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There are lots of people saying we are not.
But there are only so many scientists.
(laughter)
There are only
so many facilities, and you get to a point where mere
expenditure of money in a field like this does no good.
And my own conviction, supported by that of many, many
experts, is that in this field we are somewhere certainly
around the limit.
Now, no man, I believe, in the world can say that by just
doing one thing more, somebody out in the woods might find
out something,
but so far as the employment of the best
scientists in several different areas, in several different
groupments, is concerned, we are working at
this whole thing.
top
I think Miss Craig.
speed on
Coa
o a
Q.
May Craig of the Press-Herald, Mr. President.
Mr.
Stevenson and one of the members of the Atomic Energy Com-
mission have suggested the United States should halt its
tests of the H-bomb.
THE PRESIDENT:
Would you comment on that‘
Well, I usually ask you people not to quote
somebody else when you want me to talk, because I don't
comment on somebody else's opinion.
their own opinions.
But I do want to point this out:
They are entitled to
It's a little bit of a
paradox to urge that we work just as hard as we know jow
on the guided missile and that we stop all research on the
hydrogen bomb.
Because one without the other is rather use-
less.
So we go ahead with this hydrogen bomb, not to make a bigger
"bang," not to cause more destruction, to find out ways and
means in which you can limit it, make it useful in cefensive
purposes of shooting against a fleet of airplanes coming
over, to reduce "fall-out," to make it more a military weapon
and less one just of mass destruction.
We know we can make
REPRODUCED AT THE DWIGHT D.
EISENHOWER LIBRARY
them big, we are not interested in that any more.
So this whole thing goes together. The guided missile, with
an expensive warhead that is a ona-shet thing; it is really
effective, because it has a tremendous blow when it gets to
the end of its flight. So that if you don't work on one
and get the right kind of explosive to use there, why work
on the other’
So I think research without test is perfectly useless, a
waste of money. And goodness knows I don't want to do this.
If you would allow me to put this money in -- I mean, if the