ATOMIC ENERGY AS A HUMAN ASSET-—COMPTON 163 
threatened, we should be considered meddlers and should gain only 
the fear and hate of other nations. We should prefer to withhold our 
fighting power unless our own safety is directly threatened, and con- 
fine our policing activity to our own reasonable share in keeping order 
within nations that are not now able to look after their own interests 
or that may become dangerous to us if not kept under control. 
Nevertheless, looking ahead it is clear that no mere strengthening 
of our own might can keep us safe. Our safety cannot be kept secure 
by our own military development without international control of 
the new weapons. Whatever our strength, others also can arm so as 
to inflict upon us disastrous damage if war should come. What is 
needed is an agreement which will make our safety much surer than 
could result from our own armed might and which will at the same 
time provide for elimination of international wars elsewhere through- 
out the world. It is such an agreement that we should seek, sincerely, 
with determination, and with faith that it can be attained with rea- 
sonable promptness. The important step that has just been made 
in this direction by the President of the United States and the Prime 
Ministers of Great Britain and Canada should be welcomed by the 
entire world. 
I am not much concerned with the precise answer to the question 
of how long it would require before other nations could be prepared to 
challenge us with atomic weapons. I know they will not do so for 
the next 5 years. After 25 years, unless some mutual agreement pre- 
vents their development, such countries as Britain, Russia, and France 
could arm themselves with weapons similar to ours if they should 
want to spend the necessary effort. The time required would not be 
greatly affected by whether we hold to our own secrets or not. It is 
in any case only a small part of the lifetime of our Nation that would 
elapse before we should be faced with the awful possibility of an 
atomic war. 
As has been seen by the heads of our governments, now is the time 
when international agreements can best be made to prevent such a 
catastrophe. Other nations have not yet developed a pride in their 
atomic might which could give them dreams of world mastery. Our 
own effort has paid for itself many times over by stopping the course 
of World War II. All nations are now laying plans for the post- 
war years, and it will be much easier to shape these plans now on the 
basis of world government than to stop the wild development of a 
renegade nation by imposing emergency military controls after it is 
set in its course. 
It may be worth reviewing just what we mean when we refer to the 
great destructiveness of war in the age of atoms. If the future de- 
mands it, science sees no reason to doubt that atomic weapons can be 
made that are related to the present atomic bomb much as the block 
