THE DEADLY DUST

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 885, 20 July 1956, Page 5

THE DEADLY DUST

Sir,-The reported possibility of an atomic cloud or radio active rain passing over Australia and New Zealand again rivets attention on the question of whether atomic scientists have any sense of moral responsibility for their Mephistophelian invention. Dr. Harold C. Urey, Nobel Prize winner who had an important part in the Manhattan Project, which produced the first atomic bombs, has remarked: "The scientists who developed these weapons are among the ones who fear them most. We tried hard and long to tell the people about the dangers." But why, why should we ordinaty people believe that these weapons are really so dangerous when the scientists who trumpet such phrases, continue to develop and make such fiendish weapons of massacre and torture? Living as he does along with the rest of us in-a moral universe where right ultimately prevails, the atom scientist is faced with the dilemma of either doing that which is expedient or that which is right. But surely with the>evi-

dence of mass murder and destruction of Hiroshima and now the increased capacity for annihilation and slaughter of H-bombs, surely the scientist is morally bound to say NO, and to refuse his skill in their development. Even obedience *to his political or social responsibility will never absolve him from the guilt of failure to be obedient to right and to God. And for the ordinary man the Stavitie is no less crucial, for each individual must decide whether he can support the use of such diabolical means, The only hope for individuals and nations is not in the strength of the bombs but in the strength of moral and spiritual repudiation of evil. Renunciation of the method of war itself is the onlv answer.

REX

BENNETT

(Manurewa)