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There is also a defense against it: "The same sort of defense used against any other type of bomb [radar, jet fighters, the proximity fuze] . . . We need not be terrified."
Intercontinental guided missiles, Bush contends, need not be feared at all—at least for the present. "It can be done . . . [but] its cost would be astronomical. As a means of carrying high explosive or any toxic substitute, therefore, it is a fantastic proposal. It would never stand the test of cost analysis."
Mistakes & Abortions. The upshot of Dr. Bush's thumbing through the catalogue: modern war comes high, and the sheer expense puts a definite limit on weapons. But the armament race is on, and it behooves the U.S. to win it. "We have not gone far in it yet and we already feel the pinch . . . We had better settle into the harness for the long pull." So long as the U.S. stays out in front, war is not likely, but the nation cannot lag.
Can a free democracy win such an armaments contest against totalitarian Russia? Bush is sure that it can—just as the U.S. beat the Nazis to the atomic bomb. "At the end of the war," he says, "it was found that [Nazi scientists] . . . had not accomplished five percent of the task." Somewhat underestimating Russian science, Bush writes: "It is a far cry indeed from the time when the enemy has a bomb." Even as Bush's book was going to press, President Truman announced that the Russians had it.
But Russia's bomb does not substantially alter Bush's thesis: that a regimented science which does not admit criticism "is likely to produce great mistakes and great abortions . . . [that] it cannot possibly alter its pattern and become fully effective without at the same time becoming free; and if it becomes free, the contest is ended."
The immediate danger to the U.S., as Dr. Bush sees it, is the danger of strangling U.S. enterprise by good intentions. The central problem "is summarized in the idea of the welfare state."
A horde of bureaucrats "takes two dollars from Jones to furnish one to Smith and makes Smith stand in line to get it." The next thing the U.S. knows, he says, it will "have taken care of everyone at the expense of everyone else, and failed to take care of the primary national interest. We cannot afford today to interfere unduly, even in the name of humanitarianism, with the diversified vigorous private initiative that made us great."
Impartial Science. "There need be no more great wars; yet there may be ... If democracy loses its touch, then no great war will be needed to overwhelm it. If it keeps and enhances its strength, then no great war need come again. Yet there is a chance . . . and free men must be ready . . .
"Fear cannot be banished, but it can be calm and without panic, and it can be mitigated by reason and evaluation. A new great war would not end the progress of civilization, even in the days of the riven atom, even with the threat of disease marshaled for conquest. It is even possible that defenses may become tightened, not made absolute, but competent to halt the full flood of death from the air. As science goes forward, it distributes its uses both to those who destroy and to those who preserve."