Placing key war industry underground—assembly lines underground are all very well, but blast furnaces and many other things simply won’t fit. Whatever digging in we do, be sure we do it so secretly that the enemy will never suspect, lest he drop an earthquaketype atomic bomb somewhere near-by and bury all hands. Let us be certain, too, that he does not introduce a small atomic bomb inside the underground works, disguised as a candy vending machine, a lunch pail, or a fire extinguisher. The age of atomics is a field day for saboteurs; underground works could be colossal death traps.
No one wants this new war, no sane men anywhere. Yet we are preparing for it and a majority, by recent Gallup polls, believe it will come. We have seen the diplomats and prime ministers and presidents and foreign affairs committees and state departments manage to get things messed up in the past; from where we sit it looks as if they were hell-bent on messing them up again. We hear the rumble of the not-sodistant drum.
What we want, we little men everywhere, is planetary organization so strong that it can enforce peace, forbid national armaments, atomic or otherwise, and in general police the globe so that a decent man can raise his kids and his dog and smoke his pipe free from worry of sudden death. But we see the same old messing around with half measures.
(If you want to help to try to stop the messing-up process, you might write Congressman Jerry Voorhis, or Senator Fuibright, or Senator Ball, or Beardsley Ruml, or Harold Stassen. Or even the President himself.)
If things go from bad to worse and we have to fight a war, can we prepare to win it? First let us try to grasp
what kind of a war it will be. Look at LIFE, Nov. 19, 1945, page 27: THE 36-HOUR WAR: Arnold Report Hints at the Catastrophe of the Next Great Conflict. The first picture shows Washington, D.C., being destroyed by an atomic rocket bomb. The text and pictures go on to show 13 U.S. cities being destroyed the same wa~, enemy airborne troops attempting to occupy, the U.S. striking back with its own rockets from underground emplacements, and eventually winning—at a cost of 13 cities and at least 10,000,000 American lives.
Horrible as the picture is, it is much too optimistic. There is no reason at all to assume that the enemy will attack in too little force, destroying only 13 cities, or to assume that he will attempt to occupy until we have surrendered, or to assume that we will be able to strike back after we are attacked.
It is not safe to assume that the enemy will be either faint-hearted or foolish. If he follows our example with Japan, he will smash us until we surrender, then land. If his saboteurs are worth their blood money, our own rocket emplacements may be blown up by concealed atomic bombs just in advance of the attack.
Atomic rocket warfare has still another drawback— it is curiously anonymous. We might think we knew who had attacked us but be entirely mistaken.
You can think of at least three nations which dislike both us and Russia. What better joke for them than to select a time when suspicion has been whipped up between the two giants to lob just a few atomic rockets from a ship in the North Atlantic, or from a secret emplacement in the frozen north of Greenland—half at us, half at Russia, and with the attack in each case apparently coming from the other, and then sit back while we destroyed each other!
A fine joke! You would die laughing.
Don’t think it can’t be done, to us and to Russia.
What can we do?
The first thing is to get Congress to take a realistic
view of the situation. The most certain thing about LIFE’s description of the coming war was the destruction of Washington. Washington is the prime military target on earth today for it is the center of the nervous system of the nation that now has the Bomb. It must be destroyed first and it will be destroyed, if war ever comes. Your congressman has the most dangerous job in the world today. You may live through World War Ill—he can’t. Make yours realize this; he may straighten up and fly right.