dy tion in kind unless our military leaders had been criminally. negligent. 74 There is no reason why democracy should make such negligence necessary. The second has to do with the character of the surprise attack itself, if a surprise attack were to come out of aclear political sly, it would put even the most carefully planned preparations to a severe test. ence, however, does not suggest the likelihood of such an event. Past experiEven if a Russian government should ever feel tempted-to--imitate the Nazis orthe Japanese, fe ~ aN it must be remembered that the "surprise attacks") carried out by those two nations were preceded in every case by “sibelot years of tension and mount— ine portents of war. It is hard to believe that this country, fearing for the fate of its cities and urban population, would not use such periods of crisis to make its arrangements for retaliation immme to the initial atomic attack, In this connection something needs to be said about the possibility of a Russian Wsurprise attack by pianted bombs" which is creating considerable anxiety here. If it were an effective method of defeating this country, it | would be one which a dictatorially ruled country and no other might decide to employ, However, as was stated earlier, it would be hard to believe that before the number of bombs was large such action undertaken by or for a foreign government would not be detected. What the reaction in this country would be, once the first bomb was discovered and particularly if Communist Russia were involved, is not hard to imagine. Not only would saboteurs have a bitter time thereafter but retaliation in kind, difficult though it might be, would not be out of the question, In &@ more general way preparations for sabotage undertaken in a period of peace constitute a form of "armament" for which democracies like our own are little adapted. The fear of Russia's indulging in them, though it might be quite unjustified, would become strong in this country if Soviet-Anerican relations were ever to become seriously strained. Nothing could do more to threaten our ability to retaliate in kind than "fifth column" activities directed Ths See above pp, 66-68, v. 73.