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16 BrewsterBrewster Terrace, Brookline, Massachusetts

August 10, 1947 

Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists 90 Nassau Street, Princeton, New Jersey

Dear Scientists:

   Thank God for the noble work you have done. Almost surely you have found the way to stop mankind from damnable world-power wars.  From killing and kill-training millions of vote-conscripted healthiest men in all nations.    
  The atom bomb that kills in seconds of time is phenominally the almost painless method of war mass-killing.  It ends life before there is time for pain.  Why not use it then and make war only weeks long? 
  Because the rank and file of callous stupid men and women who vote for war are too selfish to want to die themselves.  And they do not want the destruction of their material comforts.  And they are so stupidly selfish that only for their own sakes will they end wars.  Thank God you have called their selfish hands!
  Will the agonies of today help teach the human animal how to breed and rear human thoroughbreds?  And how to think out a thoroughly, yes, scientific, medium of exchange?  I know you will keep on and on and find more and more sources of industrial power, and build world brotherhood and peace.
          My gratitude to you, 
               Alice L. Priest

  If this seems like a grouch, forgive it.  And lets say over and over your great sentence:  "'What we must not lose, or we lose all, is our willingness to seek the truth and our courage to act upon the truth."