Heinlein, Robert A – Expanded Universe

leave us at the “mercy” of the butchers of Budapest, our lives staked on the “honor”

of men to whom honesty is a bourgeois weakness, our freedom resting on the promises

of a gangster government that has broken every promise it ever made.

The Committee’s manifesto claims: “-the problems in monitoring such tests

are relatively uncomplicated.” This is either an outright lie or ignorant wishful

thinking; the problems are so complicated that nothing short of on-the-spot

inspection will work-an underground test cannot be told from an earthquake shock by

any known method of monitoring.

Before you trust your lives and freedom to the promises of the Kremlin,

remember Budapest-

-remember Poland in 1945

-remember Prague

-remember Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania

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-remember Korea

-remember brave little Finland

-and keep your powder dry!

The third proposal is largely pious window-dressing but it has the same sort

of booby-trap buried in it. It reads: “That missiles and outer-space satellites be

brought under United Nations-monitored control, and that there be a pooling of world

science for space exploration under the United Nations.” The harmless part could be

done if the U.S.S.R. were willing; the booby-trap is the word “missiles.”

We Americans live in a goldfish bowl; we could not conceal rocket tests even

if we tried. But in the vast spaces of Russia, Siberia, and China missiles of every

sort-even the long-range ICBMs-can be tested in secret, manufactured and stockpiled

and installed ready to go, despite all “monitoring.” Anything less than onthe-spot

inspection of the entire vast spaces of the Communist axis would leave us at the

mercy of the bland promises of the Butchers of Budapest.

The last paragraph of this letter that they want you to send to the

President is not a proposal; it is simply

another attempt to strike terror into the hearts of free men by reminding us of the

horrors of nuclear war.

“‘Will you walk into my parlor?’ said the Spider to the Fly.”

It is no accident that this manifesto follows the Communist line, no

coincidence that it “happens” to appear all over the United States the very week

that Khrushchev has announced smugly that the U.S.S.R. has ended their tests-and

demands that we give up our coming, long-scheduled, and publicly announced tests of

a weapon with minimum fall-out.

This follows the pattern of a much-used and highlyrefined Communist tactic:

plan ahead to soften up the free world on some major point, package the propaganda

to appeal to Americans with warm hearts and soft heads, time the release carefully,

then let the suckers carry the ball while the known Communists stay under cover.

They used this method to gut our army after the Japanese surrender with the

slogan of “Bring the Boys Home.” They used it to make us feel guilty about the

A-bomb-while their spies were stealing it. They dreamed up the pious theme of “Don’t

Play Politics with Hunger”-then used our charity to play their politics. They used

it to put over the infamous “Oxford Oath” and the phony “Peace Strikes” of the

thirties. They have used this tactic many times to soften up the free world and will

use it whenever they can find dupes.

They are using it now. Today both sides, Freedom and Red Tyranny, are armed

with nuclear weapons… and the Communists are again using our own people to try to

shame or scare us into throwing our weapons away.

These proposals are not a road to world peace, they are abject surrender to

tyranny. If we fall for them, then in weeks or months or a few years at most, Old

Glory will be hauled down for the last time and the

whole planet will be ruled by the Butchers of Budapest.

For more than a hundred years, ever since the original Communist Manifesto,

it has been the unswerving aim of the Communist Party to take over all of this

planet. The only thing blocking their conquest is the fact that the

tragically-shrunken free world still possesses nuclear weapons. They can destroy us

.. . but they know that we can destroy them.

So they want us to throw away the equalizer.

If we do, we can expect the same “mercy” that Budapest received. They will