- \ —2)- \ developed highly efficient counter-smuggling and counter-sabotage agencies, and which had dispersed through the surrounding countryside substantial portions of the industries and populations normally gathered in urban communities would obviously be better prepared to resist atomic attack than a nation which had either neglected or found itself unable to do these things, But it would have only a relative advantage over the latter; it would still be exposed to fear-— ful destruction, fs In any case, technological progress is not ikelyfo be confined to measures of defense. The use of more perfect vehicles and of more destructive bombs in greater quantity might very well offset any gains in defense, And the bomb already has a fearful lead in the race, Random and romantic reflections on the miracles which science has already ~ wrought are of smal] assistance in our speculations on future trends, World War II saw the evolution of numerous instruments of war of truly startling ingenuity. But with the qualified exception of the atomic bomb itself (the basic principle of which was discovered prior to but in the same year of the outbreak of war in Europe), all were simply mechancial adaptations of scientific principles which were well known long before the war, It was no doubt a long step from the discovery in 1922 of the phenomenon upon which radar is based to the use of the principle in an antiaircraft projectile fuse, but here too realization that it might be so used considerably antedated the fuse itself. The advent of a "means of destruction hitherto unknown"--— to quote the Truman—Attlee-King statement—-is certainly not new, The steady improvement of weapons of war is an old story, and the trend in that direction has in recent years been accelerated. But thus far each new implement has, at least initially, been limited enough in the scope of its use or in its strategic consequences to permit some timely measure of adaptation both on the battlefield and in the minds of strategists and statesmen, Even the most "revolutionary" developments aw