The Journals of Ayn Rand (61 page)

An atomic bomb is safe only in a free society—because a free society does not function through violence and does not cause wars. Such a weapon would be dangerous in the world at any time. At a time when most of mankind has embraced the faith of Statism—a world suicide is most surely ahead of us, unless men learn a different faith.

The best sociological minds of this country say: “Mankind has just one more generation to exist. This is a final ultimatum to us. Now men must be free—or perish.”

The horror and the responsibility in that statement is the fact that our generation will probably have a chance to muddle through irresponsibly to our normal graves—that we know it instinctively and so refuse to think about it too deeply. But our children will not survive. Nobody who is under twenty now will escape it. And it is
we, now,
who are going to blast them into bloody vapor—we, who will decide the issue by what we do and think—we, who’ll pass the sentence on them and throw them into a screaming horror—while we ourselves escape.
This
is what I, for one, will not have on my conscience. And I don’t see how anyone else can wish to have it [on his conscience].

This is not a subject for quibbling or evasions. When we say “men must be free or perish,” let us be specific and honest about what
“free”
means. It means free from compulsion; it means free from rule by force; it means free from government control of enterprise.

Since the issue of free enterprise versus Statism is so fundamental, since everything we do or say affects it, since every bit of propaganda relates to it—we cannot touch a subject such as the atomic bomb without knowing clearly where we stand. There is no fence to straddle here, no compromises, no neutrality, no appeasement policy possible. [...]

The atomic bomb is now the focus of everybody’s sociological thinking. All people agree that mankind must reconsider its whole direction in a world that contains the atomic bomb. The question is: What direction?

The Statists are already making propaganda capital out of the atomic bomb by yelling that now we must have a bigger and better Statism, a world slave state with a world totalitarian government—for the sake of harmony and peace. Well, this last is true: we must have peace or it will be the end for all of us. But harmony is not achieved by force. Brotherhood is not achieved by compulsion. Peace is not achieved by appeasement.

Harmony, brotherhood and peace can be reached only voluntarily—or not at all. Only free men are peaceful men. When we need peace as desperately as now, we must have freedom.

It is true that mankind must reverse its direction. But its direction has not been toward free enterprise. Its direction has been toward Statism.
That
is the trend which must be reversed.

The world is still stunned by the atomic bomb and is groping desperately for some understanding of its significance. Therefore anything we say or hint or imply or suggest in a picture on this subject will have tremendous consequences in influencing the thinking of a muddled, confused, bewildered public.

Let us realize and remember that the atomic bomb as an argument can be more powerful and destructive spiritually than it is as a weapon physically.

To sum up, the crux of our responsibility in making the picture is this: (1) It is precisely
because
of the atomic bomb that the world
must
return to free enterprise; (2) The atomic bomb is a tremendously potent argument. If we use it as an argument for Statism—we will have blood on our hands. If we use it as an argument for free enterprise—we will make an inestimable contribution toward saving mankind; perhaps, a historic and immortal contribution.

The whole history of the atomic bomb is an eloquent example of, argument for and tribute to free enterprise.
It would be monstrous to disregard the lesson, to ignore it or to twist it into the exact opposite. We don’t have to attach artificial propaganda to the picture. We must let the facts speak for themselves. We must only present the truth. But we must present the truth, the
whole
truth and
nothing but the truth.

If our picture is to be a tribute to free enterprise, does it mean that we have to enter into a controversy and antagonize a lot of people? Not at all. Since we will treat the subject in a broad, philosophical manner, we will find everybody in agreement with us. We will present the issue in such a way that we will leave no room for argument and nobody will dare disagree with us, except the out-and-out Fascists and Communists.

How do we do that? Very simply. By presenting the issue not in superficial, political terms—but in its deeper, essential terms. We state our theme like this: “Man’s greatest achievements are accomplished through free, voluntary action—and cannot be accomplished under force, compulsion and violence.”

If we stick to this theme intelligently and consistently, who will want to disagree? In order to object, a person would have to admit that he is against freedom and in favor of violence.

Do we touch on any political issue in the narrow sense of contemporary American politics? No. None of that is pertinent. We are not for or against Labor or Capital or Republicans or Democrats. We are presenting only a fundamental issue. If, after seeing our picture, the audience walks out with the conviction that personal freedom is desirable and that the use of force is neither good nor practical, that is all we want to accomplish, and it will be a great accomplishment.

However, we cannot do this by merely tacking on a few cheap speeches about freedom, worded in such a general way that it can mean anything or nothing. Our theme must be explicit, clear-cut and expressed not in speeches, but in action. It must be integrated into the structure of our story.

Do we have to attack our own government and criticize the New Deal? No. (So long as we don’t start glorifying the New Deal, either!) As far as I know without further research, our government seems to have behaved properly in regard to the atomic bomb. All we have to do is show the government’s actions factually, stressing that in this case it acted as a free country’s government should act: it did not use compulsion.

But where we must express our theme full blast is in our treatment of the governments of the countries from which the scientists escaped. This is the heart of the real issue historically—and this is the crux of our theme. We must show how Statism destroys, exiles and paralyzes men of genius—why these men could not work under compulsion—why they could produce what they produced
only
in a free country. Will anyone object to our showing that dictatorships do things at the point of a gun, by force, by decree, by orders in the name of the State? A person who objects to
that
, deserves to have every returned soldier spit in his face.

So much for our general approach to the subject. Now let us examine the particular key points.

This is the most important question our picture has to answer.

