My first - grade class had 63 kids in it, one teacher, no assistant. Before the end of the second semester all 63 could read.
2. Many people seem to feel that the "Bridey Murphy" case has been invalidated. Maybe so, maybe not - the investigative reporter who went to Ireland had no special qualifications and the "disproof' came from TIME magazine. TIME magazine probably publishes many facts
but since its founding in the early 1920'sIhave been on the spot eight or nine times when something that wound up as a news story in TIME happened. Not once - not once - did the TIME magazine story match what I saw and heard.
I have the "Bridey Murphy" recording and Bernstein's book about it. I am not an expert witness... but I found the recording highly interesting. To me it sounded like what it purported to be: regression under hypnosis to memory of a former existence. Some years later I learned from an ethical hypnotherapist (i.e., he accepted patients only by referrals from M.D.'s, his own doctorate being in psychology) that regression to what seemed to be former lives was a commonplace among patients of hypnotherapists - they discussed it among themselves but never published because they were bound by much the same rule as physicians and priests taking confession.
I have no data to offer of my own. I decided many years back that I was too busy with this life to fret about what happens afterwards. Long before 2001Iwill know... or I will know nothing whatever because my universe has ceased to exist.
3. Anyone today who simply brushes off ESP phenomena as being ridiculous is either pigheaded or ignorant. But I do not expect controlled telepathy by 2001; that is sheer fiction, intended to permit me to get in that bit about Tchaka, et al.
4. I lifted this "Man is a wild animal" thesis bodily from Charles Galton Darwin (grandson of the author of THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES) in his book THE NEXT MILLION YEARS, Doubleday, 1953. lam simply giving credit; I shan't elaborate here. But THE NEXT MILLION YEARS is a follow - on to THE ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES and is, in my opinion, one of most important works of this century. It has not been a popular book - but I seem to recall that his grandfather's seminal work wasn't too popular, either.
FOREWORD
This polemic was first published on Saturday 12 April 1958. Thereafter it was printed many other places and reprints of it were widely circulated inside and outside the science fiction community, inside and outside this country.
It brought down on me the strongest and most emotional adverse criticism I have ever experienced - not to my surprise.
After more than twenty years my "misdeed" seems to have been largely forgotten, or perhaps forgiven. But I do not ask to be forgiven and I do not want it to be forgotten. So I now republish it in permanent form. I have not consulted my editor or my publisher; each is free to denounce my opinions here expressed - but is not free to refuse this item while accepting the rest of this book.
A few specific details below are outdated by new technology - e.g., earthquakes can now be distinguished with certainty (we hope) from nuclear explosions, while other aspects of detection and inspection grow more complex. Technical details change; basic principles do not.
"Supreme excellence in war is to subdue the enemy without fighting."
- Sun Tzu, ca. 350 B.C.
The Soviet Union is highly skilled at this - and so are the Chinese leaders. During the last twenty - odd years we have been outmaneuvered endlessly. Today it's the Backfire bomber; tomorrow it is an international (U.N.) treaty to socialize all aspects of space and thereby kill such enterprise as the L - 5 Society, Sabre, Otrag (already killed), Robert Truax's Do - It - Yourself projects. The treaty will permit a KGB agent ("A rose by any other name - ") to inspect in detail anything of ours, private or public, on the ground or in the sky, if it is in any way connected with space - or the KGB man claims to suspect that it might be.
(But if you think that gives us a free ticket into every building, every room, at the Byakonur space complex, you don't know how the USSR does business.)
The President has already announced that he will sign it. 10 to 1 he will, 7 to 2 the Senate will pass it - and 100 to 1 we will regret it.
This declaration is more timely than ever; I am proud to reprint it - and deeply sorry that it was ever needed.
Any rational person may well disagree with me on details of this broadside. But on the moral principles expressed here, a free man says: "Give me liberty, or give me death!" No quibbling, no stopping to "think it over." He means it.
Fools and poltroons do not.
~}WHO ARE THE HEIRS OF PATRICK HENRY?
STAND UP AND BE COUNTED!
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!!"
- Patrick Henry
Last Saturday in this city appeared a full - page ad intended to scare us into demanding that the President stop our testing of nuclear weapons. This manifesto was a curious mixture of truth, half - truth, distortion, exaggeration, untruth, and Communist line goals concealed in idealistic - sounding nonsense.
The instigators were seventy - odd local people and sixty - odd national names styling themselves "The National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy." It may well be that none of the persons whose names are used as the "National" committee are Communists and we have no reason to suppose that any of the local people are Communists - possibly all of them are loyal and merely misguided. But this manifesto is the rankest sort of Communist propaganda.
A tree is known by its fruit. The purpose of their manifesto is to entice or frighten you into signing a letter to President Eisenhower, one which demands that he take three actions. The first demand is the old, old Communist - line gimmick that nuclear weapons and their vehicles should be "considered apart" in disarmament talks. It has had a slight restyling for the post - Sputnik era and now reads: "That nuclear test explosions, missiles, and outer - space satellites be considered apart from other disarmament problems."
This proposal sounds reasonable but is booby trapped with outright surrender of the free world to the Communist dictators. Mr. Truman knew it, Mr. Eisenhower knows it; both have refused it repeatedly. The gimmick is this: if nuclear weapons and their vehicles are outlawed while conventional weapons (tanks and planes and bayonets and rifles) are not, then - but you figure it out. 170,000,000 of us against 900,000,000 of them. Who wins?
Even if you count our allies (on the assumption that every last one of them will stick by us no matter how bone - headed our behavior), the ratio is still two - to - one against us when it comes to slugging it out with infantry divisions, Yalu River style.
Oh yes! Khrushchev would like very much to have nuclear weapons "considered apart" from infantry divisions. And he is delighted when soft - headed Americans agree with him.
"The 'Lice Voted to Bell the Cat." - Aesop
Their second proposal has been part of the Communist line for twelve long years. It reads: "That all nuclear test explosions be stopped immediately and that the U.N. then proceed with the mechanics necessary for monitoring this cessation." This is the straight Communist gospel direct from the Kremlin. This was and is today their phony counter - proposal to the Baruch Proposals of 1946 - banning first, policing the ban if, when, and maybe .. . and subject to the veto of the U.S.S.R. It would leave us at the "mercy" of the butchers of Budapest, our lives staked on the "honor" of men to whom honesty is a bourgeois weakness, our freedom resting on the promises of a gangster government that has broken every promise it ever made.