The One World Or None report of 1946

Selections by Peter Myers, March 2, 2004; update October 12, 2019.

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To see the front and back covers (the catalog number at the National Library of Australia, in Canberra, appears in the top right-hand corner): one-world-or-none-1946.jpg.

This is a booklet of about 80 A4-sized pages. The paper quality is poor.

This book has been republished. You may be able to buy new or secondhand copies at http://www.abebooks.com.

ONE WORLD or NONE

A Report to the Public on the Full Meaning of the Atomic Bomb

Edited by Dexter Masters and Katharine Way

Contributors

Foreword by Niels Bohr

Introduction by Arthur H. Compton

H. H. Arnold
Hans Bethe
E. U. Condon
Albert Einstein
Irving Langmuir
Walter Lippmann
Philip Morrison
J. R. Oppenheimer
Louis Ridenour
Frederick Seitz
Harlow Shapley
Leo Szilard
Harold Urey
Eugene P. Wigner
Gale Young
and the Federation of American (Atomic) Scientists

Whittlesey House

McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc.

1946

{inside front cover} "Is there any scientific or military defense against the bomb?" "How close is the danger of an atomic arms race; how can we control the bomb?" "What would the Hiroshima bomb have done to New York City?" "What are the immediate and long-range problems suggested by the release of nuclear energy?"

Waiting until we could give the public a definitive, authoritative analysis of these and other problems created by the advent of the atomic bomb, we have persuaded some of the outstanding scientists associated with the project, as well as top authorities from the political and military fields, to collaborate in writing this book. The remarkable document they have produced presents a rounded discussion on the full meaning and the terrifying dimensions of the bomb's threat to world survival. It warns the public that world control of the atomic bomb is an essential of human survival and hence the responsibility of every citizen.

Here are the facts, stated in simple, non-technical words by the men who know them best. ONE WORLD OR NONE gives a step-by-step analysis of the basic problems involved in the use of atomic energy. Each authority takes up those points with which he is most closely concerned. And the result is, for the first time in one place, an informed picture of all ramifications of the subject.

The atomic age challenges every one of us to wake up and adjust our thinking, our laws, our ways of life so that we may make the best possible use of this new force that has been put into our hands. ONE WORLD OR NONE will help each man and each woman of this country to meet the challenge in the most logical, the most competent manner possible. ...

{p. v} Introduction

by ARTHUR H. COMPTON

IT was inevitable that mankind should have atomic fire. ... it is a part of our age-old quest to use the forces of nature for shaping the world according to our desire.

No group of men had the power to prevent the coming of the atomic age. The only choice was whether these new powers should first be placed in the hands of the nations that were fighting to preserve their freedom, or should be used by some other group to arm itself with atomic might. It was feared that the other group might be an enemy whose object would have been to enslave the world. The intense incentive of self-preservation was accordingly responsible for making available atomic energy perhaps a decade or two earlier than it might otherwise have come. Thus it was that the Promethean gift was first presented to nations that are conscious of their responsibilities to mankind for its wise use.

The terrific blast at Hiroshima shocked the world into a realization that catastrophe lies ahead if war is not eliminated. This great fear has for the time being overshadowed the hope that atomic energy may vastly enrich human

life if given a chance. We now have before us, the clear choice between adjusting the pattern of our society on a world basis so that wars cannot come again, or of following the outworn tradition of national self defense, which if carried through to its logical conclusions must result in catastrophic conflict. ...

It is to give help in ansqoering such problems that this volume is presented. The writers are persons who have been actively concerned with problems of the atomic nucleus, some of them over many years. The technical aspects of the problems are presented in understandable as well as authoritative form by men who have themselves been responsible for turning atomic energy to practical use. They are leaders in atomic engineering. Those who describe the military effectiveness of atomic

{p. vi} energy have followed the development of the bomb from the beginning and have had a first-hand view of its effects. Those who diseuss its political implications are men who have held ths problem to their heart for years.

The suggestions put forward with regard to fhe national and international control of atomic energy are the views of the individuals who propose them and do not necessarily represent the views of all of the contributors to this book. The opinions are nevertheless the results of mature thinking by well-informed individuals. It is hoped that their presentation will help us to understand the issues involved and why certain sacrifices such as that of national sovereignty are called for.

{p. ix} Foreword

Science and Civilization*

by NIELS BOHR

THE possibility of releasing vast amounts of energy through atomic disintegration, which means a veritable revolution of human resources, cannot but raise in the mind of everyone the question of where the advance of physical science is leading civilization. While the increasing mastery of the forces of nature has contributed so prolifically to human welfare and holds out even greater promises, it is evident that the formidable power of destruction that has come within reach of man may become a mortal menace unless human society can adjust itself to the exigencies of the situation. Civilization is presented with a challenge more serious perhaps than ever before, and the fate of humanity will depend on its ability to unite in averting common dangers and jointly to reap the benefit from the immense opportunities which the progress of science offers. In its origin science is inseparable from the collecting and ordering of experience, gained in the struggle for existence, which enabled our ancestors to raise mankind to its present position among the other living beings that inhabit our earth. Even in highly organized communities where, within the distribution of labor, scientific study has become an occupation by itself, the progress of science and the advance of civilization have remained most intimately interwoven. Of course, practical needs are still an impetus to scientific research, but it need hardly be stressed how often technical developments of the greatest importance for civilization have originated from studies aimed only at augmenting our knowledge and deepening our understanding. Such endeavors know no national borders, and where one scientist has left the trail another has taken it up, often in a distant part of the world. For scientists have long considered themselves a brotherhood working in the service of common human ideals. ...

¥This statement appeared in The London Times, August 11, 1945.

{p. x} Indeed, not only have we left the time far behind where each man, for self-protection, could pick up the nearest stone, but we have even reached the stage where the degree of security offered to the citizens of a nation by collective defense measures is entirely insufficient. Against the new destructive powers no defense may be possible, and the issue centers on world-wide cooperation to prevent any use of the new sources of energy that does not serve mankind as a whole. The possibility of international regulation for this purpose should be ensured by the very magnitude and the peculiar character of the efforts that will be indispensable for the production of the formidable new weapon. It is obvious, however, that no control can be effective without free access to full scientific information and the granting of the opportunity of international supervision of all undertakings that, unless regulated, might become a source of disaster.

Such measures will, of course, demand the abolition of barriers hitherto considered necessary to safeguard national interests but now standing in the way of common security against unprecedented dangers. Certainly the handling of the precarious situation will demand the good will of all nations, but it must be recognized that we are dealing with what is potentially a deadly challenge to civilization itself. A better background for meeting such a situation could hardly be imagined than the earnest desire to seek a firm foundation for world security, so unanimously expressed by all those nations which only through united efforts have been able to defend elementary human rights. The extent of the contribution that agreement on this vital matter would make to the removal of obstacles to mutual confidence, and to the promotion of a harmonious relationship between nations can hardly be exaggerated.

{p. 22} Chapter 5

The New Weapon: The Turn of the Screw

by J. R. OPPENHEIMER

... The energy we derive from coal and wood and oil came originally from sunlight, which, through the mechanisms of photosynthesis, stored this energy in organic matter. ...

Solar energy is nuclear energy. Deep in the interior of the sun, where matter is very hot and fairly dense, the nuclei of hydrogen are slowly reacting to form helium, reacting not directly with each other but by a complex series of collisions with carbon and nitrogen. These reactions, which proceed slowly even at the high temperatures that obtain in the center of the sun, are made possible at all only because those temperatures, of some twenty million degrees, are maintained. The reason they are maintained is that the enormous gravitational forces of the sun's mass keep the material from expanding and cooling. No proposals have ever been made for realizing such conditions on earth or for deriving energy on earth in a controlled and large-scale way from the conversion of hydrogen to helium and heavier nuclei.

The nuclear energy released in atomic weapons and in controlled nuclear reactors has a very different source, which would appear to us now as rather accidental. The nuclei of the very heavy elements are less stable than those of elements like iron, of moderate atomic weight. For reasons we do not understand, there are such heavy unstable elements on earth. As was discovered just before the war, the heaviest of the elements do not need to be very highly excited to split into two lighter nuclei. ...

The interior of an exploding fission bomb is, so far as we know, a place without parallel elsewhere. It is hotter than the center of the sun; it is filled with matter that does not normally occur in nature and with radiations - neutrons, gamma rays, fission fragments, electrons - of an intensity without precedent in human experience. The pressures are a thousand billion times atmospheric pressure. ...

The obvious consequence of this intimate participation of scientists is a quite new sense of responsibility and concern for what they have done and for what may come of it. This book itself is an expression of that sense of concern. A more subtle aspect of it, not frequently recognized but perhaps in the long term more relevant and more constructive, is this: Scientists are, not by the nature of what they find but by the way in which they find it, humanists; science, by its methods, its values, and the nature of the objectivity it seeks, is universally human. ...

