Remembering Our Humanity: The Russell-Einstein Manifesto

July 16 was the 65^th anniversary of the Trinity Test: the detonation of a nuclear weapon for the first time on Earth. Celebrations of this milestone were slight, if any.  July 9 was the 55^th anniversary of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto: ten scientists and a philosopher were so alarmed by the destructive power of physics that they went public with a resolution to find peaceful alternatives to world war.  Celebrations were again slight, but the concept was honored by a peace conference July 7-10 in Nova Scotia.

I was privileged to attend that conference, which was organized around the themes of “peace education”, “women and peace”, and “nuclear disarmament” and took place in Halifax and Pugwash.  My summer columns will be a series of comments and reflections on what I heard and learned in Canada. The focus of the first is the Russell-Einstein Manifesto.

Philosopher and Mathematician Bertrand Russell won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1950 “in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought.”  Here’s a sample.

For countless ages the sun rose and set, the moon waxed and waned, the stars shone in the night, but it was only with the coming of Man that these things were understood.  In the great world of astronomy and in the little world of the atom, Man has unveiled secrets which might have been thought undiscoverable.  In art and literature and religion, some men have shown a sublimity of feeling which makes the species worth preserving.  Is all this to end in trivial horror because so few are able to think of Man rather than of this or that group of men?  Is our race so destitute of wisdom, so incapable of impartial love, so blind even to the simplest dictates of self-preservation that the last proof of its silly cleverness is to be the extermination of all life on our planet?  I cannot believe that this is to be the end.  I would have men forget their quarrels for a moment and reflect that if they will allow themselves to survive, there is every reason to expect triumphs of the future to exceed immeasurably the triumphs of the past.

With this kind of thinking, feeling and writing, Russell persuaded premier scientist Albert Einstein to work with him, endorse a manifesto, and sign a resolution to end world war.  Unfortunately, Einstein died before the publicity began.  Adding his authority to a call for peace may have been the genius’s last public action, just as this was his last private letter:

Dear Bertrand Russell,

Thank you for your letter of April 5. I am gladly willing to sign your excellent statement. I also agree with your choice of the prospective signers.

With kind regards, A. Einstein

A few months earlier, on December 23, 1954, Russell’s “Man’s Perils” had been broadcast to an audience of between six and seven million.  In many ways, this was a prelude to the manifesto.  Understanding the value and mechanics of PR, in the summer of 1955 Russell simply announced that he had something important to say and invited representatives from the press, radio and TV from around the world to come and hear it.  They did. The largest room in London’s Caxton Hall was filled to capacity.

Here is what they heard, and what we can never hear too much or too often.

In the tragic situation which confronts humanity, we feel that scientists should assemble in conference to appraise the perils that have arisen as a result of the development of weapons of mass destruction, and to discuss a resolution in the spirit of the appended draft.

We are speaking on this occasion, not as members of this or that nation, continent, or creed, but as human beings, members of the species Man, whose continued existence is in doubt. The world is full of conflicts; and, overshadowing all minor conflicts, the titanic struggle between Communism and anti-Communism.

Almost everybody who is politically conscious has strong feelings about one or more of these issues; but we want you, if you can, to set aside such feelings and consider yourselves only as members of a biological species which has had a remarkable history, and whose disappearance none of us can desire.

We shall try to say no single word which should appeal to one group rather than to another. All, equally, are in peril, and, if the peril is understood, there is hope that they may collectively avert it.

We have to learn to think in a new way. We have to learn to ask ourselves, not what steps can be taken to give military victory to whatever group we prefer, for there no longer are such steps; the question we have to ask ourselves is: what steps can be taken to prevent a military contest of which the issue must be disastrous to all parties?

The general public, and even many men in positions of authority, have not realized what would be involved in a war with nuclear bombs. The general public still thinks in terms of the obliteration of cities. It is understood that the new bombs are more powerful than the old, and that, while one A-bomb could obliterate Hiroshima, one H-bomb could obliterate the largest cities, such as London, New York, and Moscow.

No doubt in an H-bomb war great cities would be obliterated. But this is one of the minor disasters that would have to be faced. If everybody in London, New York, and Moscow were exterminated, the world might, in the course of a few centuries, recover from the blow. But we now know, especially since the Bikini test, that nuclear bombs can gradually spread destruction over a very much wider area than had been supposed.

It is stated on very good authority that a bomb can now be manufactured which will be 2,500 times as powerful as that which destroyed Hiroshima. Such a bomb, if exploded near the ground or under water, sends radio-active particles into the upper air. They sink gradually and reach the surface of the earth in the form of a deadly dust or rain. It was this dust which infected the Japanese fishermen and their catch of fish. No one knows how widely such lethal radio-active particles might be diffused, but the best authorities are unanimous in saying that a war with H-bombs might possibly put an end to the human race. It is feared that if many H-bombs are used there will be universal death, sudden only for a minority, but for the majority a slow torture of disease and disintegration.

