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Route 1 Guilford College, N.C. April 9, 1948

1. 20603

$10 B

Dear Dr. Urey:

Thank you very much for the opportunity of participating in the protest against the "undocumented and irresponsible attacks made by the House Committee on Unamerican Activities on Dr. Edward U. Condon." Enclosed please find a small check for Miss Ruth Field and myself, to be used as Dr. Condon suggests, for the support of extended usefulness of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

I am glad to see that scientists are acting with fuller recognition of their unique responsibility for seeing the danger of regimentation, censorship, fear psychology, loss of faith in our historic democratic procedures. No doubt the scientists of Germany, Japan and Italy saw the danger from the military suppression of freedom of research and freedom of communication, but they did not do enough, unitedly, against it. I hope American scientists will not follow their mistake. I hope no American scientist will feel either that his only course is to escape from the country, or that he is not an integral part of a great company of men and women bound together by great tradition and great responsibility, men and women prepared to make the whole country aware of the real meaning of freedom as distinguished from the lip services of short-sighted politicians and demagogs.

And please, you physical scientists (and I am one), do not turn the citizenship job over entirely to the social scientists. Of course we are not specialists in politics and government. Neither is any other average citizen. But we do have a lifelong training in sound reasoning, in the realization of cause and effect, in detecting fallacious reasoning, in the give and take of world wide search for the truth, and we know, as few others do, the folly of extreme nationalism. And all of this spells responsibility which far transcends any responsibility to let our countrymen know the truth with regards to atomic energy and any other physical fact. "Those who hope for peace no longer prepare for war; they prepare for world government."

Again thanking you, and with sincerest good wishes for success beyond your own hopes, even.

Very truly yours,

Ada M. Field