{p. 25} Although it would seem virtually certain that atomic weapons could be used effectively against combat personnel, against fortifications at least of certain types, and against naval craft, their disproportionate power of destruction is greatest in strategic bombardment: In destroying centers of population, and population itself, and in destroying industry. Since the United States and Britain in this past war were willing to engage in mass demolition and incendiary raids against civilian centers and did in fact use atomic weapons against primarily civilian targets, there would seem little valid hope that such use would not be made in any future major war. The many factors discussed here, and others that cannot be discussed here, clearly make it inappropriate and impossible to give a precise figure for the probable cost and thus the probable effort involved in atomic destruction. Clearly too such costs would in the first instance depend on the technical and military policies of nations engaging in atomic armament. But none of these uncertainties can becloud the fact that it will cost enormously less to destroy a square mile with atomic weapons than with any weapons hitherto known to warfare. My own estimate is that the advent of such weapons will reduce the cost, certainly by more than a factor of ten, more probably by a factor of a hundred.* In this respect only biological warfare would seem to offer competition for the evil that a dollar can do. It would thus seem that the power of destruction that has come into men's hands has in fact been qualitatively altered by atomic wepons. In particular it is clear that the reluctance of peoples and of many governments to divert a large part of their wealth and effort to preparations for war can no longer be counted on at all to insure the absence of such preparations. It would seem that the conscious acquisition of these new powers of destruction calls for the equally conscious determination that they must not be used and that all necessary steps be taken to insure that they will not be used. Such steps, once taken, would provide machinery adequate for the avoidance of international war. ...

The vastly increased powers of destruction that atomic weapons give us have brought with them a profound change in the balance between national and international interests. The common interest of all in the prevention of atomic warfare would seem immensely to overshadow any purely national interest, whether of welfare or of security. At the same time it would seem of most doubtful value in any long term to rely on purely national methods of defense for insuring security, as is discussed in greater detail in other parts of this book. The true security of this nation, as of any other will be found, if at all, only in the collective efforts of all.

It is even now clear that such efforts will not be successful if they are made only as a supplement, or secondary insurance, to a national defense. In fact it is clear that such collective efforts will require, and do today require, a very real renunciation of the steps by which in the past national security has been sought. It is clear that in a very real sense the past patterns of national security are inconsistent with the attainment of security on the only level where it can now, in the atomic age, be effective. It may be that in times to come it will be by this that atomic weapons are most remembered. It is in this that they will come to seem "too revolutionary to consider in the framework of old ideas."

{p. 53} Chapter 11

How Does It All Add Up?

By HAROLD C. UREY

{p. 57} If an atomic armament race continues - it is already going on - the citizens of the country will know less and less in regard to vital questions of this kind and finally must accept decisions in regard to public affairs blindly and from a few men in power. Not knowing the size of its armament, the people of the country must trust men in Washington with important decisions previously made through their elected representatives. Men on horseback will rapidly appear on the public scene. Note the attempt to secure the passage of the May-Johnson Bill without proper hearings in Congress. Here was a bill originating in the War Department, which proposed to transfer all control over atomic energy to a few men who would be safeguarded in their acts from all scrutiny by the public through security provisions backed by the most drastic penalties. If that bill or any similar bill passes Congress and is signed by the President, the first abdication of the sovereign rights of the people of the United States will have occurred. The May-Johnson Bill was actually similar in intent and effect to the transfer of power from the German Reichstag to Hitler, though, of course, it would not have so completely destroyed representative government in one act. Many people did not realize the broad and tragic meaning of this bill. It was a definite beginning of the end of our representative government and of the Bill of Rights of our Constitution. ...

{The Baruch Plan was, then, the alternative to the May-Johnson Bill. Here, Urey is likening the leaders of the US Army to Hitler. Yet, the US army had just helped defeat Hitler's army; what is the sense? The logic is that Urey - and his fellows behind the Baruch Plan - see the US as run by two factions: the "Aryan" or "Christian" one, and theirs, the "Jewish" one. Similarly, the Soviet Union had its "Aryan" or "Christian" faction - Stalin, and its "Jewish" one - the Trotskyist. The point of the Baruch Plan was for the "Jewish" factions in both to link up and isolate the "Aryan" or "Christian" factions. Unfortunately, Stalin was in power, and Trotsky dead, at this moment of historic opportunity. I myself have no brief for nuclear weapons. I don't think Australia or Japan should acquire them.}

{p. 61} Chaper 12

Can We Avert an Arms Race by an Inspection System?

by LEO SZILARD

{one should bear Mordecei Vanunu in mind, when reading this article; also, the WMD inspections and claims concerning Iraq}

CONFLICTS in interest between great powers can be expected to arise in the future as they have arisen in the past, and there is no world authority in existence that can adjudicate the case and enforce the decision if the powers are unable to settle their differences. In the absence of a world authority, conflicting interests could perhaps still be adjusted on an equitable basis by direct negotiation if there were universally accepted principles of law and justice to which the parties could appeal. But as yet there is no such universal acceptance of general principles. Instead negotiations take place in the shadow of the military might that the great powers can muster. In this situation the great poers are inevitably given to power politics and so long as such is the state of the world the danger of war will exist.

Against this background the existence of atomic bombs creates a new hazard for war. If two countries - and let the two most powerful, the United States and Russia, serve as examples - accumulate large stockpiles of atomic bombs, war is likely to break out, even though neither country has wanted to go to war.

How far can we go towards averting the danger of such an arms race under present conditions - that is, without assuming changes in the general organization of peace that we now have under the United Nations Organization?

If the United States and Russia were to agree to an arrangement ruling out both stockpiles and manufacture of atomic bombs within the territory of either country, it appears very likely that such all arrangements would be acceptable to all other major powers of the world and could be extended to them, or at least to all nations whose voluntary collaboration would be necessary.

If the United States, Russia, and other nations actually set up such an arrangement, an atomic arms race could be postponed and probably averted, provided that it is possible to rule out secret violations. Until there is a world authority capable of enforcing observance among the great powers, it will probbly be just as well to let the powers retain the legal right to abrogate their arrangement at any time.

The arrangement itself should provide for rights of inspection to be exercised by an international agency attached to the United Nations Organization. There are a number of ways in which inspection could be made effective, and, while none of the methods may be infallible, all the methods applied together could make violations a very hazardous undertaking.

Inspection of Ores. Aerial surveys, which during the war proved to be very effective, would go a long way toward revealing the presence of mining activities as well as other undisclosed industrial activities. Once uranium mining operations vere located, it would be possible to keep track of the mined ores and to follow the uranium from the mine to its destination. If the uranium were obtained from a low-grade ore, mining operations could be detected from the air with a high degree of probability. Nor could the operations be easily camouflaged against infrared photography. The mining of high-grade uranium ore, in the event that such deposits were discovered, might be somewhat easier to conceal because of the smaller quantity of ore that would have to be mined. But

{p. 62} if this mining were carried out in remote and sparsely populated areas, it could still be detected by means of aerial surveys, even though the quantity of ore involved were small. The international agency under whose auspices this survey would be carried out would have to possess the right to issue warrants for searches; then, if necessary, inspec- tors armed with such warrants could check on the ground any suspicious activities detected from the air.

Mining operations in populous areas, on the other hand, would hardly escape the attention of those who lived and worked in the areas and would therefore scarcely remain a secret for any length of time.

A general geological survey of the world's uranium deposits - which ought to be extended to deposits containing only 1-10 to 1-100 per cent of uranium - would enable us to determine in detail just what measures to adopt for adequate inspection of the mining of uranium in the various parts of the world.

Inspection of Industrial Installations. The detection of secret plants producing U-235 or plutonium presents little difficulty. Plants producing U-235 require such a large supply of power (in the form of either coal, oil, or electricity) that their location is betrayed, particularly if production is concentrated in not highly industrialized regions. If they are dispersed in more densely populated regions, their existence will be known to large numbers of people and will therefore not remain concealed for long.

Because of the heat liberated in the process, plutonium-producing plants can be detected either by the water supply which must be available for cooling, or by some alternate cooling method which would make them easily discernible because of certain peculiar structures involved.

The discovery of any of these plants would be easy during the period of construction. It would be particularly easy within the next few years, since early developments in this field are characterized by more conspicuous installations than those that may follow later.

Inspection of Specialized Personnel. We have so far discussed only more or less mechanical methods of inspection. The over-all aim of preventing an arms race requires, however, that we check not only the manufacture of atomic bombs but also other methods of aggressive warfare, some of which are potentially almost as terrible as those based on the liberation of atomieenergy. Such an over-all check, particularly if it is supposed to extend to unforeseen techniques of mass extermination, calls for novel, less mechanical methods of inspection. Knowledge of the movements and activities of all scientists, engineers, and technically skilled personnel would permit the detection of any dangerous activity as soon as it reaches the stage of construction and before it could reach the stage of production. This would be the primary aim of the inspection of personnel.

The inspecting agents must, of course, have scientific knowledge. ...

{p. 63} The Citizen as Inspector. ...

Scientists and engineers are not isolated from the community in which they live. They have the same loyalties as other members of the community, and their first loyalty may well be to their own country. Just how that loyalty is interpreted will vary, however, with the circumstances. Let us assume that the United States and Russia have arrived at an arrangement which prohibits the manufacture of atomic bombs but which leaves both countries the right to abrogate the arrangement at any time. Let us further assume that after this arrangement has been ratified and become the law of the land, the President of the United States calls upon all scientists and engineers in this country, asking them to pledge themselves to report to an international agency any secret violations committed on the territory of the United States. Let us assume further that the Espionage Act has been modified so that it no longer covers information of a purely scientific or technical nature, whether or not it might relate to the national defense. In circumstances like these there is little doubt that most scientists and engineers in the United States would respond to the President's appeal.

