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Paper from Reiss, R.N., February 25, 1946.
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this? Can we simply outlaw, make immediately punishable by death the pursuit of atomic research? These questions of course, are not national but world questions. In other words shall we come to a world agreement that all further research into nuclear physics must be closed, all that has been achieved must be scrapped. The answer to all this is a very simple one; and shows the futility of this procedure. For if we close the doors to atomic research, what is to prevent man from coming to the very stuff of which life is made through other doors — and there are doors ad infinitum to this end. True, we can keep closing them as each precipice comes to view. But that is only patchwork and at best will only prolong our inevitable end. And perhaps it wont even accomplish that for science is sometimes known to make simultaneous progressions along various lines. Today, atomic research may be a highly dramatic sign of what is taking place in many other scientific lines. No, the real solution is not the attack on this moment in science; for when the real solution is met the threat of atomic disintegration will dissolve naturally from our lives.
The real solution is the banishment from the face of the earth of idol worship: the worshipping of anything in itself rather than its purpose in the scheme of things for the common good, of man. What is good for the whole of man. This is the question that should guide us in all we do. Now it is a desperate need. Now is the time -- this is our moment of mercy the toleration in Divine Law. The scientists must state clearly to the world the inevitable end toward which we are all going unless we destroy our idols. At present no one group has the courage to destroy its idols for fear that another group may not destroy theirs, as witness the western powers and Russia. And so each group's fear of each other is driving them to their mutual destruction. We will all be mutually destroyed by our idols unless we all destroy them.