Heinlein, Robert A – Expanded Universe

the subject, including almost all of our military leaders and governmental

officials.

And including editors!

(The general public is just as dangerously ignorant as to the significance

of nuclear weapons today, 1979, as in 1 945-but in different ways. In 1945 we were

smugly ignorant; in 1979 we have the Pollyannas, and the Ostriches, and the

Jingoists who think we can “win” a nuclear war, and the group-a majority?-who regard

World War III as of no importance compared with inflation, gasoline rationing,

forced school-busing, or you name it. There is much excuse for the ignorance of

1945; the citizenry had been hit by ideas utterly new and strange. But there is no

excuse forthe ignorance of1979. Ignorance today can be charged only to stupidity and

laziness-both capital offences.)

I wrote nine articles intended to shed light on the postHiroshima age, and I

have never worked harder on any writing, researched the background more thoroughly,

tried harder to make the (grim and horrid) message entertaining and readable. I

offered them to commercial markets, not to make money, but because the only

propaganda

that stands any chance of influencing people is packaged so attractively that

editors will buy it in the belief that the cash customers will be entertained by it.

Mine was not packaged that attractively.

I was up against some heavy tonnage:

General Groves, in charge of the Manhattan District (code name for A-bomb

R&D), testified that it would take from twenty years to forever for another country

to build an A-bomb. (USSR did it in 4 years.)

The Chief of Naval Operations testified that the “only” way to deliver the

bomb to a target across an ocean was by ship.

A very senior Army Air Force general testified that “blockbuster” bombs were

just as effective and cheaper.

The chairman of NACA (shortly to become NASA) testified (Science News Letter

25 May 1946) that intercontinental rockets were impossible.

Ad nauseum-the old sailors want wooden ships, the old soldiers want horse

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cavalry.

But I continued to write these articles until the U.S.S.R. rejected the

United States’ proposals for controlling and outlawing atomic weapons through open

skies and mutual on-the-ground inspection, i.e., every country in the world to

surrender enough of its sovereignty to the United Nations that mass-weapons war

would become impossible (and lesser war unnecessary).

The U.S.S.R. rejected inspection-and I stopped trying to peddle articles

based on tying the Bomb down through international policing.

I wish that I could say that thirty-three years of “peace” (i.e., no A- or

H- or C- orN- orX- bombs dropped) indicates that we really have nothing to fear from

such weapons, because the human race has sense enough not to commit suicide. But I

am sorry to say that the situation is even more dangerous, even less stable, than it

was in 1946.

Here are three short articles, each from a different ap

proach, with which I tried (and failed) to beat the drum br world peace.

Was I really so naif that I thought that I could change the course of

history this way? No, not really. But, damn it, I had to try!

“If you pray hard enough,

water will run uphill. How hard?

Why, hard enough to make water

run uphill, of course!”

-L. Long

THE LAST DAYS OF THE UNITED STATES

“Here lie the bare bones of the United States of America, conceived in

freedom, died in bondage. 1776-1986. Death came mercifully, in one stroke, during

senility.

“Rest in Peace!”

No expostulations, please. Let us not kid ourselves. The next war can

destroy us, utterly, as a nation-and World War III is staring us right in the face.

So far, we have done little to avert it and less to prepare for it. Once upon a time

the United Nations Organization stood a fair chance of preventing World War III.

Now, only a major operation can equip the UNO to cope with the horrid facts of

atomics and rocketry-a major operation which would take away the veto power of the

Big Five and invest the world organization with the sole and sovereign power to

possess atomic weapons.

Are we, as a people, prepared to make the necessary sacrifices to achieve a