Can we expect Russian scientists to respond similarly? My knowledge of Russian scientists is very much less direct, and my answer to this question must therefore be based on the fundamental conviction that differences between men in general, and scientists in particular, are matters of degree. I do not believe that there are essential differences between Russian and American scientists.

Here it may be desirable to define more closely the conditions under which such a system can be expected to work to command the confidence of all nations. Clearly it would be greatly strengthened by creating international institutions that would establish close collaboration between the scientists and engineers of different countries. ...

{p. 64} The fact that scientists and engineers would be in a position to report violations without risking their lives would help to alleviate suspicion that they knew of secret violations but were keeping silent for fear of their lives. ...

Need for a Long-range Program. We cannot expect, however, to hold up indefinitely the peacetime uses of atomic power for the sake of security, and we shall have to go as soon as possible beyond such temporary expedients.

An arrangement of the type that we have discussed would remove the threat of an arms race and would be of great value because under it war would break out only if one of the major powers actually decided to risk a war by abrogation. If we eliminate not only atomic bombs but also the development of other aggressive methods of warfare, and particularly eliminate stocks of long-range aggressive weapons, such as long-range bombers, large fleets of warships, and landing craft, the risk of war between the great powers will appear to be remote and a tolerably well-working peace system under the United Nations Organization, as at present constituted, might be expected to function for a while. We cannot hope, however, to safeguard peace forever under such an arrangement.

We may have removed for the time being the danger of one kind of war - the war that arises more or less automatically out of an armed peace in which the great powers maneuver according to the laws of power politics. The First World War may perhaps be cited as an example of this kind of war which could be averted under such an arrangement, but the Second World War, in which Germany deliberately set out to conquer, does not fall into this class. Under the arrangement discussed in this chapter, there would remain a definite danger in any one year, of war's breaking out.

The breathing spell that we might secure by averting an arms race would give us the opportunity to establish a world community. Unless we made use of it for this purpose, we would have done nothing but postpone the next world war, which will be all the more terrible the later it comes. The issue that we have to face is not whether we can create a world government before this century is over. That appears to be very likely. The issue that we have to face is whether we can have such a world government without going through a third world war. What matters is to create at once conditions in whirh the ultimate establishment of a world government will appear as inevitable to most men as war appears inevitable at present to many. Clearly the crucial point in this transition will be reached when a world government will in fact operate in the area of security or police functions. When that point is reached, the right to abrogate will cease and secession will become both illegal and in fact impossible. Discussion of such a long-range program would

{p. 65} go beyond the scope of this chapter. I have mentioned it because I doubt that the danger of an arms race can be successfully averted unless the problem of creating a breathing spell and the problem of establishing a world community - that is, the short-range and the long-range programs - are attacked simultaneously. For, if we wish to avert an arms race, we will have to give up our own atomic bombs and scrap our own manufacturing facilities before we can have a foolproof peace system. We shall have to take risks, and we shall have to derive the courage to take risks from the conviction that we are on our way toward the solution of the problem of permanent peace.

{p. 66} Chapter 13

International Control of Atomic Energy

By WALTER LIPPMANN

LET us now examine the problem, as it was defined by the three foreign ministers, of how to achieve "control of atomic energy ... for peaceful purposes."*

{footnote: ¥ Communique on the Moscow Conference of the Three Foreign Ministers, December 27, 1945.}

My task is to inquire into the prospects of soling this problem, given our present knowledge of politics, government, and law. For at the outset we have to recognize that our progress in the art of mass destruction has not been accompanied by new discoveries in political science or in statecraft. We have not learned how to release hitherto inaccessible intellectual and moral energies and to direct them to constructive ends. To start with we have only the political science of the preatomic age. And while we may assume that the terrifying character of modern total war will make men somewhat more willing to support political inquiry and experiment, nothing can now be proposed that is not an application of knowledge that already exists. Nevertheless I shall contend, and I hope to demonstrate, that the political principles of the solution are known. Whether mankind in our generation will apply them is another question. It is of the utmost importance, to be sure, but it is a question that we cannot begin to examine until we have elucidated the theory of the solution. For the practical difiSculty, which is how to persuade men to accept a solution, cannot be approached until we see clearly what it is that they must be persuaded to accept.

All will agree, I believe, that the crux of the immediate problem is how to provide "for effective safeguards by way of inspection and other means to protect complying states against the hazards of violations and evasions." For as Secretary Byrnes said on his return from Moscow:

{quote} In particular it was intended ad is understood that the matter of safeguards will apply to the recommendation of the commission (to be established by the General Assembly of the United Nations) in relation to every phase of the subject and at every stage. Indeed, at the root of the whole matter lies the problem of providing the necessary safeguards. {endquote}

{the British spying on Kofi Annan's office is relevant}

It is evident that international rules will be only as good as the safeguards against their violation and evasion are effective. The fundamental problem, in short, is how to enforce the international agreements that the governments may decide to sign. For agreements are not likely to be observed if men do not have reason to believe that they will be enforced. The stakes are the life and death of national states and of masses of their inhabitants: No nation could afford the risk of being a complying state unless all states capable of producing these weapons were assuredly complying states as well.

Declarations and resolutions that are unrelated to the means for enforcing them may, and often do, serve a great purpose. They may edify, teach inspire, and illuminate the possibilities of the future. But they are not law - even if everyone has subscribed to them - and here and now we are concerned with the making of international agreements that will have the force and effect of world law. The prospects of enforcement are the controlling considerations: we can draw up only such rules as we have reason to believe we can enforce. Indeed, the very question of whether there shall be an international policy at all, rather than a national one alone, depends on what faith and credit we can put in the enforcement of international agreements.

There are few in any country who now believe that war itself or any of the important weapons of war can be regulated or outlawed by the ordinary treaties among sovereign states. During the years between 1919 and 1939 many treaties were signed

{p. 67} and ratified.*

{footnote} * For example, The Covenant of the League of Nations; the Washington Conference Treaties Limiting Naval Armaments, Relating to the use of Submarines and Noxious Gases in warfare; the Nine Power Treaty on the Ear East in 1922; the Locarno Treaties of 1925; the series of conventions of Arbitration and Conciliation between Germany and the Netherlands in 1926, Denmark, 1926, and Luembhourg, 1929; the Kellogg-Briand Pact 1928; German-Polish Nonaggression Pact 1934; Austro-German Agreement 1936; Munich Agreement 1938, Nonaggressinn Treaty between Germany and Denmark 1939; and between Germany and U.S.S.R., 1939. {end footnote}

The sovereign states promised to maintain peace, to outlaw war as an instrument of national policy, to limit their armaments; they gave and received bilateral and multilateral guaranties of mutual protection and nonaggression. These treaties did not prevent nor did they mit gate the fury and the horror of the Second World War of the twentieth century. They were not observed by the aggressor states nor enforced successfully by the complying states. No reliance can now be placed, nor indeed will it be, on more treaties of the same kind. No matter how solemn the language of the new treaties, or how specific and comprehensive the substance and the procedure, no one will put his trust in them.

But it is just as evident that there is no way to begin to deal with our problem except by international treaties of some sort. We should merely be begging the question if we did not recognize that no world-wide proposal can be adopted except by a treaty that the sovereign states of our epoch will ratify. We have, therefore, to inquire into the exact reasons why treaties of the old sort are defective; if the diagnosis is correct, it should lead us to the remedy.

As we have known them in our time, nearly all international agreements and almost all international law have been enforceable only in so far as sovereign states would and could coerce other sovereign states. They have provided no other method of enforcement except that the complying states should in the end be ready and willing to wage war against transgressor states. This has been true, as the words themselves indicate, even of measures that have been called "short of war" - of diplomatic nonintercourse, embargo, and blockade. The milder penalties were counted upon to be deterrent only because each measure short of war was to be less and less short of war. They were regarded as a series of measures that might begin with the withdrawal of an ambassador and could end in total war. The effectiveness of any sanction depends upon the fact that it is a warning and token of severer penalties to come. The world has seen this in the case of Japan in Manchuria, of Italy in Abyssinia, of Germany in Austria, of Spain and Argentina during the Second World War: the initial sanctions were not deterrent because the complying states were not ready or willing to apply the final sanction of going to war.

The enforcement of international agreement by sovereign states against sovereign states is known as the method of collective security. We cannot rely -- indeed no nation does or will rely -- upon international agreements of this kind. Why not? Because the remedy is as bad as the disease: the peaceable nations have to be willing to wage total war in order to prevent total war. The remedy is so crude, so expensive, and usually so repulsive, that it will not be applied by the very peoples who are supposed to apply it, namely by the peace-loving peoples.

