Harold S Davis Counsellor at Law 735 Exchange Building Boston 9 August 11 1947

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

Gentlemen: I have given careful consideration to Dr. Einstein's letter of August 6th and to the statements enclosed with it. I am enclosing a check in renewal of my contribution and earnestly hope that this small donation, added to others more substantial, may prove useful. I must confess, however, that I do this more because of the standing of the Committee's personnel than because I can myself see any real ground for anticipating that the program which the Committee have outlined will attain its object.

I agree in practically all the representations which the Committee make as to the extreme urgency of the present situation and as to the setting up of a world government as the only promising means whereby impending catastrophe can be warded off. The question remains, however, whether we get anywhere by discussing the excellencies of a world government, if it could be established, when all the evidence seems to show that such an achievement is, for practical purposes, an impossibility.

I have, of course, no sources of information not available to everyone who reads the newspapers, but I cannot but wonder whether it is profitable to put out effort in promoting a plan which cannot be realized without Russian cooperation, when I can see no reasonable prospect that any proposal of such a nature, however carefully framed and however persuasively presented, will meet with anything but another non possumus. If, as certainly appears to be the case, we are dealing with a group of men to whom considerations of reason mean as little as those of humanity, we might as well save our energy.