-82- * \ some have advocated, is not only callous in the extreme but stupid. Even general bombing with ordinary bomos is the worst possible way to coerce states of rela- tively low military power, for it combines the maximum of indiscriminate destruction with the minimum of direct control.” | At any rate, if the United States retains a strong navy, as it no doubt will, we should insist upon that navy retaining the maximum flexibility and adaptability to new conditions, The public can assist in this process by examining crit- ically any effort of the service to freeze naval armaments at high quantitative levels, for there is nothing more deadening to technological progress especially in the Navy than the maintenance in active or reserve commission a number of ships far exceeding any current needs. It is not primarily a question of how much money is spent or how much man power is absorbed but rather of how efficiently money and man power are being utilized. Money spent on keeping in commission ships built for the: last war is money which might berdevoted to additional research and . * experimentation, and existing ships discounaze new construction. For that matter, ' Soe < “A; money spent on maintaining a huge navy is pe iianoney taken from other services t and other instruments of defense which may be of far greater relative importance in the early stages of a future crisis than they have been in the past. The Dispersion of Cities as a Defense Against the Bomb Ye have seen that the atomic bomb drastically alters the significance of distance between rival powers, It also raises to the first order of importance as a factor of power the precise spatial arrangement of industry and population within each country. The enormous concentration of power in the individual bomb, irre- ducible below a certain high limit except through deliberate and purposeless 63. There has been a good deal of confusion between automaticity and immediacy in the execution of sanctions, Those who stress the importance of bringing military pressure to bear at once in the case of apzression are as a rule really less concerned with having sanctions imposed quickly than they are with having them appear certain. fo be sure, the atomic bomb gives the necessity for quickness of military response a wholly new meaning; but in the kinds of aggression with which the U.N.O. is now set up to deal, atomic bombs are not likely to be important for a very long time.