Damned to Hell

   Coming down the elevator in the Stimson Center yesterday - I was there to listen to Dennis Gormley's interesting presentation on cruise missiles and to buy a book - I heard a guy talking. He was one of the people who had asked perceptive and knowledgeable questions during the presentation. He was talking to the twenty-something guy in a beautiful gray suit who was standing next to him.

  (I came in on the middle of the conversation.)  "When you start meeting the sons of guys you knew in the movement - you've been doing this too long!" the older guy said and they laughed. They talked for a little about his father. Then the older man said, comfortably, to himself really, "Thank God for the durability of some complex issues."

   I do not thank God for the durability of nuclear weapons. The existence of thousands of nuclear weapons is a precipice that so far we have not fallen over, but which calls out constantly to our darker, self-destructive side.

   I am (I'm sorry) appalled by the complacency of the remark: "It's alright if the world is in mortal danger, as long as I have a job."

   Russ Wellen once asked me what all the nuclear weapons experts would do if the nuclear weapons dilemma were ever solved and the weapons done away with. I said, "Dance."

   And they would dance, too, on that great day. And all the ones who didn't dance - the ones who gathered in little groups and talked dispiritedly because they were out of a job - may be damned everlastingly in Hell.