Second, some means had to be worked out to stabilize American foreign policy so that it could handle the tremendous power we had suddenly had thrust upon us.
The second was by far the most difficult and serious. If we were to establish a reasonably permanent peace-say a century or so-through a monopoly on a weapon so powerful that no one dare fight us, it was imperative that the policy under which we acted be more lasting than pa.s.sing political administrations. But more of that later-
The first problem had to be attended to at once-time was the heart of it.
The emergency lay in the very simplicity of the weapon. It required nothing but aircraft to scatter it and the dust itself, which was easily and quickly made by anyone possessing the secret of the Karst-Obre process and having access to a small supply of uranium-bearing ore.
But the Karst-Obre process was simple and might be independently developed at any time. Manning reported to the President that it was Ridpath"s opinion, concurred in by Manning, that the staff of any modern radiation laboratory should be able to work out an equivalent technique in six weeks, working from the hint given by the events in Berlin alone, and should then be able to produce enough dust to cause major destruction in another six weeks.
Ninety days-ninety days provided they started from scratch and were not already halfway to their goal. Less than ninety days-perhaps no time at all-
By this time Manning was an unofficial member of the cabinet; "Secretary of Dust," the President called him in one of his rare jovial moods. As for me, well, I attended cabinet meetings, too. As the only layman who had seen the whole show from beginning to end, the President wanted me there.
I am an ordinary sort of man who, by a concatenation of improbabilities, found himself shoved into the councils of the rulers. But I found that the rulers were ordinary men, too, and frequently as bewildered as I was.
But Manning was no ordinary man. In him ordinary hard sense had been raised to the level of genius. Oh, yes, I know that it is popular to blame everything on him and to call him everything from traitor to mad dog, but I still think he was both wise and benevolent. I don"t care how many second-guessing historians disagree with me.
"I propose," said Manning, "that we begin by immobilizing all aircraft throughout the world."
The Secretary of Commerce raised his brows. "Aren"t you," he said, "being a little fantastic, Colonel Manning?"
"No, I"m not," answered Manning shortly. "Im being realistic. The key to this problem is aircraft. Without aircraft the dust is an inefficient weapon. The only way I see to gain time enough to deal with the whole problem is to ground all aircraft and put them out of operation. All aircraft, that is, not actually in the service of the United States Army.
After that we can deal with complete world disarmament and permanent methods of control."
"Really now," replied the Secretary, "you are not proposing that commercial airlines be put out of operation. They are an essential part of world economy. It would be an intolerable nuisance."
"Getting killed is an intolerable nuisance, too," Manning answered stubbornly. "I do propose just that. All aircraft. All."
The President had been listening without comment to the discussion. He now cut in. "How about aircraft on which some groups depend to stay alive, Colonel, such as the Alaskan lines?"
"If there are such, they must be operated by American Army pilots and crews. No exceptions."
The Secretary of Commerce looked startled. "Am I to infer from that last remark that you intended this prohibition to apply to the United States as well as other nations?"
"Naturally."
"But that"s impossible. It"s unconst.i.tutional. It violates civil rights."
Killing a man violates his civil rights, too Manning answered stubbornly.
"You can"t do it. Any Federal Court in the country would enjoin you in five minutes."
"It seems to me," said Manning slowly, that Andy Jackson gave us a good precedent for that one when he told John Marshall to go fly a kite." He looked slowly around the table at faces that ranged from undecided to antagonistic. "The issue is sharp, gentlemen, and-we might as well drag it out in the open. We can be dead men, with everything in due order, const.i.tutional, and technically correct; or we can do what has to be done, stay alive, and try to straighten out the legal aspects later." He shut up and waited.
The Secretary of Labor picked it up. "I don"t think the Colonel has any corner on realism. I think I see the problem, too, and I admit it is a serious one. The dust must never be used again. Had I known about it soon enough, it would never have been used on Berlin. And I agree that some sort of world wide control is necessary. But where I differ with the Colonel is in the method. What he proposes is a military dictatorship imposed by force on the whole world. Admit it, Colonel. Isn"t that what you are proposing?"
Manning did not dodge it. "That is what I am proposing."
"Thanks. Now we know where we stand. I, for one, do not regard democratic measures and const.i.tutional procedure as of so little importance that I am willing to jettison them any time it becomes convenient. To me, democracy is more than a matter of expediency, it is a faith Either it works, or I go under with it."
What do you propose?" asked the President.
"I propose that we treat this as an opportunity to create a worldwide democratic commonwealth." Let us use our present dominant position to issue a call to all nations to send representatives to a conference to form a world const.i.tution."
"League of Nations," I heard someone mutter.
