...We call it rationale or reason...
...It may be that the problems of accommodation in a world split by rival ideologies are more difficult than those with which we have struggled in the construction of ballistics missiles...
...Without that faith we shall never get started...
...If enough of us believe strongly enough in the ability of intelligent human beings to get together on some basis of a just accord, we might somehow, somewhere, in some way and under some auspices make a start on it...
...Have we already gone too far in this search for peace through the accumulation of peril...
...Our nation is crowded with extraordinary intellect, few of whom have the opportunity to cultivate their talents in an atmosphere as stimulating as that of St...
...This reasoning may have the benefit of logic...
...And when that time comes there will be little we can do other than to settle down uneasily, smother our fears, and attempt to live in a thickening shadow of death...
...It is a protest against that slovenly lack of intellectual discipline we have tolerated in our nation's educational institutions...
...For twelve years now we have sought to stave off this ultimate threat of disaster by devising arms which would be both ultimate and disastrous...
...This irony can probably be compounded a few more years, or perhaps even a few decades...
...Time is running against us, and it is running against us with the speed of a Sputnik...
...I would like to believe that we are addressing ourselves to this problem of how to make human intelligence work for humanity...
...And when are we going to muster an intelligence equal to that applied against the Sputnik and dedicate it to the preservation of this Satellite on which we live...
...He wrote that while the long-run program must be initiated now, "It is not entirely possible of fulfillment until equality, or superiority in scientific achievements is assured" vis-avis "a ruthless nation bent on imposing her ideology on the rest of the world...
...In a sense, therefore, we might be said to have engaged in an act of social protest...
...He carries the banner of human progress in his hands, for it is he alone who can cultivate the extraordinary intelligence that will be required to extricate this world from its accumulating burden of peril...
...Missiles will bring anti-missiles, and anti-missiles will bring anti-anti-missiles...
...Is there any way to halt this trend—or must we push on with new devices until we come inevitably to judgment before the atom...
...Albans School] with a common concern for the educational welfare of our children...
...There is no calling more worth while than this...
...How long—I would ask you—can we put off salvation...
...We can compete with a Sputnik and probably create bigger and better Sputniks of our own...
...It is a protest against the exploitation of dedicated teachers who must reconcile themselves to a marginal existence for the privilege of following their calling...
...By comparison with it, the conquest of space is of small significance...
...But even logic sometimes goes awry...
...Albans, we come more and more to the realization that the human mind is a noble thing, that the capacities of human intellect are boundless...
...If we're going to save ourselves from the instruments of our own intellect, we had better soon get ourselves under control and begin making the world safe for living...
...I believe there is a way out...
...This is the real and—indeed—the most strenuous challenge to man's intellect today...
...And as we watch them grow in a school as demanding in its intellectual disciplines as St...
...All of us learn from our children...
...In all the great undertakings of mankind, in the beginning there was belief, belief in what had to be done, could—as a matter of fact—be done if only man would persevere in the doing...
...For until we learn how to live together, until we rid ourselves of the strife that mocks our pretensions of civilization, our adventures in science—instead of producing human progress—will continue to crowd it with greater peril...
...Here—as in schools anywhere—respect for human intelligence can be taught only by teachers who are qualified to teach it...
...And until we get started, we shall never know what can be done...
...But if we will only come to the realization that it must be worked out—whatever it may mean even to such sacred traditions as absolute national sovereignty—I believe that we can somehow, somewhere, and perhaps through some as yet undiscovered world thinker and leader, find a workable solution...
...It is a problem we have put upon ourselves...
...We reason that no government, no single group of men— indeed, not even one willful individual—would be so foolhardy, so reckless, as to precipitate a war which would most surely end in mutual destruction...
...As a result, we are now speeding inexorably toward a day when even the ingenuity of our scientists may be unable to save us from the consequences of a single rash act or a lone reckless hand upon the switch of an uninterceptorable missile...
...In our endeavor to provide more adequately for their needs, we have departed the tradition of public schooling...
...But this, my friends, is what we need: faith in our ability to do what must be done...
...I am unable to understand why—if we are willing to trust in reason as a restraint on the use of a ready-made, ready-to-fire bomb—we do not make greater, more diligent, and more imaginative use of reason and human intelligence in seeking an accord and compromise which will make it possible for mankind to control the atom and banish it as an instrument of war...
...And finally, it is a protest against that anti-intellectual prejudice which appears to disparage learning...
...To those who would take comfort in the likelihood of an atomic peace to be secured solely by rationale and reason, I would recall the lapse of reason in a bunker under the Reich Chancellery in Berlin...
...Call it faith—if you will—but believe in those capacities and you will believe also in the ability of an educated mankind to discipline itself so securely as to put an end to this peril with which the world is now encompassed—even its regions of outer space...
...For a school is not so much an institution as it is a band of teachers, joined in dedication, in professional competence and in the desire to help humanity lift itself up by making better use of the infinite capacity of human intellect...
...I confess that this is as much an article of faith as it is an expression of reason...
...We are met here [St...
...THE CENTRAL problem of our -¦- time is how to employ human intelligence for the salvation of mankind...
...But I believe, too, that if we apply to these human problems the energy, creativity, and the perseverance we have devoted to science, even problems of accommodation will yield to reason...
...But inevitably, this whole electronics house of cards will reach a point where it can be constructed no higher...
...Many of them are permitted to clot in indifferent school systems...
...At that point we shall have come to the peak of this whole incredible dilemma into which the world is shoving itself...
...The Editors...
...It is a protest against the parsimonious mistreatment of our public school system—not only by this community, but by communities almost everywhere...
Vol. 22 • January 1958 • No. 1
