Evening star., 1944-10-01
Man, His Weapons.
And the Next Peuce
Another War Might Wipe Oui
Our World Civilization
Bu WilIinm n Harrison

Every man Is a divinity In disguise,
q god playing fool. It seems as ii
Heaven had sent Its insane angels
into our world as to an asylum and
here they will break out into their
native music and utter at intervals
the words they have heard In Heaven:
then the mad fit returns and they
NOPE and wallow like dogs.
In his essay on history Emerson thus
suggests that people, no matter how fine
and noble and idealistic they are at
times, are by nature prone to revert
periodically to all the evil that flesh is
heir TO. The thought is not novel one:
Man. far from being perfect. is at best
perfectible. Despite his high aspira-
tions. his excellent resolves, his aware
ness Of the sins and errors of the past,
and his repeated pledges to turn over a
new leaf and be consistently virtuous, he
somehow-after singing celestial music
for while and speaking words heard in
Heaven-falls by the wayside and be-
comes lunatic angel for yet another
SPELL
This fundamental characteristic of
human nature has been illustrated re-
peatedly through the centuries, not
: merely on the scale of individuals but on
the scale of nations. The history of
the world has been the history of cycle
of war and peace, and war once more
and then peace again, and each time
especially since the advent of the ma
chine age-statesmen, with the best of
intentions and on the basis of the most
humanitarian ideals, have sought a
formula to keep the mad fit" from re-
turning. But no formula has worked
up to now, and the periods between the
commissions have been periods of hope
fast deteriorating into disillusionment,
If not despair, over mans seeming in
ability to save his international society
from trying. every rs years or so, to
cut Its own throat.
<H \
Yet, though history thus contains
much food for pessimism, mankind is
at point Of development where 1t SIM
ply cannot afford to be cynical about
the likelihood of preventing future wars
More than ever before in all the past
centuries, the problem of fashioning an
enduring peace must now be approached
in an Affirmative spirit-not negatively,
but positively. with determination re-
fusing to be shaken by momentary dis
couragements growing out Of possible
international disagreements over what
political arrangements may be best de-
signed to achieve collective security
For an enduring peace has become civil
lization's most urgent need, made so by
the horrors implicit in modern arms, in
those instruments of destruction which
tomorrow may be perfected to such an
extent that to let them have free play
might we'll be like inviting the end of
the world
Today, in this Second World. War.
there are developments that make the
First World War seem almost innocuous
by comparison. If at times he is a
lunatic angel, man is ingenious as we'll
His planes and tanks in 1914 are to his
planes and tanks OF 1918 as the giant
to the dwarf. He has super fortresses
that range nonstop through the skies for
a distance equivalent to the distance
between Atlanta, Ga, and the Arctic
Circle. He has small fighter aircraft
7that dive with the speed of sound. He
has instruments that enable him to fly
night and day, in good weather and bad,
to smash targets accurately with bombs
weighing as much as eight tons each.
And he has in radar wondrous de-
fens!e and offensive weapon. with which
to give himself advance warning Of the
approaching enemy vr score direct hits,
lin the dark, on objects 10 or more miles
away
But this is not all. In addition, man
today has strange new jet propulsion
planes of revolutionary design. He has
things like the bazooka and the rocket
shell He has factories deep UNDER
ground to manufacture death against his
fellow man, one such factory-a German
one near the French ch-Llixembourg border
being as much as $50 feet below the
surface Of small mountain. He has the
fearsome flying bomb, with its range of
$50 miles-an eerie air missile that
buzzes lethally toward its target at a
speed approximating 400 miles an hour.
And though he has not used it as yet,
he has giant rocket bomb, and there
are reports that in Germany he has
a mysterious 14-ton projectile, self
propelled, radio-controlled and go feet
in length, capable of destroying or
damaging everything within q radius
of almost miles from its point of
impact.
These are but some of the weapons
revealed to the world In this war When
thought is given to the difference be-
tween the plane of today and the plane
of 1918, or between firepower then and
firepower now, little imagination is
needed to visualize how far advanced
ana how unbelievably deadly may be
such things as the rocket bomb
decade or two hence. In the field of
physics and chemistry. moreover, man
is making discoveries full of fabulous
implications, the most important of to-
morrcw's possibilities being that atomic
energy may be harnessed. Censorship
demands guarded language on this point,
but it may at least be said that science
and the atom make conceivable a time
when the basis of our industrial society
will be revolutionized and when there
will be an explosive on earth SO devas-
tating that the very thought of war will
frighten the stoutest heart.
The death ray and the disintegrator