February 17, 1951. I missed the televue flash above the plane crash that killed the President because I was lying down in my apartment. Manning, by that time was requiring me to rest every afternoon after lunch though I was still on duty. I first heard about it from my secretary when I returned to my office, and at once hurried into Manning's office.
There was a curious unreality to that meeting. It seemed to me that we had slipped back to that day when I returned from England, the day that Estel Karst died. He looked up. "Hello, John," he said.
I put my hand on his shoulder. "Don't take it hard, chief," was all I could think of to say.
Forty - eight hours later came the message from the newly sworn - in President for Manning to report him. I took it in to him, an official dispatch which decoded. Manning read it, face impassive.
"Are you going, chief?" I asked.
"Eh? Why, certainly."
I went back into my office, and got my topcoat, gloves, and briefcase.
Manning looked up when I came back in. "Never mind, John," he said. "You're not going." I guess I must have looked stubborn, for he added, "You're not to go because there is work to do here. Wait a minute." He went to his safe, twiddled the dials, opened it and removed a sealed envelope which he threw on the desk between us. "Here are your orders. Get busy."
He went out as I was opening them. I read them through and got busy. There was little enough time.
The new President received Manning standing and in the company of several of his bodyguards and intimates. Manning recognized the senator who had led the movement to use the Patrol to recover expropriated holdings in South America and Rhodesia, as well as the chairman of the committee on aviation with whom he had had several unsatisfactory conferences in an attempt to work out a modus operandi for reinstituting commercial airlines.
"You're prompt, I see," said the President. "Good." Manning bowed.
"We might as well come straight to the point," the Chief Executive went on. "There are going to be some changes of policy in the administration. I want your resignation."
"I am sorry to have to refuse, sir."
"We'll see about that. In the meantime, Colonel Manning, you are relieved from duty."
"Mr. Commissioner Manning, if you please."
The new President shrugged. "One or the other, as you please. You are relieved, either way."
"I am sorry to disagree again. My appointment is for life."
"That's enough," was the answer. "This is the United States of America. There can be no higher authority. You are under arrest."
I can visualize Manning staring steadily at him for a long moment, then answering slowly, "You are physically able to arrest me, I will concede, but I a vise you to wait a few minutes." He stepped to the window. "Look up into the sky."
Six bombers of the Peace Commission patrol over the Capitol. "None of those pilots is American born," Manning added slowly. "If you confine him, none of us here in this room will live out the day.' There were incidents thereafter, such as the unfortunate affair at Fort Benning three days later, and the outbreak in the wing of the Patrol based in Lisbon and its resultant wholesale dismissals, but for practical purposes, that was all there was to the coup d'etat. Manning was the undisputed military dictator the world.
Whether or not any man as universally hated Manning can perfect the Patrol he envisioned, make self - perpetuating and trustworthy, I don't know and - because of that week of waiting in a buried English hangar - I won't be here to find out. Manning heart disease makes the outcome even more unpredictable he may last another twenty years; he may fall over dead tomorrow - and there is no one to take F place. I've set this down partly to occupy the she time I have left and partly to show there is another side to any story, even world dominion.
Not that I would like the outcome, either way. There is anything to this survival - after - death business I am going to look up the man who invented the bow and arrow and take him apart with my bare hands. For myself, I can't be happy in a world where any man or group of men, has the power of death over you and me, our neighbors, every human, every animal, eve living thing. I don't like anyone to have that kind power.
And neither does Manning.
FOREWORD
After World War II I resumed writing with two objectives: first, to explain the meaning of atomic weapons through popular articles; second, to break out from the limitations and low rates of pulp science - fiction magazines into anything and everything: slicks, books, motion pictures, general fiction, specialized fiction not intended for SF magazines, and nonfiction.
My second objective I achieved in every respect, but in my first and much more important objective I fell flat on my face.
Unless you were already adult in August 1945 it is almost impossible for me to convey emotionally to you how people felt about the A - bomb, how many different ways they felt about it, how nearly totally ignorant 99.9% of our citizens were on the subject, including almost all of our military leaders and governmental officials.
And including editors!
(The general public is just as dangerously ignorant as to the significance of nuclear weapons today, 1979, as in 1945 - but in different ways. In 1945 we were smugly ignorant; in 1979 we have the Pollyanna’s, and the Ostriches, and the Jingoists who think we can "win" a nuclear war, and the group - a majority? - who regard World War III as of no importance compared with inflation, gasoline rationing, forced school - busing, or you name it. There is much excuse for the ignorance of 1945; the citizenry had been hit by ideas utterly new and strange. But there is no excuse for the ignorance of 1979. Ignorance today can be charged only to stupidity and laziness - both capital offences.)
I wrote nine articles intended to shed light on the post Hiroshima age, and I have never worked harder on any writing, researched the background more thoroughly, tried harder to make the (grim and horrid) message entertaining and readable. I offered them to commercial markets, not to make money, but because the only propaganda that stands any chance of influencing people is packaged so attractively that editors will buy it in the belief that the cash customers will be entertained by it.
Mine was not packaged that attractively.
I was up against some heavy tonnage:
General Groves, in charge of the Manhattan District (code name for A - bomb R&D), testified that it would take from twenty years to forever for another country to build an A - bomb. (USSR did it in 4 years.)
The Chief of Naval Operations testified that the "only" way to deliver the bomb to a target across an ocean was by ship.
A very senior Army Air Force general testified that "blockbuster" bombs were just as effective and cheaper.
The chairman of NACA (shortly to become NASA) testified (Science News Letter 25 May 1946) that intercontinental rockets were impossible.
Ad nauseum - the old sailors want wooden ships, the old soldiers want horse cavalry.
But I continued to write these articles until the U.S.S.R. rejected the United States' proposals for controlling and outlawing atomic weapons through open skies and mutual on - the - ground inspection, i.e., every country in the world to surrender enough of its sovereignty to the United Nations that mass - weapons war would become impossible (and lesser war unnecessary).
The U.S.S.R. rejected inspection - and I stopped trying to peddle articles based on tying the Bomb down through international policing.
I wish that I could say that thirty - three years of "peace" (i.e., no Atom or H - or C - or N - or X - bombs dropped) indicates that we really have nothing to fear from such weapons, because the human race has sense enough not to commit suicide. But I am sorry to say that the situation is even more dangerous, even less stable, than it was in 1946.