{Given the Jewish earnestness to bring peace to everyone else - to solve squabbles via enforcement from the UN - as exhibited by the Jewish contributors in this book, it is ironic that the Middle East conflict has been the most intractable in the world for over 50 years; that Israel has been able to defy the UN without penalty; that Israel - unlike Iraq and Iran - has been able to build a secret nuclear program, without calls for UN inspection; and that it has jailed its "nuclear whistleblower" Mordecai Vanunu, even in solitary confinement, with scarecely a murmur of complaint}

We must be clear about this, for much hangs upon it. It is often said that the mere threat of collective force will deter any state from taking the steps that lead to war. That might be true if the threat is known to be genuine - - if it is not a gesture and a bluff. There must be no doubt in the minds of the rulers of the transgressor states that the others are mobilized, equipped, and trained, and it must be certain that there will be no hesitation and debate about the willingness of the law-abiding peoples to wage total war. To state these conditions is to know how improbable it is that they will be met in times of peace. For in the early stages of any campaign of conquest, the issues are certain to be remote and in themselves of no great importance to the nation that must carry the main burden of collective security. We may recall the seizure of Manchuria in 1931-1932, Ethiopia in 1935, the Spanish civil war in 1936, the reoccupation of the Rhineland in 1936, the episode of the Paraguay in 1937. It is in these early stages of aggression that collective security would have to be effective if war is to be prevented. But that is just when it is least effective: the peace-loving states cannot be counted upon to be ready and willing to wage total war over vhat appear to be in themselves minor, remote, and unclear disputes. Their unreadiness and unwillingness will be patent to the aggressor, and therefore their collective threats will be discounted as a collective bluff.

The threat of total collective war can be a deterrent only if it is evident that the threat will be car-

{p. 68} ried out. But it will be carried out only as the very last resort. It is in fact not a way of enforcing international agreements. It is a measure of ultimate desperation that will be used only when reliance upon agreements is gone, the peace of the world has already been irretrievably shattered, and the peace-loving nations are compelled to unite in order to fight a war of survival.

When the issue is less than the survival of the great nations, the method of collective security will not be used because it is just as terrifying to the policeman as it is to the lawbreakers. It punishes the law enforcing states, at least until they have paid the awful price of victory, as much as the law-breaking states. Therefore, it cannot be used as a method of ordinary and continuing enforcement, for example, as a means of insuring the inspection of laboratories and plants working with fissionable materials. There would be little surgery if the surgeon hd to amputate his own arm when he was called upon to amputate his patient's leg. There would be little enforcement of law in our cities if in order to arrest burglars, murderers, and violators of the traffic ordinances the police had to start a fight in which the courthouse, the jail, and their ovn homes were likely to be demolished. Men will not burn down the barn in order to roast a pig: the method of collective security is, I repeat, too crude, too expensive, and too unreliable for general and regular use.

It proposes to achieve peace through law by calling upon great masses of innocent people to stand ready to exterminate great masses of innocent people. No world order can be founded upon such a principle. It cannot command the support of civilized men, least of all of democratic men who respect the individual and consider it the very essence of justice to distinguish between the guilty and the innocent, the responsible and the irresponsible. Our own experience with the method of collective security has proved how right was Hamilton in saying that when "every breach of the laws must involve a state of war and military execution must become the only instrument of civil obedience," no "prudent man (would) choose to commit his happiness to it."

At the beginning of this chapter I said that the essential political principle is known by which our problem can be solved. There is no mystery about it, and indeed it becomes self-evident once we realize clearly why collective security is such a bad method of enforcing laws and agreements.

The principle is to make individuals, not sovereign states, the objects of the international agreements; it is to have laws operate upon individuals. This principle is not altogether novel even in the international affairs of our era when national sovereignty has been so absolute, and its doctrines have been expounded so dogmatically and so pedantically.? It is the principle that men have had to invoke and apply "whenever they have sought to enlarge the area of lawful order."

{Footnote ?: Cf Hans Kelsen, Peace Through Law, Univerity of North Corolina Press, pp. 71 et. seq., for instances of individuai responsibility etablished by general international law or treaty - namely, rules forbidding piracy, breach of blockade and contraband, illegitimate warfare; also Article III of tbe abortive Treaty of Wahington, 1922, on submarine warfare and Article II of the International Convention for the Protection of Submarine Telegraph Cables, 1884. Other interesting and suggestive intances are: Treaty for the Suppression of the African Slave Trade, 1862: international convention ior the Suppression of the Trade in women and Children, 1921; International convention for the Suppression of the Circulation of and Trade in Obscene Publications, 1923, and the International Convention for the Suppression of Counterfeiting Currency, 1929. {end footnote}

The authors of the American Constitution invoked it in order to remedy the lawlessness and disorder of the Confederacy of 1781. They espoused and elucidated the principle in the Federalist. If anything in the field of political science can be called a proven discovery, it is that a system of law will not produce order if it operates only upon states, and that the enforcement of law becomes possible only as the laws operate upon individuals. For then the enforcement of the law may not encounter "the organized and unified opposition which is evoked" when the attempt is made to regulate or coerce states that command the allegiance and obedience of masses of people. Hamilton argues that if there is to be a "super-intending power" - which is what we are committed to establishing when we seek "effective safeguards" against weapons of mass destruction - then "we must resolve to incorporate into our plan those ingredients which may be considered as forming the characteristic difference between a league and a government; we must extend the authority of the Union (in this case of the super-intending power of the United Nations) to the persons of the citizens" of the Unitd Nations.

In examining the bearing of this principle upon

{p. 69} the problems of the world today, we must not be diverted or confused by the connotations of the word "government." The word suggests the apparatus of a world flag, a world executive, a world legislature, a world judicial system, a world army, world policemen, detectives, inspectors, and tax collectors. None, some, or all of these instruments of government may be desirable or feasible; the point I wish to insist upon is that we need not and that we should not consider them now. For the principle that world laws and agreements shall operate upon individuals can be applied constructively at once without a priori commitment to create the particular institutions of a world government.

The principle is most suitable to the problem that the three foreign ministers agreed to lay before the Commission for the Control of Atomic Energy that they have asked the General Assembly of the United Nations to establish. The problem is how to provide "effective safeguards ... against the hazards of violations and evasions" of agreements that would call for "the exchange of basic scientific information for peaceful ends," for the "control of atomic energy to the extent necessary to insure its use only for peaceful purposes," and "for the elimination from national armaments of atomic weapons and other major weapons of mass destruction."

It is manifest that these rules will deal with the activities of countless individuals in all countries. Scientists, technicians, industrialists, administrative offficials, inspectors, judges, legislators, military commanders, diplomats, and the rulers of states must comply with the rules. They must enforce the rules. They must be accountable for violating or evading them. They must be protected against being forced to violate or evade them.

If mankind is to rely upon obedience to the law by such a multitude of individuals, the rules agreed upon must become the supreme law in all lands, and all previous and subsequent national law must conform to the world law. A nation which refuses to accept this had better not be invited to sign the treaty. For it ill be pretending to subscribe to rules that its own las do not support. Thus, by invoking this principle we can establish at the out- set a clear criterion as to whether there is in fact any good prospect that the safeguards will be effective. We can stipulate that no state shall be held to have ratified the treaty until by domestic legislation it has expressly made the rules of the treaty the national law within its jurisdiction.

But that is not all. Since the treaty would require that the laws governing atomic energy be essentially the same throughout the world, the United Nations could hold that any individual person was entitled to the protection of that law and was liable under it in any jurisdiction of any of the member states. Then no one who violated the law could claim the protection of his own government. He would be an outlaw, like a pirate, who could be indicted, arrested, tried and punished in any of the United Nations. If his defense was that he had acted under the order of superior officials of his own government, it would not be an un- friendly act but an established right to ask that government for explanation and investigation. If the government refused, then, of course, it would be in rebellion against the United Nations, and the hard question- which can arise in any civil society - would be posed as to whether they would resort to war to suppress the rebellion. If it came to that, the rulers of the rebellious state would be liable to indictment as war criminals and, if ever they were caught, to trial and punishment.

Any individual scientist, industrialist, administrator, or official who wished to obey the law could, if his government were seeking to coerce him, claim the protection of the United Nations. {what of Mordecai Vanunu?} If he escaped, they would give him asylum. If he were put in a concentration camp, the United Nations could demand an explanation and a fair hearing of his case if any friend or relative managed to convey the news of his case to any agent of any government of the United Nations.

No one would owe allegiance to his own state when that meant that he had to violate the world law. It would not be unpatriotic, in fact quite the contrary, for any man to expose officials who were conspiring to violate what would be the law of the world and the law of their own country. He could expose them with a good conscience just as he would expose them if in the United States they were conspiring against the Bill of Rights, or for that matter to rob the Treasury. They would be the traitors, the usurpers, the disloyalists, the criminals, and lawbreakers. He would be the law-abiding citizen of his country and of the world, and, if he took risks in order to uphold the law, he would have behind him the power of all law-

{p. 70} abiding states and the explicit and avowed con- science of mankind.

While this principle can be applied progressively to enlarge the area of order under world law, it is especially suited to the specific problem of how to provide effective safeguards against violation and evasion of international agreements about atomic energy. These agreements have not been worked out as this chapter goes to the printer. But their general character and purpose have been sufficiently forecast by the Truman-Atlee-King Declaration of November 15, 1945, and the Moscow communique, and I am assuming that our main concern is with how they are to be observed and enforced.

The proposed agreements will be designed to limit the development and use of atomic energy to peaceable ends and purposes. This must mean that at no stage in the process from pure research and the mining of ores to the manufacture of weapons can secrecy be permitted which would enable a government or a faction of conspirators to use atomic energy for ends that were prohibited by the agreement. The disclosure and the inspection must be adequate to make it highly improbable that complying states will be made the victims of sinister surprise and sneak attack. Enough must be known so that the complying states can be fore-warned in time to take preventive and defensive measures. This need not mean that everyone must be taught how to make atomic bombs in the kitchen sink. But it must mean that no government can even start to prepare itself to make atomic bombs except with the consent of the other governments and in accord with the international rules they have agreed upon.

