Born in a Missouri log cabin, Omar N. Bradley (1893–1981) graduated from West Point in 1915, a classmate of Dwight Eisenhower. Like Eisenhower, Bradley never served overseas during World War I and spent much of the conflict guarding copper mines in Montana. During the interwar years he held a series of command and teaching assignments, including a tour as an instructor at the Infantry School under George Marshall. Bradley received his first combat command in 1943, successfully leading a corps in Tunisia and Sicily, and then went to England to help Eisenhower plan the invasion of Normandy. Afterward he led American ground forces in northwest Europe from D-day until the German surrender. From 1949 to 1953 he served as the first chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, during which time he supported building the hydrogen bomb and endorsed Truman’s decision to fight a limited war in Korea.
Not the life story one would expect in a writer figuring in this book. But the 1958 piece included here is entirely consistent with his career and sensibility; he saw as a military man that a nuclear war was unwinnable and catastrophic, and turned his intelligence to solving the problem posed by nuclear weapons with the same trust in human rationality and precision of calculation that had distinguished his military career. So far, at least as regards nuclear weapons, his trust in human rationality has not been falsified.
THE central problem of our time—as I view it—is how to employ human intelligence for the salvation of mankind. It is a problem we have put upon ourselves. For we have defiled our intellect by the creation of such scientific instruments of destruction that we are now in desperate danger of destroying ourselves.
As a result, we are now speeding inexorably toward a day when even the ingenuity of our scientists may be unable to save us from the consequences of a single rash act or a lone reckless hand upon the switch of an uninterceptable missile. For twelve years now we’ve fought to stave off this ultimate threat of disaster by devising arms which would be both ultimate and disastrous.
This irony can probably be compounded a few more years, or perhaps even a few decades. Missiles will bring anti-missiles, and anti-missiles will bring anti-anti-missiles. But inevitably, this whole electronic house of cards will reach a point where it can be constructed no higher.
At that point we shall have come to the peak of this whole incredible dilemma into which the world is shoving itself. And when that time comes there will be little we can do other than to settle down uneasily, smother our fears, and attempt to live in the shadow of death.
Should this situation come to pass, we would have but one single and thin thread to cling to. We call it reason. We reason that no government, no single group of men—indeed, not even one wilful individual—would be so foolhardy, so reckless, as to precipitate a war which would most surely end in mutual destruction.
This reasoning may have the benefit of logic. But even logic sometimes goes awry. How can we assume that reason will prevail in a crisis when there is ordinarily so little reason among men? Reason has failed before, it can fail again.
Have we already gone too far in this search for peace through the accumulation of peril? Is there any way to halt this trend? I believe there is a way out. And I believe it because I have acquired a decent respect for human intelligence.
It may be that the problems of accommodation in a world split by rival ideologies are more difficult than those with which we have struggled in the construction of ballistics missiles. But I believe, too, that if we apply to these human problems, the energy, creativity, and the perseverance we have devoted to science, even problems of accommodation will yield to reason. Admittedly, the problem of peaceful accommodation in the world is infinitely more complex than a trip to the moon. But if we will only come to the realization that it must be worked out—whatever it may mean even to such sacred traditions as absolute national sovereignty—I believe that we can find a workable solution.
I confess that this is as much an article of faith as it is an expression of reason. But this, my friends, is what we need, faith in our ability to do what must be done. Without that faith we shall never get started. And until we get started, we shall never know what can be done.
If I am sometimes discouraged, it is not by the magnitude of the problem, but by our colossal indifference to it. I am unable to understand why we do not make greater, more diligent and more imaginative use of reason and human intelligence in seeking an accord and compromise which will make it possible for mankind to control the atom and banish it as an instrument of war.
This is the real and—indeed—the most strenuous challenge to man’s intellect today. By comparison with it, the conquest of space is of small significance. For until we learn how to live together, until we rid ourselves of the strife that mocks our pretensions of civilization, our adventures in science—instead of producing human progress—will continue to produce greater peril.
We can compete with a Sputnik and probably create bigger and better Sputniks of our own. But when are we going to muster an intelligence equal to that applied against the Sputnik and dedicate it to the preservation of this Satellite on which we live?
How long can we put off salvation? When does humanity run out?
If enough of us believe strongly enough in the ability of intelligent human beings to get together on some basis of a just accord, we might somehow, somewhere, in some way, make a start on it.
We can’t sit about waiting for some felicitous accident of history that may somehow make the world all right. Time is running against us.
If we’re going to save ourselves from the instruments of our own intellect, we had better soon get ourselves under control and make the world safe for living.