'
~T
=
SESSION JH
anyway.
5)
It wonld cost a lot of money and trouble s0 we're not going
to do anything about it until we have to.
{
FREMONT-SMITH:
\
WARREN: That puts us in a very vulnerable situation. There was
a general participation and training upto about 1956 that could have
provided a fairly competent protection in the poasibility of warfare
affecting the United States. But now there exists nothing that is much
more than a paper organization, very poorly supported, and not wellunderstood or known.
FREMONT-SMITH:
t
,
|
t
This was the psychological caetualty, wasn't
it?
WARREN:
\
Yea.
This was the psychological casualty.
FREMONT-SMITH:
Of the whole country.
WARREN: There's a group of astistant professors who know nothing
about World War If and still less about atomic warfare. They have a
kind of vague apprehension. They would like to know more and they
are beginning to work on it. Of course, there's a very srnall group
that is willing to work on it. The rest of them think it's a horrible thing:
"We must stop all war.'' This is a nice goal but we haven't gotten very
far on that goal yet.
‘"FREMONT-SMITH:
Not quite.
WARREN: This is really where we run into trouble in the long run.
How do webring .his situation to a focus and howdo we deai with it?
In our culture and history it se-ms to me to lead eventually to a war,
because our people will eventually get sick and tired of the harassment
and impasse of cold and hot partial wars and atomic war blackmail.
Earlier, I heard this very often from audiences. A prominent busin:ssman and other leaders in the community will stand up before four or
five hundred people and say, ‘Well, if it's that bad, let's get it over
with while we're ahead. Why are we waiting around? Let's go and do
it now."
FREMONT-SMITH: You remember, Staff, the conference that we
attended, We had a group of stee! people from Pittsburgh, and on the
first day of the conference that was their attitude.