Criminal Use Of A-Bombs Feared

Press, Volume XCIV, Issue 28162, 28 December 1956, Page 7

Criminal Use Of A-Bombs Feared

NEW YORK, Dec. 26.

The annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science .was told today that there was hardly any doubt that within one or two decades nuclear weapons would pass into the hands of criminals. The statement was made by Dr. Pitirim SoiPkin, of Harvard University, in urging his colleagues of the social sciences to become practical, to stop relying on discredited and worn-out theories, and to start working out scientific ways to prevent selfish groups and criminals destroying the world. Among selfish groups he included governments, and among criminals he included rulers of nations.

Governments and rulers had displayed those traits in the past, he said.

So there was no ground to believe that contemporary rulers and rulers in the near future would miraculously turn into wise and blameless saints. He said that of English, Russian, French, Austrian, and Turkish absolute monarchs of the past and present, and of the presidents and “political bosses” of republics, one of every four had been “a qualified murderer.” The qualification he gave was the slaying of a father, mother, brother, or wife.

“In other words,” Dr. Sorokin said, “the rulers of the states are the most criminal group in a respective population. “With a limitation of their power their criminality tends to decrease, but it still remains exceptionally high in all nations.” As for professional criminals, he said that, in the past, all new I

weapons had reached this class. Within a short, period, he predicted, hydrogen and atomic bombs and the means of bacteriological warfare all would be small in size and would be easily handled by one or a few individuals.

“It would be quite- foolish to expect that the criminals would willingly abstain from the use of such ‘handy’ means or, under the existing circumstances, would oe unable to obtain them at all for their professional operations,’ Dr. Sorokin said.