Linus Pauling: Are we being led into war, being prepared for war? Can it be that the powerful people who make decisions think that perhaps
the suggestion of Herman Kahn, that it may be that not 180 million or 150 million Americans would be killed but perhaps only
50 million is right and that there is a reasonable chance of this and that it would be worth this price of 50 million to destroy
Russia and gain a mastery over the whole world? I don't know. If there were nobody in the world but politicians, I would feel
that there was no hope for mankind, no hope for civilization, no hope for the world.
Today, I listened to our Congressman, Congressman Hiestand, Representative Hiestand. He said "Our Congress made mistakes.
We have just appropriated hundreds of millions for unemployment, for sewage disposal. This is a waste of money. We don't need
to spend that money. We need to spend it in order to increase our military might, to make ourselves stronger for Berlin."
Then he said "The town of Newberg, New York, where they won't give money for the help of illegitimate children, sets an example
of real Americanism." He said "Let's set a deadline for Cuba, about that plane that they have hijacked, that Electra. Let's
set a deadline, say 10 o'clock tomorrow morning. And if that plane isn't back by 10 o'clock tomorrow morning we come and get
it, the Marines would come and get it. The Pentagon has told me," Congressman Hiestand said, "The Pentagon has told me that
we are powerful enough to take over Cuba in 12 hours, and that would be a real lesson, that would show Khrushchev that we
mean business." I am quoting Representative Hiestand this afternoon, as he spoke this afternoon on the radio.
But the world is not populated only by politicians, exclusively with politicians, there are also people, other people in the
world, people like you and me and our counterparts in all of the other countries of the world. People of good sense and high
principles of morality, war resisters, members of the International War Resisters League, pacifists, clear-thinking people,
scientists too -- or some scientists, I don't want to say that all scientists are the same -- people who know what the meaning
of "one million" is, what it means for bombs to be a million times more destructive, more powerful than they were before.
People who have the imagination to think of what one 20-megaton bomb can do when it explodes over a city, what ten 20-megaton
bombs can do, what 100 20-megaton bombs can do, what 1,000 can do, what 10,000 20-megaton bombs can do when they explode,
and there may well be -- this is approximately the amount of nuclear explosive that we have in the world now.
There are people with conscience, with the belief that the precious resources of this beautiful world should be used for the
benefit of human beings all over the world and not for death and destruction, people who believe in the brotherhood of man.
People who want their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren to populate this earth and enjoy its fruits, people
who are determined that the insanity of extreme nationalism and religious fanaticism, of unthinking and unrestrained economic
self-interest, selfishness, of racial intolerance, of anticommunist hysteria will not be allowed to destroy civilization and
bring the human race to an end.
