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The Navigator. He likes to play the fiddle (favorite composers: Bach, Mozart), and to sail a boat. In sailing, his system is to set the sail, make it fast, and with no thought of velocity or energy, loll back while the boat drifts. He smokes a pipe, but never drinks.
Einstein is probably happiest among children, with whom he loses all his shyness and whom he keeps in gales of laughter. His kindness to children is proverbial. One little Princeton girl used this to good advantage: she got him to do her arithmetic homework for her. When suspected, she confessed simply: "Einstein did it for me."
Einstein was once violently pacifist. In 1930 he wrote: ". . . That vilest offspring of the herd mind—the odious militia. . . ." After Hitler, his thoughts became somewhat more martial. He is also a Zionist ("The Jew is most happy if he remains a Jew"), an internationalist ("Nationalism is the measles of mankind"). Einstein claims that he is a religious man ("Every really deep scientist must necessarily have religious feeling"). But he does not believe in the immortality of the soul.
Blast Shock. Last week Professor Einstein seemed suffering from blast shock from the bomb he had fathered. In the New York Times he warned Americans that "There is no foreseeable defense against atomic bombs. . . . Scientists do not even know of any field which promises us any hope of adequate defense." The Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists, of which Einstein is chairman, frantically appealed for $200,000 to educate people to "a new type of thinking ... if mankind is to survive and move toward a higher level."
Mankind, in general less apocalyptic, scarcely knew what to think or do. Most of them were inclined to accept the bomb stolidly—like an earthquake, an act of God. Few were even yet willing to accept Oswald Spengler's bracing pessimism about the age: "There is no question of prudent retreat or wise renunciation. Only dreamers believe that there is a way out. Optimism is cowardice." But there was a growing sense that the Brothers de Goncourt had been grimly farsighted when they wrote in their Journal (in 1870):
"They were saying that Berthelot had predicted that a hundred years from now, thanks to physical and chemical science, men would know of what the atom is constituted. ... To all this we raised no objection, but we have the feeling that when this time comes in science, God with His white beard will come down to earth, swinging a bunch of keys, and will say to humanity, the way they say at 5 o'clock at the Salon, 'Closing time, gentlemen.'"
* E=mc2, with E standing for energy expressed in ergs, m the mass in grams, and c the speed of light in centimeters per second