It follows, therefore, that treaties must be designed directly to nullify the sovereign right and to destroy the actual power of any government to make a state secret of the development of atomic energy. A state secret is kept by means of national laws and regulations establishing censorship, definitions of treason and of espionage, and secrecy is enforced by restrictions upon all who share the secret and penalties upon all who might ferret it out. If, then, members of the United Nations are to agree to the mutual right of inspection, they must agree that in these matters the sovereign right to enforce a state secret is no longer absolute. The apparatus of censorship, treason, and espionage is, as respects the terms agreed upon, null and void.

Even in time of war among well-nigh absolute soverelgn states, the enforcement of complete secrecy is exceedingly difficult and in large degree imperfect. The kind of agreement that we are discussing would make it much more difficult, especially in peacetime. It would make secrecy by government officials unlawful and would make it lawful, and also righteous, honorable, and not too imprudent, for anyone to expose violations of the rules and to inform the inspectors.

{Mordecai Vanunu being the perfect test case}

Dr. Szilard examines the details of the problem of inspection in Chapter 12. It may be added here that, under agreements of the type we are examining, the prohibitions that would prevent effective inspection are outlawed, and therefore the inhibitions of individuals arising out of patriotism or fear of prosecution are greatly reduced. It would cease to be a crime against the state to help the inspectors: it would have beeome a crime to obstruct them. Individuals who wished to observe and to enforce the world law on this subject would have the support, once they had managed to invoke it, of the combined power and influence of all the complying states. We need not suppose that the complying states will rely wholly upon United Nations inspectors wearing badges to identify them; they will maintain also diplomatic and consular agents, intelligence services, and there will be spread all over the world journalists, businessmen. tourists, missionaries, and students. It would still be theoretically possible, but it would be much more difficult, for another Hitler to lock up an anti-Hitlerite or to have him disappear surreptitiously, without some word of it being sent by the man's family or friends to some agent or even a mere citizen of a complying state.

There is every reason to think that the international family of scientific men would become the foremost supporters of the international agreements we are discussing. These agreements would recognize, legalize, and protect the established traditions of scientific men: the agreements would authorize them, invite them, and induce them, to do the very things that they need to do and must want to do. Because atomic energy cannot be developed without them, they occupy a strategically controlling position. They are, therefore, the natura1ly appointed guardians of any system of international control. They would be most expertly qualified to draw conclusions from the reports that would come in not only from the formal inspectors

{p. 71} but from all other services of intelligence and information. Our agreements wiil be sound law not only because their purpose is good but because they enable the many scientists and technicians to serve their own interests and professional ideals. It is easier to administer laws like these which release multitudes of men than laws which restrict them. Agreements of this type would use the liberty of the individual to regulate the absolutism of the national state. All this will become possible if we found the treaties we propose to ratify upon the basic principle that they prescribe rights and duties not only for states but for individuals. But if we do not introduce this ingredient, as Hamilton called it, then the agreements will not be laws. They will be declarations only. For observance will depend upon the faithful performance by all sovereign states, and enforcement upon the willingness and readiness of some states to wage total war in the name of collective security.

Yet our conclusions, however cogent, would have no practical importance if they were merely a theoretical demonstration that atomic weapons can best be regulated in a certain way. We should then have just another plan for the limitation of armaments, and we know from the experience of 1919 to 1939 that partial disarmament does not prevent war and may indeed prove to be a snare and a delusion for those very nations that put their trust in it. In the end we must be concerned not with atomic war but with war, since we know per-fectly well that the best possible system for regulating bombs will be swept away if there is another great war. If there is another war of the giant powers, atomic and even more deadly and malignant weapons will - we must assume - be used. For even if they are not in stock when the war breaks out, they will be manufactured before it is concluded.

Therefore, in judging specific plans to control atomic energy, we must examine their bearing upon the formation of a world-wide order of peace We must see how the principle, which I have been con- tending is suitable to the control of atomic energy, affects the United Nations as a world society and the United Nations Organization that they have just established. Consistency is essential: there cannot be a system of world law that is unique for atomic energy ?nd a different and conflicting system for the maintenance of peace.

There is, however, no conflict. On the contrary the method we have been discussing for regulating atomic energy is a concrete application of the fundamental principle to which the United Nations are already committed by implication and by their acts. I realize that many ardent and faithful supporters of the old League and of the new organization think otherwise. Yet it is demonstrable, I think, that the United Nations have in fact rejected the method of collective security, and in so far as they have adopted any method of enforcing agreements and laws, it is to found the international order upon laws that govern individuals.

The charter of the United Nations organization does not explicitly reject the idea that peace is to be kept by authorizing a universal war against transgressor states. The charter does indeed say it is one of the "purposes" of the United Nations to take "collective measures ... for the suppression of ... breaches of the peace,"? and it empowers the Security Council§ "to take such action by air, sea, or land forces as may be necessary to maintain or restore international peace and security."

{Footnote §: Id., Chapter VII, Article 42.}

But, as everyone knows, all this is nullified by the rule of unanimity, usually called the privilege of veto, among the five great powers.¶ The method of collective security cannot be used lawfully against any one of the great military powers without its consent. This is equivalent, of course, to saying that it can never be used. For no nation will ever conceivably authorize the rest of the world to wage total war against itself. Moreover, the rule of unanimity protects all other states against collective coercion unless, perchance, there is some state so small, so isolated, and so unimportant that it is not the ally or client of any one of the great powers.

{Footnote ¶: Id., Chapter V, Article 27, Section 3.}

Thus the United Nations, when they framed the charter of their organization, renounced in practice though not in theory the method of collective security. There are many who deem this a reactionary event in international affairs and argue that every effort must be made to abolish the veto {would this not allow the strongest power to get its way?}

{p. 72} and to establish the principle of collective security. They will have, I believe, to reconsider their position. In 1919 the United States rejected the Covenant because it would not submit to or participate in a commitment to wage war to make peace. Neither against Japan in 1931 nor even against Italy in 1936 were the members of the League of Nations willing to fulfill their commitment. In 1945 the Soviet Union most positively, and the United States most probably, would not have ratified the charter if it had in fact authorized the method of collective security.

Since the great powers have in fact rejected collective security, it does not follow that they are international anarchists. The great powers may be right not because they are great powers but because they are so directly responsible and so immediately involved in the consequences that they are compelled to see the true nature of collective security. They may have rejected it not because they are wrong-minded but because the method is wrong - because it is in truth too crude, too expensive, too unreliable, and also too unjust, to be used generally and continually for the enforcement of international conventions.

In any event it is the fact that without a revolutionary revision of the charter the method of collective security cannot be used to control atomic weapons or for any other purpose. Those who argue that the veto must be abolished if there is to be any sanction behind agreements and laws are taking a position that is tantamount to renouncing all hope of an order of law in the world. If there is no other method of enforcement, then there is no method of enforcement, and we find ourselves in a world condemned to the unending anarchy of sovereign states.

But as a matter of fact if we look beyond the San Francisco Charter to the United Nations as a living world society, we see that during the past quarter of a century, as they have rejected the method of collective security, they have also been committing themselves deeply to the other method that we have been discussing, that is, to holding individuals accountable for breaches of the peace and for the violation of treaties and of international law.

The commitment is now solemn, deep, and publicly declared. It is sealed by the fact that all the United Nations have participated in the arrest, the indictment, the trial, and the punishment of war criminals. No one has protested, and by their words and their acts all are committed to the doctrine enunciated by Mr. Justice Jackson in his opening address at the Nuremberg trialthat "the forces of law and order be made equal to the task of dealing with such international lawlessness as I have recited here" by taking "the ultimate step," which is "to make statesmen responsible to law." With the assent of his British Soviet, and French colleagues Mr. Justice Jackson completed the commitment: "... and let me make it clear that while this law is first applied against German aggressors, the law includes, and if it is to serve a useful purpose it must condemn, aggression by any other nation, including those which now sit here in judgment." {that is the real test; it's ok to try a Milosevic, but what about a Sharon or a Bush?}

We shall have misunderstood the real principles that govern the United Nations if we do not see that as they have rejected the principle of collective security by adopting the veto, they have embraced the principle that "crimes are always committed by persons" and that "only sanctions which reach individuals can peacefully ana effectively be enforced." The commitments of the Nuremberg trial are no sudden improvisation out of thin air - they have their roots in the history of our epoch, and they have been evolved during the two World Wars. Though they are, like all common law in its beginnings, empiric and uncodified, they are no less authoritative than the Charter. The fundamental law of the United Nations is not confined to the Charter, and in construing the text of the Charter we must take fully into account the law that they have promulgated at Nuremberg.

Here the United Nations have recognized, in the words of Mr. Justice Jackson's opening statement, "individual responsibility on the part of those who commit acts defined as crimes, or who incite others to do so, or who join a common plan with other persons, groups, or organizations to bring about their commission. The principle of individual responsibility for piracy and brigandage, which have long been recognized as crimes punishable under international law, is old and well established. That is what illegal warfare is. This principle of personal liability is a necessary as well as logical one if international law is to render real help to the maintenance of peace. An international law which operates only on states can be enforced only by war because the most practicable method of coercing a state is warfare."

