The Atom Bomb and Nato

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THE utilization of atomic energy for warlike purposes raises moral, political and military questions and requires the review and perhaps the revision of many traditionally accepted ideas. The first of these questions is whether the possible use of so horribly destructive a force does not rule out the very idea of war.

For years I have been irritated by the statement that because men have always fought they always will fight. When I was young this pessimistic fatalism conflicted with my hopes for a better world; my reaction was sentimental, a refusal to accept the idea of a society without progress, a future without hope. Today my reaction is just as sharp but quite different, grounded more in reason, I believe, and hence more justified.

The thesis of the inevitability of war stated in absolute terms strikes me as superficial in any case. The reason men have fought throughout history is because they hoped that by fighting and winning a war they would solve their problems. In our time, however, so-called victories no longer pay, and this will be even more true in times to come. No sensible person would say today that war solves problems or that problems are easier to solve after a war than they were before. The plain fact is that war no longer pays. But though it is a fact, it is still quite a new one and therefore deserves to be repeated and explained.

The Franco-German war of 1870 was the last war in Europe that brought some advantages to the victor. As the prize for their victory, the Germans received 5,000,000 gold francs and two provinces, Alsace and Lorraine, and from it they drew the impulse which by 1914 had made them the most powerful nation in Europe if not in the world.

By the time of the First World War the results of victory already were very different. That war made plain that the fate of nations is joint, not separate. Those who thought they had won found very soon that they had come to the aid of those who had lost. The United States in particular learnt how much its attempts to rescue Germany cost in loans that never were repaid and gifts that brought nothing in return. Before long the worries and difficulties of the defeated became those of the victors also...