Evening star., 1946-04-22
Letters to The Star
Sees Potential Germ Warfare
To Offset Atomic Bomb


The second paragraph of the splendid
editorial captioned Macarthur on War"
in The Star of April begins thus:
'Yet today in the age Of electronics
and atomic energy, when man is
capable of sending catastrophe across
| oceans in rockets of fantastic speed,
| and when he can use bacteria in
ways which he does not like to talk
about, the ideal of establishing a
literally permanent peace has be-
come, as Gen. Macarthur declares,
the greatest imperative of mankind"
The words: "He can use bacteria in
ways which he does not like to talk
about" are cautious reference to what
some future headline writer will dub
germ bombs" or epidemic warfare"
They will mean the sowing of conta-
gious disease germs by one country on
the population centers of an enemy.
OF course, no one likes to talk, or
even to think about such a develop
ment. Yet the political and military
leaders of all nations have not only
thought and talked, but, so far as pos
sible, prepared for it. While they have
not advertised it as they have the atom
bomb and other spectacular man
killers, our own military authorities
have freely and repeatedly disclosed
that our laboratories have been stock
piling disease germs with which they
are prepared to retaliate in kind and
more effectively on any enemy country
resorting to the use of this supreme
atrocity of war.
knowledge of this fact undoubtedly
was in the forefront of Gen. MacArthur's
mind when he urged the simultaneous
and universal" remuneration "by all ma
tions of the right to wage war;" in his
opening talk to the Allied Council for
Japan, and of the next war, if any,
prophesied: "A totally destructive war
a war involving mass determination
." that may blast mankind to per-
dition."
Bacterial warfare just as surely was
in Marshal Stalins mind when, de-
nouncing Winston Churchills proposal
for an Anglo-American alliance, he
said that the Russian people could not
be frightened by the threat of any one
sided weapon like the atom bomb.
The physical sciences have given the
United States most of its new DEATH
dealing weapons and the flrst-maybe
the last-effective use of the atom
bomb.
But curing the past few years there
have been coming from Russia reports
of advances in the biological sciences,
some well verified, as notable as any
our physicists and chemists have made
in the Western World. Possibly United
States authorities are overconfident in
their assurance that they are prepared
to outdo any other country in bacterial
warfare.
Bacterial Attack Not Costly.
War with Russia is much discussed
here these days, but war may break out
in the most unexpected quarter. Germ
warfare is not a one-sided weapon in
the sense that Stain probably had in
mind, that of costliness. The atom
bomb, we are told, cost two billions of
dollars, while uncounted billions were
spent in the development and use Of
mechanical and electronic devices al
ready obsolete or obsolescent on that
day and hour when any nation turns
to germ warfare, for which all govern
ments-but not the uninformed and un-
suspecting people-were and are pre-
pared in varying degrees.
A small tithe of the money spent on
the atom bomb alone would finance the
cultivation and planting of enough of
any one of a dozen known contagious
disease germs to decimate the popula-
ton centers of the United States or any
other country. A few skilled bacteri-
ologists and technical assistants could
prepare the ammunition in a small
laboratory in the smallest country in
the world.
The greatest difficulty would be to
overcome the natural human repug-
nance to such program. But even
this may not be insuperable, certainly
not imponderable. 1t is not too hard
to imagine that political-military au-
thorities who initiated the atrocities of
this recent war might turn to germ
warfare in a last desperate hope that
they might live to report new vic
tory to their few surviving countrymen
Psychological warfare as The Star
says, is unpleasant to talk about
Plague Might Be Isolated
Yet the American people should know
and think very seriously, because logic
and logistics declare that it will be
the determining factor in any future
war in which we may engage. Our
isolation by wide seas would give some
assurance that any plague started here
might be confined largely to this con-
tinent Secondly, it is the one certain
Offset to our atomic bombs. Any con-
ceivable foe, with long range airplanes
already existent, could so saturate our
Canadian sources of uranium with dis
ease germs that they would be i'm
mobilized for years to come. These
same planes on one-way missions, new
kamikaze, could spread plague not only
at Oak Ridge and other atom bomb
production centers, but over all our
Northern industrial population centers.
Meanwhile, we would be deferred
from use of either atom or germ bombs
by the fact that a million or SO of our
own best blood-scattered through Gen.
trail Europe and the Middle Orient
almost certainly would be sacrificed.
Even in Russia this probably would