{p. 73} We can now see in retrospect that during the Second World War there was consummated a revolutionary development in human relations. It has pushed mankind across the boundary lines of what was until recently the modern age, when men lived in a congeries of unqualifiedly sovereign states and their dependencies; the first but essential formations of the world state have begun. They are not merely being proposed and advocated. This event was not caused, though its evolution may now be accelerated, by the portent of the atomic bomb. For the decisive change occurred before the explosions at Los Alamos, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki.

Like all great historic events it was not originally the product of a conscious design but of a series of necessary decisions taken for empiric reasons. The United Nations became an alliance because they were all, though separately and at different times, the victims of aggression. They were compelled to unite in order to wage a war of survival. They were moved to make their union permanent by the knowledge that in no other way could they hope to consolidate the peace they had paid such a price to win. But when they came to write the charter of their union at Dumbarton Oaks and at San Francisco, they found it impossible to construct an international order on the principle of collective security. As sovereign states they could not participate in a world order within which sovereign states were authorized and obliged to wage war against sovereign states.

This did not mean, as many men have thought, that the United Nations are stalled on the way to a world order. It meant, on the contrary, an admission on their part that out of sovereign states alone a world order cannot be formed. Though that was not the intention, nor was its significance appreciated when it happened, what was in fact blocked by the rule of unanimity was the effort to advance along a way that did not and could not take the United Nations into a world order of law.

But simultaneously, though separately, they were moved to open up the way that can lead to a vorld order. The impelling cause here was in the first instance their attempt by warnings and threats to stop the massacres and atrocities that were an integral part, not merely incidents, of the Nazi doctrine and practical conduct of war. These warnings were not heeded. Then the impelling motive of the Allies became the need to inflict retribution upon and to exact some rough measure of justice from those who were most clearly responsible for the monstrous evils of the wa. The Allies united in applying the principle that not the anonymous collective entity of the state but the responsible officials of the state may be held personally accountable for the violations of treaties, of the conventions of war, and of the covenants of international law.

With the Nuremberg trial itself, which is not concluded as these lines are written, we are not concerned. Our conclusions are unaffected by the questions that have still to be determined, whether any or all of the defendants are justly and legally guilty on all the counts in the indictment. They could all be innocent, or they could plead successfully that the law under which they are being prosecuted is in their case ex post facto. None the less this would be the law of the United Nations henceforth unless we intend to deny the authority of law to what they have all declared, sealed, signed, and ratified, and repeatedly affirmed, by the official action of their lawful governments.

Nor can it be said that this principle of personal liability is a new doctrine and alien to the conscience of civilized men. I believe it could be shown that it is the traditional and orthodox doctrine and that the theory of the absolute sovereign state that is subject to no higher law, and is itself the source of the highest law of its people, is an aberration and heresy, which has flourished, though even then never without protest, during the closing decades of the nineteenth and the opening decades of the twentieth century.

To President Wilson belongs the distinction of having been the first head of a great state to attack the foundations and premises of this heresy. He did just that on April 6, 1917, when in asking Congress to recognize that the United States was at war with the Imperial German government, he said that we should fight not against the German people but against "their rulers." It does not matter how many or how few Germans he or anyone else adjudged to be guilty and responsible: once it was declared that in a war not all the inhabitants of an enemy state are collectively indistinguishable, the doctrine of the absolute sovereign state had been breached.

{p. 74} The principle that Wilson advocated in his message was carried over into the Treaty of Versailles when the Allies and Associated Powers did "publicly arraign William II of Hohenzollern, formerly German Emperor, for a supreme offense against international morality and the sanctity of treaties."

But in 1919 the nations vere reluctant as a matter of doctrine and unprepared for reasons of expediency to act on the principle.

In 1945 they did act on it. They did so only after explicit, repeated, and formal declarations that they would act on it. Thus on January 13, 1942, twenty-eight months before the defeat of Germany, an Allied conference of nine occupied countries of Europe placed "among their principal war aims the punishment, through the channels of organized justice, of those guilty and responsible for these crimes, whether they have ordered them, perpetrated them, or in any way participated in them." This declaration had the approval of the United Kingdom, the British Dominions, the U.S.S.R., China, India, and the United States, all of them participating as observers. They themselves subsequently and repeatedly made a similar commitment, and from these declarations stems the prosecution of the war criminals.

While the United Nations had begun empirically, seeking first to deter the enemy officials and "those who have hitherto not imbrued their hands with innocent blood,"* and then to exact retribution, the evolution of their doctrine and practice took them far beyond the case of the criminals of this war. At the Nuremberg process they bound themselves to the general principle that not only these German aggressors but all future aggressors shall be accountable to the same law. By this engagement the United Nations adopted the elements that form "the characteristic difference between a world league and a world state."

{Footnote *: Declaration by President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill, and Premier Stalin, issued at the Tripartite Conference at Moscow, November 1, 1943.}

{The Soviet Union itself was expelled from the League of Nations in 1939 for invading Finland (but not for invading eastern Poland or the Baltic states). And the United States has freely invaded other countries without sanction ... George W. Bush even bound allied countries to sign away any right to be tried by the UN}

As we look back upon what has happened, we see what can happen. The United Nations Organization is not another League of Nations, rendered impotent by the veto. It is the constituent association of a world state already directed to establishing a universal order in which law, designed to maintain the peace, operates upon individual persons.

No one can prove how fast and how far mankind will now go to form the world state, or what vill be the legislative, executive, and judicial organs of the world state. We may indeed fail altogether and be doomed to the desolation of utter anarchy. Nothing that could happen will surely happen. But what we can prove - and it is a momentous conclusion - is that the potentiality of the world state is inherent in the United Nations. When I say that it is inherent, I mean that this is the end and the logic according to which the United Nations must evolve if they are to evolve at all towards an enduring world order. The world state is inherent in the United Nations as an oak tree is in an acorn. Not all acorns become oak trees; many fall on stony ground or are devoured by the beasts of the wilderness. But if an acorn matures, it will not become a whale or an orchid. It can become only an oak. That is the potentiality inherent in its organism. In this sense, not another League of Nations but a world state, in the exact meaning of the term, is inherent and potential in the embryonic organism of the United Nations.

The recognition of this truth will be in itself an event that will affect the course of events. For when an idea that enlists men's hopes is seen to be consistent with their acts, it evokes and organizes their energies. It is not then an abstraction or an essence. It is a dynamic force in their conduct. There are the ideas that shake the world and change it.

The project of the world state is now such an idea. It was not always such an idea, though for some two thousand years in the Western world, at least since the Stoic philosophers were teaching, men have been able to transcend their tribal inheritance and to imagine the ideal of the universal state. But for long ages they were able to imagine also many other things they could not achieve - that, for example, men could fly and that no human person should be a chattel slave. Much had to happen, much had to be experienced and discovered, before the abolition of slavery or the art of flying could become realizable ideas. So it has been with the ideal of the union of mankind under universal law. Much has had to happen, much experienced, discovered, and learned, before the leading peoples of the world could arrive at the point where the formation of the world state

{p. 75} was not only what many of them desired but what in fact they were engaged in creating.

Now the ancient ideal has become an idea, indispensable in fact, to which men have been compelled to turn: there is no other way they can exact justice for the crimes of the war, no other way they can establish effective safeguards against the misuse of the weapons of mass destruction, no other way they can hope to make international agreements enforceable. The solution of the most urgent practical problems and the advance towards a wider and greater order - of peace among men depend upon the same fundamental idea. We need not hesitate to recognize it and to proclaim it and to employ it as the creative principle of the coming order of mankind.

Not our powers of persuasion but the inevitability of the truth will convert men's minds and enlist their support. We need not suppose that all the nations and al! the peoples in them will become suddenly unanimous and incandescent with enthusiasm to found the world state. Some must be convinced before many can be convinced, and under any predictable conditions the affairs of the world will long be determined by the rivalries, the combinations, and an uneasy equilibrium among the sovereign and powerful states. But in this condition of the world, a new event may and can, and could be made to intervene. That event would be the decision of the American people to make the formation of the world state the principal objective of their own foreign policy.

{H. G. Wells also advocated the World State: opensoc.html}

This can be made to happen. For the American people, who have learned that they cannot live in isolation, have no taste and no aptitude for the career of a world power among world powers, and no faith that good can come of it. Intuitively and by tradition they believe that security and serenity and great achievements require a universal order of equal laws and can never be had in a mere equilibrium of sovereign states. It would conform therefore, with American ideals and with American interests to dedicate the power and influence of the United States to sponsoring and pressing for the formation of a world state.

If that were the dynamic core of the foreign policy of the United States, the influence of this decision upon mankind would be enormous. The United States is at the zenith of its power and for the time being at least is the sole possessor of the most devastating weapons ever manufactured on earth. There is no doubt that if at this moment in history the United States raised the standard, many nations would immediately rally to it and in all the other nations more and more of the people.

