The Evening Star (November 28, 1945)
ON THE RECORD —
Atomic bomb is greatest apostle of peace
By Dorothy Thompson
A scientist who witnessed the first demonstration of the atomic bomb in New Mexico told me, “It was Hell and Heaven. Amidst apocalyptic destruction, it created an immense aura of transcendently beautiful light; all I could think of was the light surrounding the risen Christ in the great, painting by Gruenewald.”
This force has existed since the world began. It was not put into the world by man, but by the Creator. It was discovered by man’s understanding of natural laws. It must be controlled by the recognition that there are also natural laws governing the relations between human societies.
The bomb should be used to re-establish the first of these laws: Thou shalt not kill.
When I say the bomb must be used, I do not, of course, mean that it should be dropped anywhere. It must be used as a warning and a means of releasing the only energy that can control it; the worldwide emotion of the ideal; the recognition that all men are brothers.
It is not necessary to found a superstate to abolish war. It is not necessary to found a superstate to abolish smallpox, cholera or typhus. But it is necessary to form an international sanitary corps, as it were.
The first thing that should be done with the atomic bomb is to demonstrate it as the opening explosion in a campaign for God’s peace. Some spot should be evacuated and cleared of all human life. Officials and the press of every country should be gathered to see what happens.
Simultaneously, the United States should declare to all nations five propositions:
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The constitution of every state should be amended to forbid war and all armaments, except those in conformity with provisions of the United Nations Organization.
Planning for war must become illegal within every country, making every citizen responsible before the law. This is not without precedent. The constitution of Switzerland forbids its government to go to war, and limits military plans entirely to territorial defense.
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Laws should be passed in every country prohibiting armament of aircraft. The frontierless air is the element of mankind and must be forever freed from instruments of destruction.
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Laws should be passed in every country prohibiting conscription and reducing defenses to a militia.
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The Security Council of UNO should decree national quotas for heavy armaments.
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The United Nations should establish a highly paid, strictly professional police force, carefully recruited and composed so as never to give any single state the possibility of control, and responsible solely to the United Nations. Its task should be confined to policing these laws and prohibitions. It should fly its own flag – a flag of humanity. It should be publicized – by an immense international bureau – as the protector of every man, woman and child on earth.
All propositions concerning a world state flounder on the problem of what sort of world state. Capitalist? Cooperative? Communist? Parliamentary?
These are not the pressing issues. Whatever the world becomes, or however societies may differ in form at any time, they must not coerce each other.
Only when nations are not afraid of being destroyed by each other, can they possibly begin to understand each other. Only when war is prohibited in the domestic laws of nations, can the crime of preparing for aggressive war become a personal responsibility.