The Evening Star FRIDAY, JULY 4, 1947. The Soldier and the Scientist.

Evening Star, Issue 26144, 4 July 1947, Page 4

The Evening Star FRIDAY, JULY 4, 1947. The Soldier and the Scientist .

In' these days when the common man may be excused sometimes for thinking that the atomic scientist is deliberately trying to make his flesh creep, it is at least a little comforting to find that FieldMarshal Montgomery (now in Australia and soon to come to New Zealand) does not believe that the war machine will be controlled entirely by a 6et of push-buttons. Not that any sane person wants war, either under the old auspices or with every modern device contrivable by the scientist. Montgomery, indeed, in his first statement on arriving in Australia this week, declared bluntly: —“ lam fed up with war.” And, on the same theme a few days later, he said:—” We soldiers don’t make wars- We try to stop them.”

It is well that so popular and influential a figure as Montgomery should preach this gospel. As a •grim background to his message is the warning from New York this week by a body called by the forbidding title of the “ Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists ” that an atomic war might break out in eight years. But Montgomery, with his-challenge to the “ inevitable - third - war ” philosophy, is giving a lead ip rational thinking, in trying to ensure, that panicky imagination does not outride common-sense, reality.y No one disputes that the dropping of the Horoshima bomb just less than two years ago ushered in an era instinct with evil, destructive potentialities. But the atomic era can be fraught with malevolent consequence .only if man makes it so. The outlook for world co-operation on the true United Nations basis looks poor enough now in all conscience with yet another Foreign Ministers’ Conference ending in failure. It is in a sense reassuring to have Montgomery’s view that a hurried peace may be an uneasy one. But many will feel that the prospects for an enduring peace are being gravely, menaced by the continued lack, of agreement among those Powers who must take the lead in planning it and in ensuring that the atomic age.becomes one bright with hope and achievement and not dread with fear and destruction.

If the atomic era is to be, a peaceful one much will depend on the 'joint efforts' in the same team of the soldier, the the statesman. : ■ /