| Show THE ATOMIC BOMB we hear and read much about the latest discovery of I 1 man these days and many opinions are offered concerning its use and abuse we too formed an opinion ioli long since but ut until we read what theodore heline had to say about it in his august issue of the new age interpreter we found anyone to agree with our thought to wit that forewarning of its use should have been given in order to pre vent such wholesale slaughter of so many people to use such a weapon without previous warning may be justified in the minds of those who ordered the dropping of it on a city thereby blotting out the lives of thousands of its inhabitants and it may have been the factor which brought sudden end to the war with japan but when full realization of the act is brought home to us it cannot be denied that it will ever be as a blot against ou our r nation which prides itself on living up to the rules of any game i we play we agree with mr heline who says while the development of atomic power was of the utmost urgency its release was not its development was urgent because we knew it was well within the enemies reach and that if they laid hold of it there was nothing in their code to restrain them from using it in such an event unless we were able to strike back with an equally effective weapon we were faced with the possibility not only of an annihilating defeat but even utter destruction we won the race and having won it we promptly used the power it gave us we did so contrary to fo our proclaimed principles we did not hold it for use solely in self defense yet this would have been our true course had we held fast to the spiritual idealism we have been championing in the face of ruthless conscienceless aggression we used it moreover after there was no longer any question as to our achieving absolute victory the only thing that remained in our calculations was time and cost and it was to shorten the time and to save american lives that atomic bombing was adopted even though it meant taking a multiplied toll of nonmilitary non military lives of our enemy he makes another good point when he points out that the first of these new bombs snuffed out more civilian lives than the total number of american soldiers killed in the first world war he also calls attention to what it would mean to us if a like annihilation had come to detroit as came to hiroshima would we have taken the calamity as merely another sanguinary incident in the course of war he further says such an event would have steeled us the harder in our fight against a lawless world resorting to such wanton disregard for life in the course of wars inevitable i inhumanities ties he calls attention to the philosophy of the united nations that only military targets were admissible for total destruction and that all else that did not directly endanger the war effort in attaining its undertaken objective was to be spared his suggestion as to its use if followed would have enabled us to hold in reserve the secret of our discovery and make use of it in constructive ways at some future time it was to the effect that japan be told of our intention to use the atomic bomb by striking some isolated military target to show its destructiveness and then if surrender was not forthcoming to use it where total losses would prove more staggering how much more to the credit of a nation would such procedure have been and as mr heline points out though by our final act of the war we brought the conflict to a quick end and spared thereby the lives of our fighting men perhaps great in number there are worse things that can come to a man than dying americas heart can but grow heavier on calmer reflection there is food for thought as we consider the destruction wrought through use of this most deadly of weapons and it is to be hoped that it will be put to more constructive use in the future for the good of humanity to counteract the destructiveness it has wrought thus far |