"No!" he answered the side remark. "Not a League of Nations. The old League was helpless because it had no real existence, no power. It was not implemented to enforce its decisions; it was just a debating society, a sham. This would be different for we would turn over the dust to it."
n.o.body spoke for some minutes. You could see them turning it over in their minds, doubtful, partially approving, intrigued but dubious.
"I"d like to answer that," said Manning.
"Go ahead," said the President.
"I will. I"m going to have to use some pretty plain language and I hope that Secretary Larner will do me the honor of believing that I speak so from sincerity and deep concern and not from personal pique.
"I think a world democracy would be a very fine thing and I ask that you believe me when I say I would willingly lay down my life to accomplish it.
I also think it would be a very fine thing for the lion to lie down with the lamb, but I am reasonably certain that only the lion would get up. If we try to form an actual world democracy, we"ll be the lamb in the setup.
"There are a lot of good, kindly people who are inter-nationalists these days. Nine out of ten of them are soft in the head and the tenth is ignorant. If we set up a world-wide democracy, what will the electorate be?
Take a look at the facts: four hundred million Chinese with no more concept of voting and citizen responsibility than a flea; three hundred million Hindus who aren"t much better indoctrinated; G.o.d knows how many in the Eurasian Union who believe in G.o.d knows what; the entire continent of Africa only semicivilized; eighty million j.a.panese who really believe that they are Heaven-ordained to rule; our Spanish-American friends who don"t understand the Bill of Rights the way we think of it; a quarter of a billion people of two dozen different nationalities in Europe, all with revenge and black hatred in their hearts.
"No, it won"t wash. It"s preposterous-to talk about a world democracy for many years to come. If you turn the secret of the dust over to such a body, you will be arming the whole world to commit suicide."
Larner answered at once. "I could resent some of your remarks, but I don"t.
To put it bluntly, I consider the source. The trouble with you, Colonel Manning, is that you are a professional soldier and have no faith in people. Soldiers may be necessary, but the worst of them are martinets and the best are merely paternalistic." There was quite a lot more of the same.
Manning stood it until his turn came again. "Maybe I am all those things, but you haven"t met my argument. What are you going to do about the hundreds of millions of people who have no experience in, nor love for, democracy? Now, perhaps, I don"t have the same conception of democracy as yourself, but I do know this: Out West there are a couple of hundred thousand people who sent me to Congress; I am not going to stand quietly by and let a course be followed which I think will result in their deaths or utter ruin.
"Here is the probable future, as I see it, potential in the smashing of the atom and the development of lethal artificial radioactives. Some power makes a supply of the dust. They"ll hit us first to try to knock us out and give them a free hand. New York and Washington overnight, then all of our industrial areas while we are still politically and economically disorganized. But our army would not be in those cities; we would have planes and a supply of dust somewhere where the first dusting wouldn"t touch them. Our boys would bravely and righteously proceed to poison their big cities. Back and forth it would go until the organization of each country had broken down so completely that they were no longer able to maintain a sufficiently high level of industrialization to service planes and manufacture dust. That presupposes starvation and plague in the process. You can fill in the details.
"The other nations would get in the game. It would be silly and suicidal, of course, but it doesn"t take brains to take a hand in this. All it takes is a very small group, hungry for power, a few airplanes and a supply of dust. It"s a vicious circle that cannot possibly be stopped until the entire planet has dropped to a level of economy too low to support the techniques necessary to maintain it. My best guess is that such a point would be reached when approximately three-quarters of the world"s population were dead of dust, disease, or hunger, and culture reduced to the peasant-and-village type.
"Where is your Const.i.tution and your Bill of Rights if you let that happen?"
I"ve shortened it down, but that was the gist of it. I can"t hope to record every word of an argument that went on for days.
The Secretary of the Navy took a crack at him next. "Aren"t you getting a bit hysterical, Colonel? After all, the world has seen a lot of weapons which were going to make war an impossibility too horrible to contemplate.
Poison gas, and tanks, and airplanes-even firearms, if I remember my history."
Manning smiled wryly. "You"ve made a point, Mr. Secretary. "And when the wolf really came, the little boy shouted in vain." I imagine the Chamber of Commerce in Pompeii presented the same reasonable argument to any arly vulcanologist so timid as to fear Vesuvius. I"ll try to justify my fears.
The dust differs from every earlier weapon in its deadliness and ease of use, but most importantly in that we have developed no defense against it.
For a number of fairly technical reasons, I don"t think we ever will, at least not this century."
"Why not?"
"Because there is no way to counteract radioactivity short of putting a lead shield between yourself and it, an airtight lead shield. People might survive by living in sealed underground cities, but our characteristic American culture could not be maintained."
"Colonel Manning," suggested the Secretary of State, "I think you have overlooked the obvious alternative."