Never was there such an opportunity for any people as is ours, though briefly if we do not seize it. We can use the preeminence of our military power so that an ideal for all mankind, not the United States of America as a national state, may dominate and conquer the world. The issues of territory and of resources and all the other knotty problems of settling the war and of making peace will still have to be dealt with. The struggle of civilized men with the primitive, the stubborn, the malign, and the stupid, within each of us and all about us, will not end. But how different would he the assumptions and the expectations of diplomacy if, as a great power, in the company of other nations who would surely be with us, we were committed to the formation of a world order of universal law! Merely to have begun upon this enterprise, though the first steps be small and difficult, would be to introduce into all the calculations and judgments of international affairs a new orientation, and into men's lives a compelling purpose.

{p. 76} Chapter 14

The Way Out

by ALBERT EINSTEIN

THE construction of the atom bomb has brought about the effect that all the people living in cities are threatened, everywhere and constantly. with sudden destruction. There is no doubt that this condition has to be abolished if man is to prove himself worthy, at least to some extent, of the self-chosen name of homo sapiens. However, there still exist widely divergent opinions concerning the degree to which traditional social and political forms, historically developed, will have to be sacrificed in order to achieve the desired security.

After the First World War, we were confronted with a paradoxical situation regarding the solution of international conflicts. An international court of justice had been established for a peaceful solution of these conflicts on the basis of international law. Furthermore, a political instrument for securing peace by means of international negotiation in a sort of world parliament had been created in the form of the League of Nations. The nations united in the League had further outlawed as criminal the method of solving conflicts by means of war.

Thus the nations were imbued with an illusion of security that led inevitably to bitter disappointment. For the best court of justice is meaningless unless it is backed by the authority and power to execute its decisions, and exactly the same thing is true of a world parliament. An individual state with sufficient military and economic power can easily resort to violence and voluntarily destroy the entire structure of supranational security built on nothing but words and documents. Moral authority alone is an inadequate means of securing the peace.

The United Nations Organization is now in the process of being tested. It may eventually emerge as the agency of "security without illusion" that we so badly need. But it has not as yet gone beyond the area of moral authority as, in my opinion, it must.

Our situation is rendered more acute by other circumstances, only two of which will be presented here. So long as the individual state, despite its official condemnation of war, has to consider the possibility of engaging in war, it must influence and educate its citizens - and its youth in particular - in such a way that they can easily be converted into efficient soldiers in the event of war. Therefore it is compelled not only to cultivate a technical-military training and type of thinking but also to implant a spirit of national vanity in its people in order to secure their inner readiness for the outbreak of war. Of course, this kind of education counteracts all endeavors to establish moral authority for any supranational security organization.

{Does not Israel have that spirit of "national vanity"?}

The danger of war in our time is further heightened by another technical factor. Modern weapons, in particular the atom bomb, have led to a considerable advantage in the means of offense or attack over those of defense. And this could well bring about the result that even responsible statesmen might find themselves compelled to wage a preventive war.

In view of these evident facts there is, in my opinion, only one way out.

It is necessary that conditions be established that guarantee the individual state the right to solve its conflicts with other states on a legal basis and under international jurisdiction. It is necessary that the individual state be prevented from making war by a supranational organization supported by a military power tht is exclusively under its control.

Only when these two conditions have been fully met can we have some assurance that we shall not vanish into the atmosphere, dissolved into atoms, one of these days.

From the viewpoint of the political mentality prevailing at present, it may seem illusory, even fantastic, to hope for the realization of such conditions within a period of a few years. Yet their

{p. 77} realization cannot wait for a gradual historical development to take its course. For, so long as we do not achieve supranational military security, the above-mentioned factors can always and forcibly lead us into war. Even more than the will for power, the fear of sudden attack will prove to be disastrous for us if we do not openly and decisively meet the problem of depriving national spheres of power of their military strength, turning such power over to a supranational authority.

With due consideration for the difficulties involved in this task, I have no doubt about one point. We shall be able to solve the problem uhen it will be clearly evident to all that there is no other no cheaper way out of the present situation.

Now I feel it my obligation to say something about the individual steps which might lead to a solution of the security problem.

1. Mutual inspection by the leading military powers of methods and installations used for the production of offensive weapons, combined with an interchange of pertinent technical and scientific discoveries, would diminish fear and distrust, at least for the time being. In the breathing spell thus provided we would have to prepare more thorough measures. For this preliminary step should be taken with conscious awareness that the ultimate goal is the denationalization of military power altogether.

This first step is necessary to make any successive moves possible. However, we should be wary of believing that its execution would immediately result in security. There still would remain the possibility of an armament race with regard to a possible future war, and there always exists the temptation to resort once more, by "underground" methods, to the military secret, that is, keeping secret the knowledge about methods and means of and actual preparations for warfare. Real security is tied to the denationalization of military power.

2. This denationalization can be prepared through a steadily increasing interchange of military and scientific-technical personnel among the armies of the different nations. The interchange should follow a carefully elaborated plan, aimed at converting the national armies systematically into a supranational military force. A national army, one might say, is the last place where national feeling may be expected to weaken. Even so, the nationalism can be progressively immunized at a rate proportionate at least to the building of the supranational army; and the whole process can be facilitated by integrating it with the recruiting and training of the latter. The process of interchanging personnel would further lessen the danger of surprise attacks and in itself would lay the psychological foundation for internationalization of military resources.

Simultaneously the strongest military powers could draft the working papers for a supranational security organization and for an arbitration committee, as well as the legal basis for, and the precise stipulation of, obligations, competencies, and restrictions of the latter with respect to the individual nations. They could further decide upon the terms of election for establishing and maintaining these bodies.

When an agreement on these points shall have been reached, a guarantee against wars of world-wide dimensions can be assured.

3. The above-named bodies can now begin to function. The vestiges of national armies can then be either disbanded or placed under the high command of the supranational authority.

4. After the cooperation of the nations of highest military importance has been secured, the attempt should be made to incorporate, if possible, all nations into the supranational organization, provided that it is their voluntary decision to join.

This outline may perhaps create the impression that the presently prevailing military powers are to be assigned too dominant a role. I have tried, however, to present the problem with a view to a sufficiently swift realization that will allow us to avoid difficulties greater than those already inherent in the nature of such a task. It may be simpler, of course, to reach preliminary agreement among the strongest military powers than among all nations, big and small, for a body of representatives of all nations is a hopelessly clumsy instrument for the speedy achievement of even preliminary results. Even so, the task confronting us requires of all concerned the utmost sagacity and tolerance, which can be achieved only through aareness of the harsh necessity we have to face.

{p. 78} Survival is at Stake

by THE FEDERATION OF AMERICAN (ATOMIC) SCIENTISTS

THIS is an unusual book. It has been written by many persons. It is repetitive at times and there is disagreement in its pages, as there is disagreement elsewhere, among scientists and non-scientists, in this country and in other countries. It is a serious and a dangerous circumstance that on this most vital of issues there is not yet the strongest agreement on the basic pattern of the precise solution. The fact that there is not, seven months after the bomb became a reality, tells better than anything else how critical is our problem. For it means that the atomic arms race which can mean our doom is in full swing.

The arms race must be stopped. This book was put together with the sole obiective of helping to stop it. This book cannot do what most needs to be done, which is to state the solution. Yet the book has a unity and achieves a purpose even so: it states the problem before us, in full and on sound authority and in one place. Each in his own way, the authors have recognized the nature of the problem and have thereby provided standards by which any proposed solution must be judged.

And this is more than half the battle. There is more to fear from confusion than from disagreement, more from irrelevance than from incompleteness. The many-sided nature of the problem of nuclear energy must be clear from the very content of the book. But just as clear is the common framework within which its authors have written:

¶ The problem has brought us to one of the great crises of history.

¶ The problem has moved onto the political plane and will remain there. Science will devise no defense to make the danger go away.

¶ The problem is a world problem. There can be no merely national solutions.

We of the Federation of American Scientists here undertake to discuss some of the terms of solution, to point some ways to action. But before this we wish to give emphasis to one point which has not been emphasized enough.

If the terror of the bomb is great, and properly great, the hope for man in the release of nuclear energy is even greater. The fruit of that science which follows in the proud tradition of Galileo, the outcome of that complex organization of society which has made possible the city of New York and the Hanford plutonium plant, is the large-scale release of nuclear energy. We cannot now see more than the faint shadow of what such a new force can mean for man. But it is our faith as scientists and our experience as citizens of the twentieth century that it will mean much. It will grow and develop. It will lead a life of its own. No influence that we have seen in our times can prevent this.

Yet it is the eloquent and unanswerable argument of this book that such a growth will bring death to the society that produced it if we do not adapt ourselves to it. This is the dilemma that the release of nuclear energy has brought to a world torn already by a horrible war. The nations can have atomic energy, and much more. But they cannot have it in a world where war may come.

There is one way to bring about the needed change, for there is a unique solution. The nations must collaborate for the development of the new force. They cannot, in fact, do otherwise and live. The new energy is, if you like, our common enemy; it must be made our common ally. And it can be done. You have seen how unique are the properties of uranium, how novel the techniques of its control and exploitation. In this fresh field we can proceed better, or at all, the less we are hampered by the old nationalistic conflicts which now divide the world. Too often the controls and safeguards against the misuse of nuclear energy have been discussed as something private and

{p. 79} static, apart from its development. Yet it is clear that its development, planned internationally, will simplify and make natural those controls which a haphazard national handling would leave uncertain. Out of the success of such collaboration, moreover, will emerge a greater success. The common possession of atomic energy and the prevention of atomic war will lead us to the end of war itself. That is in the seed of the solution.

