HOPE FOR PEACE I opened a notebook which I “kept” in 1933-34 and, for some strange reason my attention snagged at the very bottom of page 59. It was from a newspaper, rather than a magazine. A penciled note by it: “Sept.11”.
It read:
“When dynamite was invented, its inventor Dr. Alfred Nobel, donor of the Nobel Peace Prize, really thought that war was thenceforward impossible, since man would cease to fight when such a terrible force was in the hands of his enemies as well as his own hands.”
Beside the item I penned a note, probably that same year. It reads” “Idea will work again and again with each new dealing device invented or discovered.” I disagreed with Nobel's rather childish view about peace but I must have been impressed with either his or someone else's use of the “thenceforward” which was different. I don't think I ever had manner. Has poetic grandeur about it.
This way to peace by way of enhanced horror and suffering is unworthy of man's ability to think. Many of living today remember when friends of ours did the same sickly routine every we were told we had a newly-lettered bomb...”A”..”H...”V1”...”V2” and variations from that point on – or “thenceforward”, perhaps.
Fission...fusion.. we have an endless variety! Each of them is bad and getting worse.
One of these days we are going to come up with a substance which will dissolve anything and everything - every material, every substance. Then, ,and only then, we will wonder: what shall we keep it in?
Andrew McCaskey amccsr@adelphia.net 8-12-06 [c302wds]
