◆ SpookStack

people operating the whcle range of apparatus available to modern miltary forces. This is an unstable situation, to say the least. It is important to realize that the development of delivery systems has kept apace of development of the weapons them- selves. For instance, the speed of a modern missile is many times that of a high speed rifle bullet. If a missile were to fly across the front of this auditorium, it would be going so fast ‘that we would not be able to see it. It would be a block or two past us before the sound would reach our ears. It would not be coming in a straight line along the surface of the- earth. or at a given height in the air. Rather, it might be coming any- where in a large region several hundred miles high and thousands of miles in breadth. In the midst of this vast region, each missile carries with it the destructive power to wipe out any city. If you knock down ten percent, or fifty percent, or even ninety percent of such missiles, the fact remains that each one which gets through will still produce vast quantities of destruction. In the light of these developments, the possibilities of defending ourselves in the usual ways just don’t exist. Thus, an entirely new expedient has been adopted. Unable to defend our people and our cities by any tangible means, military and political Jeaders have substituted the untried and untested program of deterrence. That is, no longer able to stop the enemy physically, they hope to deter the enemy by threatening the indiscriminate slaughter of the whole population. It is as though we were unable to put out fires any longer, and therefore the fire departments, having all this apparatus at their disposal, decide that since they cannot fight fires suc- cessfully, they will deter fires. And so they go around the city spreading gasoline, kerosene and high explosives through the streets and in everyone’s basement. Then nobody will dare drop a match in a city all set to go up in flames. The fire engines would parade through the streets spreading their exposives and earrying banners saying, “These are our defense forces.” And the people would cheer, “These are for our defense. They protect us because they deter anybody from dropping a match and start- ing a fire.” I wonder how secure we would feel in such a city. Again, it is as though we were trying to stop automobile accidents, and so went around tying children of all families to automobile bumpers. Nobody would dare have an automobile accident, if their kids were strapped to the front bumpers of automobiles. How happy we would be,. busily manufacturing defense racks to be mounted on bumpers, and in which we would strap our neighbors’ children to make sure that they would not smash their automobiles into ours. Sete me re ee ee ee ee ee