Book Review: The Legacy of Hiroshima
| Published date | 01 March 1963 |
| Author | John C. Polanyi |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070206301800113 |
| Date | 01 March 1963 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
98
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL
politics
of
the
Soviet
group
is
driving
the
world
to
destruction.
He
wants
to
break
away
from
all
this
completely,
starting
with
a
few
chosen
people who
commit
themselves
to
a
measure
of
unilateral
dis-
armament
by
the
United
States.
He
admits
that
the risks
are
terrify-
ing.
But
he thinks
that,
if
a
few
people
make
a
start,
there
may
suddenly
sweep
over
the
world
a
reaction
against
the
religious
wars
in
which we
are
entangled
similar
to
what
happened in
the
seven-
teenth
century,
when
the
people
of
Europe
decided
that
Protestantism
and
Catholicism were
not worth
fighting
about.
War, he
says,
not
communism,
is
our
number
one
enemy.
And
while
the
deadlock
be-
tween
the
two
power
groups
seems
insoluble
at
present,
someone
must
be
willing
to
risk
a
Utopian solution
such
as
he proposes.
Hughes
thinks
that
the
lead
must
be
given
by
intellectuals
who
should
be
willing
to
play
the
unpopular
part
of
criticizing
the
estab-
lished
values of
their
society.
That
is
what
intellectuals
are
for;
they
should
not
be
content
to
be
mere
"mental
technicians."
So
he
sets
out
on his
crusade realizing
that
it
may
lead
to
martyrdom.
He
believes
that
he
may
attract
considerable
support from
university
students,
though
he
remarks
that
the
political
virginity
of
the
American
under-
graduate
is
disconcerting.
If
he
keeps
on he
will
discover
that
virginity
is
still
the
underlying
fault
of
a
good
many
of
his
followers
who
have
passed
beyond
the
undergraduate
age.
The
results
of
power politics
in
our
age
are
appalling. Hughes
believes
that,
as
his
studies
of
European
history
have
so
brilliantly
demonstrated,
the
men
of
ideas
are
always
under-
mining
the
position
of
the
men
of
power.
But
this
does
not
eliminate
power
from
politics.
It
merely
passes
power
into
other hands.
Power
is
what
politics
is
about.
I
find
everything
that
Stuart
Hughes
writes
illuminating
and
inspiring.
But
I
wish
that
he
had
studied
Anglo-
American
thought
over
the
last
century
as
thoroughly
as
he
has
studied
continental
European
thought.
He
would
have
been
introduced
to
more examples
of
how
power
may
be
used
moderately and respon-
sibly,
and
might
thereby
have
been helped
to
a
greater faith
in
his
-own
society.
Ottawa
FRANK
H.
UNDmRHiLL
THE
LEGACY
OF
HIROSHIMA.
By
Edward
Teller
with
Allen
Brown.
1962.
(New
York:
Toronto:
Doubleday.
ix,
325pp.
$5.95.)
Edward
Teller
is
a
distinguished
nuclear
physicist
who
for
the
past twenty years
has
devoted
himself
to
the
development
of
nuclear
weapons.
Through
his
persistent
championing
of
a
vigorous
nuclear-weapons
development
programme,
he
has
come
to
personify,
for
scientists,
the
"hard
line"
attitude
to
the
East-West
conflict.
In
this
book
he
sets
out
in
detail
for
the
first
time
his
ideas
on
a
wide
range
of
topics,
from the
inadequacies
of
the
American
educational
system,
through
nuclear
tests,
fall-out,
civil
defence
and
disarmament,
to
the
need
for
eventual world
government.
However,
the
main
theme
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