blàr anam [35]

“…I’ve been dreaming up more hunches and ideas all my own. My latest is that I won’t have to go to the Pacific and nether will Tib. All this is a result of the new bomb. I really think Japan will give in now that the bomb is unleashed on her and Russia is attacking. However, I have grave misgivings about the new bomb. I wish it had not been discovered. That old bugaboo about ‘the human race committing suicide’ doesn’t seem so silly to me now. I deplore any new weapon of violence as long as human nature is what it is. This last one tops them all. They (the scientists) imply that wonderful new uses can be made of this atomic power for the peacetime world but this terrible use, the first use it was put to, will always be a threat. Man must first learn to live decently before he toys with the means to destroy himself.”
–Arthur Freeman, from a letter to his parents from Burstadt Germany: 9 August 1945

“Our tribal instinct has not been eliminated by science and invention. We, as individuals, haven’t caught up physically or ethically with the atomic age. Will we?”
–Harry Truman, from a letter to Dean Acheson: 17 March 1954

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