Browning Chief

'MAN'S EXTREMITY'

What the fiction writers have long toyed with—virtual extinction of the human race—the atomic scientists now declare feasible. They say a hydrogen bomb could be rigged to spread radio-active material over the face of the globe and wipe out all life.

Much of the day's news—leopard hunting, the Sander trial, even the coal strike—seems to shrink into relative unimportance beside this announcement. But the end of the world has a way of being postponed and only those who enjoy being terrorized should count on cataclysm tomorrow.

Even if the researchers' calculations are correct there are a number of technical difficulties to be overcome before mankind will be able to commit universal suicide. And in the end the notion may lose its appeal.

Hydrogen hysteria is no answer. But neither should the peril be ignored. For the race has been marching toward self-destruction at an accelerated pace. Many wise men believe it can be saved only by a drastic change in the direction of its thinking. The basis for such a change exists. Men have been gaining a greater knowledge not only of material power, but of spiritual power. Many have awakened to a new understanding of God and His wholly spiritual creation. Many even of the physical scientists are recognizing that materiality has no absolute reality.

So at the moment when material force is claiming the power to extinguish all life at one stroke men are becoming aware that the only true life is spiritual. More understanding and proof of this fact is the only sure defense from the fast-mounting prospect of total destruction which ungoverned material knowledge presents. Having come to this pass the human mind should be ready to turn from the more frantic aspects of an atomic arms race and seek safety in a new direction.

The bomb itself is powerless. It is against the supposed power of hate, fear, and greed to control human thought—to make and use the bomb or other means of mass destruction—that the ultimate defense must be raised. It can be raised if men will devote equal effort to learning about spiritual power. If this is not the day of Armageddon, it is close enough. We need not be terrorized. But it will be salutary if we recognize how close the human mind has come to the end of its rope. For "man's extremity is God's opportunity."
—Christian Science Monitor.