NUCLEAR PERSPECTIVE
Munk, Arthur W.
Nuclear Perspective The Legacy of Hiroshima, by Edward Teller with Allen Brown. Doubleday. 334 pp. $4.95. The Irreversible Decision, by Robert C. Batchelder. Houghton Mifflin. 320 pp. $5. Nuclear...
...Reviewed by Arthur W. Munk A lthough not of equal value, these books are important from the standpoint of perspective...
...a dogmatic assertive-ness without regard for what other competent authorities have said (Linus Pauling, for instance, is not even mentioned...
...The two essays by John H. Herz and David R. Inglis are outstanding...
...Even though Edward Teller's The Legacy of Hiroshima contains certain constructive features such as his opposition to the preventive war idea and his concern for a peaceful world community, yet, for the most part, it is the same old line which he has presented ad nauseam elsewhere: The Communist threat can be met effectively only through military preparedness in terms of adequate civil defense plus "the establishment of a second-strike force...
...The first, by a well-known nuclear scientist, not only presents a graphic picture of the nuclear revolution, but there is also a definite attempt to formulate a policy to meet the Soviet challenge...
...Kenneth W. Thompson, in a way reminiscent of Teller, stresses military preparedness and the shelter program...
...From the standpoint of future prospects, Roger L. Shinn's essay is also profoundly stimulating...
...This book exhibits grave weaknesses: a preoccupation with military preparedness together with a tragic neglect of dip lomatic, economic, and political means to peace...
...For, along with his suggestive version of unilateral disarmament, there are his insistence that the chief obstacles to disarmament lie largely "in the frozen stereotypes of feelings and thought habits on both sides...
...His essay, in fact, sounds like something right out of the State Department...
...Moreover, Paul Ramsey's attempt to rescue "the just war" theory is no less futile than Batchelder's...
...Edited by John C. Bennett...
...The third, with its seven contributors including the editor (the distinguished dean of the faculty of Union Theological Seminary), concentrates primarily on the ethical implications of the perplexing nuclear problem...
...Nuclear Weapons and the Conflict of Conscience edited by John C. Bennett also contains much that is outmoded...
...his warnings that the arms race "constitutes a particular threat to Western culture...
...The second, by the young associate director of the Detroit Industrial Mission, besides telling the dramatic story of the decisions to make and to use the atom bomb, attempts to sketch a Christian ethic for the nuclear age...
...Two conclusions emerge from this review...
...Erich Fromm's essay in the Bennett volume is nothing less than a masterpiece...
...An all-out war would be dreadful for all participants...
...and his conviction that values are not safe until "man" is put "back into the saddle...
...Today the attempt to revive the archaic doctrine of "the just war" is as futile as the attempt to revive an Egyptian mummy...
...Most fantastic of all, there are his twin prophecies that, given a proper civil defense system, "perhaps ninety per cent of our people" could survive "a sudden nuclear attack," and that these survivors "could rebuild our industrial plant to its pre-attack productive capacity within five years...
...Insofar, however, as his "new ethic" involves little more than just putting "relevant restraints upon both the ends and means of warfare" without demanding its abolition, the book is disappointing...
...His protests against total war and obliteration bombing are also commendable...
...The second is that Fromm's essay is classic—an outstanding contribution to the literature of peace...
...Scribner's...
...an undue stress on scientific education at the expense of the humanities...
...The first is that Teller's book should be read in the light of Pauling's No more War'., Mills' The Causes of World War Three, and Noel-Baker's The Arms Race...
...Nuclear Weapons and the Conflict of Conscience...
...But there would be a winner, and there would be a loser...
...Herz sees no way out of the nuclear crisis except by means of "worldwide planning" in accordance with "the ethics of universalism" Together with his warnings concerning the dangers of the arms race, Inglis offers the reader a brilliant analysis of the chief causes of a possible nuclear war, namely, "by accident, by misjudgment, by escalation, or by catalysis...
...191 pp...
...3.95...
...Here are a few gems picked at random: "Civilian defense methods can help people survive nuclear wars of almost any scale...
...Robert C. Batchelder is superb in his portrayal, in The Irreversible Decision, of the events which led to the making and the dropping of the bomb, in his graphic account of Japanese reactions, and in his insistence that the use of appropriate "political and diplomatic means" might have brought the war to a close without the use of the atom bomb...
...In spite of a certain timidity, Bennett's essay is important for his criticisms of Herman Kahn, for his warnings concerning the dire effects not only of nuclear war but also of the arms race upon morality, and his protest against the stupid attitude which sees Communism as nothing but "a vast undifferentiated and unchanging blot of evil...
...and an unrealistic optimism concerning the survival of man and the possibilities of civil defense...
Vol. 26 • June 1962 • No. 6
