Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1947-06-04
Our City and the Atom

1t is measure OF the fearSome nature
of our age that we must give serious
thought to the possibility of Washington's
overnight humiliation. The latest Amer
lean to discuss this danger is Lieutenant
Colonel David B. Parker, an Army expert
on atomic weapons. Writing in the Coast
Artillery Journal, he reminds all of us
again that our great and beautiful Capital
City would be top-priority target in
another war and that it could be erased
within matter of minutes by A-bombs
radioactive gases, germ sprays, or dooms-
day combination of the three.
j This is fact that rests on the testimony
of many others besides Colonel Parker
His views are not new. They represent
merely local footnote to broader and
more comprehensive security studies like
the report of the Presidents Advisory Com
mission on Universal Training-a report
making grimly clear how vulnerable Is the
whole of urban America. Looking at the
problem solely from the standpoint of
Washington, Colonel Parker says that
virtually every building in the city would
have to be rebuilt to give reasonably COM
haps we ought to abandon the Capital and
disperse the Government over wide area.
Reconstruction, however, would be only
palliating safeguard at best, and its cost
would be prohibitive almost to the point of
inpossibility. AS for dispensing the Gov
eminent, that, too, falls apart for practical
reasons: No modern nation, with all the
problems of the modern age to handle, can
govern itself effectively from dozens of
different places; it must have a central
seat. Colonel Parker is on more realistic
ground when he limits himself to such
suggestions as that we should start right
now" to build underground facilities for
our most vital Federal units. A limited
: program of similar kind-aimed at pro-
tecting our key industries-has been advo-
Gated by the United States Strategic
Bombing Survey and the Commission on
Universal Training
Every protective measure within reason
must be taken. Here in the Capital, for
instance, besides the setting up of special
safeguards for important Federal opera
lions, it may be advisable for Congress to
consider legislation designed to cope with
what would happen If this city-including
most Government officials from the Pres
ident on down-were really wiped out one
day. Throughout the Nation at large
industrial dispersion and underground
construction should be carried out to the
greatest extent feasible. Above all, there
must be preparedness of kind that will
make any potential enemy think long and
hard before attacking u.s. Still, even as
we undertake these and similar measures,
we ought not to delude ourselves. We
could spend hundreds of billions of dollars
decentralizing our urban civilization but
even then our vulnerability would remain
great, and the desolation among us would
be unimaginably terrible should there be
war with Aweapons.
In short, without the kind of interna-
tional control and peace that will insure
men against the horrors of their own
genius, we can have only palliatives. This
Is the towering fact of our time. 1t
has life-or-death meaning not merely
for our own city, but for all the cities of
America and all the cities of the world.