THREAT OF .
EXTINCTION
IOMAN beings, Mr. T. S. Eliot has said, cannot bear much reality. The object of the four preceding articles is to focus attention on the grimmest reality in contem- porary life which is also the central fact in contemporary poli- tics—the existence of the hydrogen bomb. One way of seeking refuge from it is firmly barred by Sir George Thomson's article: writing with authority; he reaches the conclusion that in the foreseeable future it will be technically impossible to establish any effective international control of nuclear explo- sives and the bombs 'which contain them. It is a sombre conclu- sion but one which cannot be too strongly emphasised. Faced with the possibility of calamity, it is the natural tendency of opinion in democracies to look for some piece of mechanism which will exorcise it, and in recent years it has been fashion- able in such circumstances to turn to the idea of international organisation. Nothing now could be more dishonest than to foster the belief that it may be possible to find a means of excluding the hydrogen bomb from the calculations on which foreign policy must rest.
It remains to assess the significance for defence and foreign policy of a state of affairs in which both sides in the only probable major international conflict now facing us possess these weapons. One fact is implicit in all four articles: the effectiveness of the foreign policy of the Western Powers, and the preservation of peace itself, 'has rested during the last ten deterrent to Russian aggression; but it is another to say that it is a deterrent to the use of nuclear weapons by Russia once a war has started. Are there wars Which could be fought without nuclear weapons? It is a pertinent question, because rational fear of the consequences of war cannot, as has repeatedly been shown, be relied on to preserve peace. A localised conflict of serious dimensions like the Korean War can be waged by the troops of several nations without becoming nuclear. One of the first effects of the atomic age has been to make diplomacy concentrate as much on limiting as on preventing wars. The trouble now is that the possible areas for localised conflicts arc
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