Many warnings have been uttered by eminent men of science and by authorities in military strategy. None of them will say that the worst results are certain. What they do say is that these results are possible, and no one can be sure that they will not be realized. We have not yet found that the views of experts on this question depend in any degree upon their politics or prejudices. They depend only, so far as our researches have revealed, upon the extent of the particular expert’s knowledge. We have found that the men who know most are the most gloomy.

Here, then, is the problem which we present to you, stark and dreadful and inescapable: Shall we put an end to the human race; or shall mankind renounce war? People will not face this alternative because it is so difficult to abolish war.

The abolition of war will demand distasteful limitations of national sovereignty. But what perhaps impedes understanding of the situation more than anything else is that the term “mankind” feels vague and abstract. People scarcely realize in imagination that the danger is to themselves and their children and their grandchildren, and not only to a dimly apprehended humanity. They can scarcely bring themselves to grasp that they, individually, and those whom they love are in imminent danger of perishing agonizingly. And so they hope that perhaps war may be allowed to continue provided modern weapons are prohibited.

This hope is illusory. Whatever agreements not to use H-bombs had been reached in time of peace, they would no longer be considered binding in time of war, and both sides would set to work to manufacture H-bombs as soon as war broke out, for, if one side manufactured the bombs and the other did not, the side that manufactured them would inevitably be victorious.

Although an agreement to renounce nuclear weapons as part of a general reduction of armaments would not afford an ultimate solution, it would serve certain important purposes. First, any agreement between East and West is to the good in so far as it tends to diminish tension. Second, the abolition of thermo-nuclear weapons, if each side believed that the other had carried it out sincerely, would lessen the fear of a sudden attack in the style of Pearl Harbour, which at present keeps both sides in a state of nervous apprehension. We should, therefore, welcome such an agreement though only as a first step.

Most of us are not neutral in feeling, but, as human beings, we have to remember that, if the issues between East and West are to be decided in any manner that can give any possible satisfaction to anybody, whether Communist or anti-Communist, whether Asian or European or American, whether White or Black, then these issues must not be decided by war. We should wish this to be understood, both in the East and in the West.

There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge, and wisdom. Shall we, instead, choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? We appeal as human beings to human beings: Remember your humanity, and forget the rest. If you can do so, the way lies open to a new Paradise; if you cannot, there lies before you the risk of universal death.

Resolution:

WE invite this Congress, and through it the scientists of the world and the general public, to subscribe to the following resolution:

“In view of the fact that in any future world war nuclear weapons will certainly be employed, and that such weapons threaten the continued existence of mankind, we urge the governments of the world to realize, and to acknowledge publicly, that their purpose cannot be furthered by a world war, and we urge them, consequently, to find peaceful means for the settlement of all matters of dispute between them.”

Max Born

Percy W. Bridgman

Albert Einstein

Leopold Infeld

Frederic Joliot-Curie

Herman J. Muller

Linus Pauling

Cecil F. Powell

Joseph Rotblat

Bertrand Russell

Hideki Yukawa

In the early 21^st Century, the warnings of nuclear holocaust ring even truer as weapons have become more powerful and more widespread.  They should also ring louder and be expanded to include other global threats like environmental, economic and financial disruption.  As John Donne said, “No man is an island.”  All of these issues affect all of us –as a species, not just as individuals.  The approaches to handling them should there be as international as possible.

And while it’s tempting to dismiss the fears of scientists by denigrating them as  men (and women) who don’t understand politics and power, and are hopelessly naive,  we must bear in mind that the ten who signed the resolution were brilliant polymaths.  No politician today knows as much about nuclear physics and the long-term consequences of  radiation as well as the immediate destruction applied physics can wreak.  War fought across the globe with nuclear weapons wouldn’t destroy the planet.  But it could very well wipe out humankind.  Roaches might be the sole survivors.

Symbolism abounds in the circumstances surrounding the plutonium bomb’s implosion.  At 5:30 am, its light overwhelmed the natural dawn and ushered in the manufactured Dawn of the Nuclear Age. The site was named “Jornado del Muerento” or “Journey of Death”, and Robert Oppenheimer named the test “Trinity”.  “Why I chose the name,” he later said, “is not clear, but I know what thoughts were in my mind. There is a poem of John Donne, written just before his death, which I know and love. From it a quotation: ‘As west and east/ In all flat maps (and I am one) are one, / So death doth touch the Resurrection’.” Oppenheimer continued, “That still does not make a Trinity, but in another, better known devotional poem Donne opens, ‘Batter my heart, three person’d God’.”  Oppenheimer was just one of many “pure scientists” who began to rue the implications and probable applications of their discoveries.  No doubt he was also familiar with Donne’s best known lines:  “No man is an island.”

July is a big month in the history of war and peace.  Our national holiday is not the 16^th or the 9^th, but the 4^th, America’s Independence Day.  We should acknowledge and try to celebrate global dependence as well.  We need to remember our humanity.  Thomas Jefferson was able to do so.  Even as he was declaring separation from England, he chose to observe, rather wistfully,”We might have been a free and great people together.”  It’s a shame that other Founding Fathers chose to delete these lines and with them a broader and more cooperative way of thinking about life. “[N]ever send to know for whom the bell tolls” –  it tolls for all of us.