Psychological Warfare

If it is true that the United States is engaged in a major struggle, if it is further true that this struggle has no visible end, if this struggle threatens all of us and our children as well with lifetimes of tension and violent deaths under ultra-destructive weapons, one may quite reasonably ask the question, Which is the better reaction for the bulk of the American population: normality, emotional health, mild irresponsibility, and the stockpiling of nervous and physical strength for a time of trial which may lie far ahead; or, alternatively, tension now, worry now, responsibility now, fatigue now, all the way through from the uncertain present across the bitter and perilous future to the months of near-Armageddon which may lie fifteen, twenty, or thirty years ahead?

Sadly and seriously, with no attempt at cleverness or mockery, a staff officer could argue today that the American people should leave their worries to their leaders so as to be strong when the time of trouble comes. In the field of civil defense, for instance, it is grotesque to spend billions on offense and little on the saving of American lives. On second glance, this may not be so grotesque after all. The technological advance of fissionable and thermonuclear weapons is so rapid, the development of guided missiles and other carrying instruments so swift and so unpredictable, that a 1955 model civil-defense system might become a fool's paradise by 1960. If this be true, it is better to live as well as we can to maintain the profession of arms at an adequate level, to hope (quite irrationally) for the best, and to let the dead of the future bury their dead as best they may.47