In presenting the strictly factual history of the bomb, we will not be able to avoid a slant of unintentional propaganda, one way or the other. The history of the bomb is long and complex. We cannot literally present
all
the facts. We have to exercise choice in what we select to present, how we present it, what significance we attach to it, what meaning we convey. In order to present the truth, we must be able to distinguish the essential from the inessential. Any record can be falsified by omission of the essential and overstressing of the inessential. This is where we have to be careful.

For instance: it is a fact that Roosevelt gave to the scientists the funds necessary for their experiments. How are we going to treat this point? If we show or imply that
that
was the crucial factor in the creation of the bomb, we throw at the world the most powerful piece of propaganda for Statism that could be devised. We tell the audience, in effect: “See what a strong government can do? Many people objected to Roosevelt’s arbitrary use of money for secret purposes—yet look what he gave you! The proper way to run the world and achieve the best results is for you common men to shut up, to trust a leader implicitly, to let your government decide for you and plan for you without your knowledge or consent.”
This
is what our audience will walk out of the theater with.

Do we want to say
that?

Do we want to feature the superficial aspects of the case and release on the world a thousand converted Statists with each showing of the picture? Do we want—in presenting the greatest achievement of free enterprise—to make “a picture whose hero will be Roosevelt,” as I have heard suggested?

If not, does it mean that we should falsify Roosevelt’s contribution? Certainly not. We must give him full and exact credit for the part he played. Not less than that—
and not more.

Here is the first point where clear and honest thinking is required: if it were true that the atomic bomb was an achievement of strong government—why didn’t Germany achieve it? Hitler’s government was much stronger than ours—if by “strong” we mean strong-arm, total control, dictatorial power, arbitrary use of money and resources. Hitler certainly wanted to find the secret of the atomic bomb—and he tried. He started preparing for war long before we did. He could and did throw the entire resources of his country into his war machine. What good did it do him? He
did not
get the atomic bomb.

That is a
fact.
How do we treat it? If we ascribe it to sheer luck, just an accident of fate in our favor—if we say that Hitler
could have
got the bomb, that he was just on the verge of it, only we beat him to it—we miss the whole significance of the story of the atomic bomb. We are then committing a moral crime by falsifying a historical lesson of tremendous importance.

There is no factual evidence to support the idea that Hitler was about to discover the bomb. There is plenty of evidence to the contrary. But here is what will happen if we accept that idea: we’ll be saying to the audience, in effect: “A totalitarian system is just as good and efficient as ours. Even more so. They can do anything we can. It was quite a feat for us to beat them.”

Is that true?

The fact is that Germany did not, could not and never would have created the atomic bomb; nor Italy; nor Russia.

Is it an accident that since the beginning of the machine age, all the great, basic, epoch-making inventions and discoveries have come from America and England? Mostly from America, secondly from England—and with very few contributions from all the other countries. Why? Anglo-Saxon superiority? No. The inventors were of all races and nationalities. But they all had to work either in America or in England. The other countries then elaborated on the discoveries, worked out some details and variations, made minor improvements; but never produced anything crucially new, never made a discovery that was a turning point in science; nothing to compare with the steam engine, the electric light, the automobile, the airplane, the telephone, the telegraph, the motion picture, the radio. For God’s sake, can we ignore
that?
Are we going to say “sheer accident?” How many accidents of this nature do we need to be convinced? And if, through our own fault, an atomic bomb drops on us in a few years—are we going to say that was an accident, too?

The simple fact is that invention, discovery, science and progress are possible
only
under a system of free enterprise. If you want to know why and how, in detail, please read
Science and the Planned State
by John R. Baker, a British scientist. It is a short book, recently published. It presents the whole case, with facts, names, dates, records, reasons and unanswerable proof.

This
is the crucial point of our approach to the picture. If we take the greatest invention of man and do not draw from it the lesson it contains—that only free men could have achieved it—we deserve to have an atomic bomb dropped on our heads.

Now let us look at the history of the bomb in detail. If there is a God, it is almost as if He had staged it that way on purpose—to give us an object lesson.

Some of the key figures in the development of the bomb were [Albert] Einstein, [Niels] Bohr and [Enrico] Fermi. They had to flee from Germany, Denmark and Italy. The Statist dictators had these men and had the knowledge of their original discoveries. And it did not do the dictators any good. These scientists laid the foundations of their future achievements in their own countries. But they could not continue to work there. They had to escape to a free country.

Then there is Dr. Lise Meitner who made her first important experiments right in Nazi Germany—and had to escape. Her colleagues who remained behind, Hahn and Strassman, continued the work and got no results. She continued the work in a free country—and got results. There are many, many other refugees from dictatorships among the scientists who contributed to the atomic bomb. The object lesson is eloquent.

How are we going to treat it? Are we going to say that these refugees were victims of racial prejudice? That is not an explanation. Racial prejudice was a symptom, not a cause; a manifestation of Statism, not its basic essence. Racial prejudice as such does not cause exiles and concentration camps; it can’t; it does not rule society; it remains the province of bums and the lunatic fringe. It is only when racial prejudice acquires
political
power, only when it establishes a system of Statism where man’s individual dignity and individual rights are destroyed, only then can it actually start to shed blood. Without individual rights, there are no minority rights; without minority rights there are no majority rights either. And an individual is the smallest minority on earth.

To say that Einstein and Lise Meitner were thrown out of Germany on account of racial prejudice is the truth—but not the whole truth. It was racial prejudice
armed with State power.
And what about Fermi and the others? There was no racial prejudice involved in their cases.