DON'T BLAME THE ATOM
Fischer, Louis
Don't Blame The Atom By LOUIS FISCHER SPEAKING at a celebration in his honor in Washington, D. C., Admiral Ghester W. Nimitz, commander of the United States fleet in the Pacific, made what was...
...The new infernal machines of the second world war, derived as they are from the industrial plant of rich, populous states, gives the big powers a death grip on small nations and colonies...
...The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace before the atomic age was announced to the world with the destruction of Hiroshima and before the Russian entry into the war...
...BEFORE 1940, all the dictatorships engaged in aggression against small nations...
...We have defeated the fascist Axis power...
...The problem is who controls them...
...Only dictatorships engaged in aggression...
...Don't blame the atom, blame the human...
...Weapons are useless and lifeless without man...
...IT nevertheless remains true that the United States Government could not conceivably, in peacetime, order an atomic bombing of Mexico, or Argentina, or France, or England because it wished to extort something from the victim...
...It is dictatorship, and it is governments which, though not totalitarian, strive for empires, monopolies, dominating military power, and manipulated public opinion...
...Danger never comes from bombs or shells or bullets...
...Political power must be wrested from those who have economic power...
...In other words, it is not the atomic bomb which is dangerous in civilization...
...The entire question of the future peace revolves around the relationship between dictatorship and democracy...
...Colonial peoples must merge their differences and assume political power...
...It is inconceivable so long as the United States is a democracy and so long as public opinion remains virile, critical, and free...
...There is only one defense against the atomic bomb: freedom and real democracy...
...The problem is not the atomic bomb or our vastly-expanded productive capacity...
...The millions should be active inside government, not just against government...
...This is no time to sit home and mope over the threatening Atomic Apocalypse and remote-control domination...
...This is the issue now being fought out in Europe, Asia, and Latin America...
...Yet the great issue facing the world is still whether freedom or dictatorship shall prevail...
...Today they are indispensable to the safety, of every man, woman, and child on this reeling planet...
...Voters should acquire the political weapons with which to control or, if need be, storm the economic Maginot Lines...
...Actually, the positions of the Common Man are being assailed from all sides by mighty forces, and he is in greater jeopardy than ever unless he organizes for political and economic action...
...In saying that the atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military standpoint, in the defeat of Japan, this is no effort to minimize the awful power of this new weapon...
...If this is correct — and Nimitz should know—then the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, certainly the loosing of the second atomic missile on Nagasaki, was the worst single atrocity of the second world war despite the fact that the end of the anti-Japanese conflict may have been hastened thereby...
...Modern armaments, and the steady multiplication of government functions, enhance the power of the state over the individual...
...No democracy engaged in aggression...
...Curbs on tyrants, imperialists, nationalists, and rapacious economic royalists were always desirable and necessary...
...THE cleaving of the atom calls more urgently than ever for cohesion among men...
...Small nations must unite against big aggrandizers...
...Don't Blame The Atom By LOUIS FISCHER SPEAKING at a celebration in his honor in Washington, D. C., Admiral Ghester W. Nimitz, commander of the United States fleet in the Pacific, made what was probably the most astounding statement of the year: "The atomic bomb," he said, "did not win the war against Japan...
...On July 16, humanity entered the Atomic Age...
...The growing concentration of industry and industry's ability to manufacture more with fewer hands as well as the existence of an unemployed labor reserve, tend to reduce the economic strength of wage earners and salaried employes...
...But this is not merely the Atomic Age...
...This has been pronounced the Century of the Common Man...
...The danger comes from the way man is organized for economic and political purposes...
...It is the age of mortal combat between liberty and totalitarianism...
...A dictatorship operating on the principle that the end justifies the means could release an atomic bomb on a peaceful country if it wanted something important from that country...
...But a dictatorship, which is subject to no popular control and does not have to consider public opinion— because it makes public opinion—would be under no such restraint...
...Citizens must not leave politics to the professional or pitying few...
Vol. 9 • October 1945 • No. 42
