◆ SpookStack

ete cee ee ey eee ee ee es eee a es J lenge and criticism or to public correction. What- ever the scientific or technical competence of the men working in this field, their sedulous restric- tien of interest and the limited conditions under which they work and have contact with other human beings do not foster wisdom in the con- duct of life. By vocational commitment they live in an underdimensioned and distorted world. The sum of their combined judgments is still an unbalanced judgment, for moral criteria have, from the start, been left out of their general direc- tives, Is it any wonder that even-in the narrow seg- ments of science where they claim mastery our nuclear officials have made error after error? They have again and again been forced to reduce their estimate of the “permissible” limit of ex- posure to radiation, and on the basis of knowledge already available they will have to reduce these estimates still further. Thus, too, they made an error that startled themselves, in their undercalcu- lating the range and the lethal fall-out of the hydrogen bomb, and they sought to cover that ecror by concealment and calumny, at first deny- ing the plight of the Japanese fishermen they had injured. Some have even used their authority as scientists to give pseudo-scientific assurances about biological changes that no one will be able to verify until half a century has passed. Further- more, in matters falling within their province of exact knowledge, the judgment of these authorities has repeatedly proved erroneous and mischievous. All this should not surprise us: neither science nor nuclear energy endows its users with super- human powers. But what should surprise us is the fact that the American nation has entrusted its welfarc, safety, and future existence to these imprudent, fallible men and to those who have sanctioned their de-moralized plans. Under the guise of a calculated risk, our nuclear strategists have prepared to bring on a calculated catastro- phe. At some unpredictable moment their sick fantasies may become unspeakable realitics. Does anyone really think that, unlcss a miracle supervenes, there can be a more favorable out- come to .the overall policy we have been pursu- ing? If this policy had a color of excuse before Russia had.achieved her first nuclear weapon in 1949, it became thoroughly discredited in Korea in 1950 and became suicidal as soon as Russia’s superiority in rocket missiles was established.