What specific properties will the solution exhibit? If we cannot yet outline them in a few pages, we can list for you a few tests by which the genuineness of programs and proposals from whatever source may be assayed.

First of all, our country, the United States, has a peculiar responsibility. We first used the bomb; we alone manufacture it. We are committed no less by the declarations of our leaders than by the existence of the Oak Ridge plants to assume the initiative in devising measures for the control of nuclear energy. No program is sound unless it recognizes the special duties of the United States, unless it is built upon the principle hat our insight and our patience must be greater than thaf of all the others. The bombs are marked "Made in the U.S.A."

Second, the year 1946 has a special importance - and the next year, and perhaps the next. Solutions do not grow in a few months, but they must be planted. The time to start is now. The chance for the successful end of the dilemma is greatest while the problem is yet new, while the development of nuclear energy and of the bombs which are its first fruits is still novel and still not widespread. If uncontrolled growth and development are permitted for nuclear energy, we will have lost a unique opportunity. No program far solution which does not contain steps to be taken as once has recognized the nature of the problem. There is not much time. {hence the "Time is running Out" slogan on T-shirts}

Third, the solution cannot be simply a formal one, although it will certainly bring new rights and new laws. It must be embodied; it must involve an institution, which can spend hard cash and employ earnest and intelligent men. The final form of any agency proposed will be impossible to state, but there must be a beginning. And the initial plan must provide for growth and development in the institution just as the problem will grow and develop. Here, above all, the dead hand of rote must be kept away. Technical and organizational proposals must allow flexibility or they cannot aid us. Proposals which, on the one hand, imply no material change and require no working staff cannot succeed; proposals which, on the other hand, seek to partition among bureaus the problems of a decade hence cannot succeed either. The problem is a problem of living men and a developing phenomenon. The solution cannot be wholly written on paper.

There is one more indispensable ingredient but it is not found in this book. It lies in you. The Federation of American Scientists represents men who saw both a hope and a threat in the bomb they worked so long to help create. They have known the facts, they have seen and studied them for years, while still everything was secret. Now the facts are out. They are visible in the rusted rubble of Hiroshima. They are here, in this book, in your hands. Unless these facts become real to you, unless you learn from them as we have learned from them - that we all must act - there will be no answer ever to our problem. Never have people had the opportunity and the responsibility which the citizens of the United States have today. We must learn how to use them, for after an atomic war no good will and intelligence will be needed to bring a permanent peace to the survivors. They will get it in the jumbled stones of their cities.

What can you do?

For one thing, now that you have read this book, discuss it with your friends - don't lay it aside. A great decision rests on how well you and your elected representatives understand and act on the facts and proposals presented in these pages.

Continue your education for survival by being well informed. Ask for the releases and reports on what is happening as prepared by the scientists and issued by the National Committee on Atomic Information.

Make sure that your Senators and Congressmen know that you are aware of the unprecedented gravity of the problem. Urge them to act with courage and vision in solving the problem of the atomic bomb within the framework of the new ideas that, as this book shows, are necessary to the solution.

Time is short. And survival is at stake.

{end}

To see the front and back covers (the catalog number at the National Library of Australia, in Canberra, appears in the top right-hand corner): one-world-or-none-1946.jpg.

In One World Or None (1946), about half the authors are Jewish: Bohr, Oppenheimer, Szilard, Einstein, Harold Urey, Hans Bethe and Walter Lippmann.

Lippmann's was the biggest article. Of him, Carroll Quigley wrote in Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time (Macmillan, New York, 1966):

{p. 939} This new recruit, Walter Lippmann, has been, from 1914 to the present, the authentic spokesman in American journalism for the Establishments on both sides of the Atlantic in international affairs. His biweekly columns, which appear in hundreds of American papers, are copyrighted by the New York Herald Tribune which is now owned by J. H. Whitney. It was these connections, as a link between Wall Street and the Round Table Group, which gave Lippmann the opportunity in 1918, while still in his twenties, to be the official interpreter of the meaning of Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points to the British government. {endquote} quigley.html

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was edited by Eugene Rabinowitch and H. H. Goldsmith; both appear to be Jewish.

Gerhard Falk wrote at http://www.jbuff.com/c122100.htm

{quote} Commentary by Dr. Gerhard Falk

The Achievements of the American Jewish Community: Four Fruits of Freedom

... A fourth area which owes a great deal to Jewish enterprise in America is our scientific development. Included are, of course, the great Albert Einstein who was voted Man of the Century at the beginning of this year. His achievements in physics and the achievements of Neils Bohr, Edwin Teller, Leo Szilard, James Franck, Eugene Rabinowitch, Hy Goldsmith, Hans Bethe, Harold Urey and J. Robert Oppenheimer, administrator of the atomic bomb project, make it possible to say that the atomic bomb was a Jewish invention and that the atomic age was introduced to the world by Jews. What is true of this country is also true of Russia. The Russian atomic bomb and the hydrogen bomb were also invented by Jewish physicists.
{endquote}

Ben-Ami Shillony wrote in his book The Jews and the Japanese: the Successful Outsiders (Charles E. Tuttle Company, Rutland, Vermont, 1991):

{p. 31} .. Judaism was the first religion to make world peace a central element in its eschatology. {but it was borrowed from Zoroastrianism: zoroaster-judaism.html}

{p. 32} Yet quite often peace implies domination, and in many languages the word "pacify" also means "conquer". King Solomon could afford to be a king of peace because he ruled "over all the kings from the Euphrates to the land of the Philistines, and to the border of Egypt."

{this quote, from 1 Kings 4:21, may not be historically accurate, yet it is the basis of promises that Jews will rule those lands again - at Genesis 15: 18; Exodus 23: 30-31; Deut 11: 24; Josh 1:4 - and is a major motivator of modern Zionism: shahak2.html}

... The peaceful world that the Jewish prophets envisioned was to be ruled over by a scion of the House of David, later called the Messiah.

The Jews ... were always inspired by the belief that in the future world of peace and justice they would serve as spiritual leaders {i.e. rulers}. This vision of a world mission gave them the strength to suffer severe persecution and propelled them to the forefront of various messianic and "idealistic" movements in modern times like those of human rights, socialism, and communism.

{leaders: i.e. Jewish Internationalism is partly motivated by the desire to rule}

{endquote}

Michael Higger explains in his book The Jewish Utopia that whereas Plato's Republic "is chiefy concerned with what will hold the ideal city together", "The rabbis, on the other hand, are mainly interested in that ideology which would hold the whole world, or the Universal State, together": jewish-utopia.html.

Pavel Sudoplatov on the Atomic Spies who helped Russia get the bomb: atomic-spies.html.

They were largely Jewish.

J. Robert Oppenheimer's security clearance for Los Alomos was revoked during the Cold War, on account of his former Communist ties: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/26/arts/television/26oppe.html?_r=1.

But Albert Einstein, too sacrosanct to touch, was pro-Communist too, according to marxists.org:

Einstein, Albert (1879-1955)

... By 1937, after years of failure advocating peaceful attempts to change the world, Einstein became involved with Communism. For the remainder of his life he would be a member, sponsor, or affiliate of at least 34 Communist organisations; and chaired three Communist organisations. ... Einstein did not fully approve of Stalinist Socialism; arguing on several points in letters to Soviet scientists that freedom is necessary for Socialism to work.

{endquote} http://www.marxists.org/glossary/people/e/i.htm

Leo Szilard and H.G. Wells, founders of the Green Left. Leo Szilard helped create the first nuclear chain reaction, and initiated the letter to Roosevelt that got the Manhattan Project under way. Later, he warned of the dangers of nuclear weapons, and joined Wells' crusade for World Government: szilard.html.

The 1946 Baruch Plan for World Government: baruch-plan.html.

Making sense of Stalin's rejection of the Baruch Plan: stalin.html.

Given the Jewish intent to establish world peace, it is surprising that the Middle East problem remains the most dangerous political division in the world.

But in his Complete Diaries, Vol. II. p. 711, Theodore Herzl, the founder of Zionism, says that the area of the Jewish State stretches: "From the Brook of Egypt to the Euphrates":

{quote} Discussed with Bodenheimer the demands we will make.
Area: from the Brook of Egypt to the Euphrates. Stipulate a transitional period with our own institutions. A Jewish governor for this period. Afterwards, a relationship like that between Egypt and the Sultan. As soon as the Jewish inhabitants of a district amount to 2/3 of the population, Jewish administration goes in force politically, while local government (communal autonomy) always depends on the number of voters in the community.
These are Bodenheimer's ideas, in part excellent.
A transitional stage is a good idea.
{endquote}

Source: The Complete Diaries of Theodore Herzl, Volume 2, p. 711 (New York: Herzl Press and Thomas Yoseloff, 1960).

For an image of the text, with the computerized call slip from the National Library of Australia, see herzl.jpg.

One World Or None is a booklet of about 80 A4-sized pages. The paper quality is poor.

Second-hand copies start at around US$68: http://dogbert.abebooks.com/abe/BookSearch?an=dexter+masters&tn=one+world+or+none.

Back to the One World index: oneworld.html.

Write to me at contact.html.
 

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