LEST WE FORGET Prof. H.W.Berky

The bomb exploded 150 feet directly about Military Park. In the whole city only about 50 concrete buildings still have walls. As far as a man can walk for an hour in any direction there is only a flat, silent plain, a still stinking junk pile. The trees, killed by the blast, stand like skeletons. Americans visiting the city have to keep reminding themselves that this enormous destruction was caused by one bomb. The article was written for Life Magazine in September, 1945 by an eyewitness photographer who viewed the ravages upon an innocent Japanese city by th explosion of a thimble full of matter which blotted out 125,000 men, women and children, faster than eyesight. Nor is this the last page to their tragedy. People are still dying inchwise from incipient anemia, cancer, and shriveling sores, caused by the bomb. Children are being born cripples and monsters and doctors are expecting this for generations. Radio- active air reached California a few days after the test explosions at Bikini Islands, although in comfortingly small amounts, but on the next page we read that bombs many times more powerful are formulating in the minds of scientists and groups of these dropped in the Pacific near California could make American air deadly, could make all or most American Water undrinkable and the soil, plants, and the rain deadly poisonous. Scientists who know, are crying as one voice that almost any nation could produce enough atomic bombs to break any existing nation on earth in one night and that war must never again be allowed to try to settle an international dispute. One scientist who helped build the first bomb and saw the fifth explode at Bikini, remarked solicitously, - the stone age lasted a thousand years, the machine age lasted one hundred years - will the atomic age last only ten years ? If so, three years are gone. We have seven years left. In spite of these ominous warnings our country is in the throes of an unpredictable military pressure, to introduce sponsored research work on atomic energy in our universities, to speed the construction of atomic bombs to cow all the world and finally affect a military liaison with the atomic commission. Atomic bombs can be used for only one purpose. The military mind knows only one method for settling international disputes. In realization of these facts Albert Einstein, heading a group of thoroughly frightened scientists is sending an appeal for $1,000,000 to stem this destructive tidal wave by counter education to drive home to every individual that : 1. One day's atomic war can destroy our cities and slay 40,000,000 people. 2. Atom bombs afford the cheapest warfare known today and will become cheaper and thousands of times more powerful. 3. There is no secrecy about the bomb - any nation can make them. 4. There is no military defense and none is expected. 5. Keeping prepared is many more times more expensive than World War II and would ruin our civilizations. 6. Ware will destroy our civilization because bombs will surely be used. 7. No place can be protected against attack. 8. There is no solution except abolition of war. I can suggest no better solution to my readers than to entrust a few dollars into the hands of Albert Einstein of Princeton, N.J. Atomic education. The majority of people in American are resigned to war. It need not be if we are as Christian as we profess to be. This war is costing us five times as much as the last war and the next one will inconceivably outcost this one. If we had used the money we had spent fir this war for constructive purposes we could have carried into effect the following program: 1. We could have built a $1,000,000 college in each county in the United States. 2. We could have endowed each of these with $1,000.000 . 3. We could have built ten $1,000,000 high schools in each county. 4. We could have built two hundred $50,000 churches in each county. 5. We could have built two hundred $50,000 hospitals in each county. 6. We could have laid aside $25 per capita during the life of every man, woman and child for health insurance. 7. We could have spent $1,000,000 for highways in each county. 8. We could have built one $1,000,000 air field in each county. 9. We could have guaranteed one teacher for every 15 pupils in the U.S. at a salary of $2500 per year for life. 11. Then we could have paid 1% tax and with the proceeds granted every college $2,000,000 annually for research in the art of better international relations. Lest any reader might regard this as a multiple choice program I wish to reiterate that the waste of this war could have sponsored this entire program. The next war will be in our backyard. This generation faces a supreme choice and, lest we forget, if tt guesses wrong the next generation will be still-born. This is the Blufton Science department's message to the Alumni and friends.