"Heinlein, Robert A - The Last Days Of The United States" - читать интересную книгу автора (Heinlein Robert A)

Our other unforgivable sin is being rich while they are poor. Never mind our rationalizationsЧthey see our wasteful luxury while much of the globe starves. Hungry men do not reason calmly. We are getting ourselves caught in a situation which should lead us to expect attack from any quarter, from whoever first produces atomic weapons and long-distance rockets.

Knowing these things, the professional gentlemen who are charged with the defense of this country, the generals and the admirals and the members of the military and naval affairs committees of both houses, are cudgelling their brains in a frenzied but honest attempt to persuade the rest of the country to follow this course or that, which, in their several opinions, will safeguard the country in any coming debacle.
But there is a tragic sameness to their proposals. With few exceptions, they favor preparedness for the last war. Thusly:
Conscription in peacetime to build up a reserve;
Emphasis on aircraft carriers rather than battleships;
Decentralization of cities;
An armaments race to keep our head start in atomic weapons;
Agreements to УoutlawФ atomic weapons; Consolidation of the Army and the Navy;
Buying enough war planes each year to insure new development;
An active military and foreign affairs intelligence corps;
Moving the aircraft industry inland;
Placing essential war industry underground.
These are the progressive proposals. (Some still favor infantry and battleships!) In contrast, General Arnold says to expect war in which space ships cruise outside the atmosphere and launch super-high-speed, atomicarmed rockets on cities below. Hap Arnold tells his boys to keep their eyes on Buck Rogers. Somebody is wrongЧis it Hap Arnold or his more conservative colleagues?
Compulsory military trainingЧFrance had that, for both wars. The end was Vichy.
Aircraft carriers vs. battleships. Look, pals, the aircraft carrier was the weapon of this war, before Hiroshima. Carriers donТt look so good against space ships. LetТs build galleons instead; they are cheaper, prettier, and just as useful.
Decentralization of large citiesЧletТs table this one for a moment. There is some sense to it, if carried to its logical conclusion. But not with half measures and not for $250,000,000,000, the sum mentioned by Sumner Spaulding, its prime proponent.
Bigger and better atomic weapons for the United StatesЧthis has a reasonable and reassuring sound. WeТve got the plant and the trained men; letТs stay ahead in the race. Dr. Robert Wilson says that atomic bombs a hundred or a thousand times as powerful as the Hiroshima bomb are now in prospect. Teddy Roosevelt advised us to УSpeak softly but carry a big stick.Ф
It is a tempting doctrine, but the great-hearted Teddy died long before Hiroshima; his day was the day of the charge up San Juan Hill. A hundred obsolete atomic bombs could destroy the United StatesЧif the enemy struck first. Our super bombs would not save us, unless we were willing to strike first, without declaring war. If two men are locked in a basement, one armed with a 50-calibre machine gun, the other with an 18th century ball-and-powder pistol, victory goes
to the man who shoots first, not to the one with the better weapon. That is the logic of atomics and now is the time to learn it by heart.
Agreements to УoutlawФ atomic weapons? Swell! Remember the Kellogg Pact? It УoutlawedФ war.
Consolidation of the armed forces: A proposition sensible in itself, but disastrously futile unless we realize that all previous military art is obsolete in the atomic age. The best pre-Hiroshima weapons are now no more than the sidearms of the occupying military police. Buck Rogers must be the new chief of staff. Otherwise we will find ourselves with the most expensive luxury in the worldЧa second-best military establishment.
Purchase of military aircraft in quantities to insure new developmentЧwe bought sailing ships-of-theline in the 1880Тs. This makes the same sort of pseudosense. Airplanes are already obsoleteЧslow, clumsy, and useless. The V-2 is credited with a speed of 3600 miles per hour. Here is a simple problem in proportion: The Wright Brothers crate at Kittyhawk bears the same relation to the B-29 that the V-2 bears to the rocket ship of the coming war. Complete the equation by visualizing the coming rocket ship. Then stop wasting taxes on airplanes.
An efficient intelligence systemЧFine! But no answer in itself. The British intelligence was quite efficient before this war. Mr. ChamberlainТs desk was piled high with intelligence reports, reports which showed that Munich need never have happened. This has since been confirmed by high German General Staff officers. But Mr. Chamberlain did not read the reports. Intelligence reports are useful only to the intelligent.
Moving the aircraft industry inlandЧexcellent preparation for World War II. Move an industry which we donТt need for World War III inland where it will be safe from the weapons of World War II. While we are about it letТs put stockades around them to keep
the Indians out. In the meantime our potential enemies will have plenty of time to perfect long-range rockets.
Placing key war industry undergroundЧassembly lines underground are all very well, but blast furnaces and many other things simply wonТt fit. Whatever digging in we do, be sure we do it so secretly that the enemy will never suspect, lest he drop an earthquaketype atomic bomb somewhere near-by and bury all hands. Let us be certain, too, that he does not introduce a small atomic bomb inside the underground works, disguised as a candy vending machine, a lunch pail, or a fire extinguisher. The age of atomics is a field day for saboteurs; underground works could be colossal death traps.

No one wants this new war, no sane men anywhere. Yet we are preparing for it and a majority, by recent Gallup polls, believe it will come. We have seen the diplomats and prime ministers and presidents and foreign affairs committees and state departments manage to get things messed up in the past; from where we sit it looks as if they were hell-bent on messing them up again. We hear the rumble of the not-sodistant drum.
What we want, we little men everywhere, is planetary organization so strong that it can enforce peace, forbid national armaments, atomic or otherwise, and in general police the globe so that a decent man can raise his kids and his dog and smoke his pipe free from worry of sudden death. But we see the same old messing around with half measures.
(If you want to help to try to stop the messing-up process, you might write Congressman Jerry Voorhis, or Senator Fuibright, or Senator Ball, or Beardsley Ruml, or Harold Stassen. Or even the President himself.)

If things go from bad to worse and we have to fight a war, can we prepare to win it? First let us try to grasp
what kind of a war it will be. Look at LIFE, Nov. 19, 1945, page 27: THE 36-HOUR WAR: Arnold Report Hints at the Catastrophe of the Next Great Conflict. The first picture shows Washington, D.C., being destroyed by an atomic rocket bomb. The text and pictures go on to show 13 U.S. cities being destroyed the same wa~, enemy airborne troops attempting to occupy, the U.S. striking back with its own rockets from underground emplacements, and eventually winningЧat a cost of 13 cities and at least 10,000,000 American lives.
Horrible as the picture is, it is much too optimistic. There is no reason at all to assume that the enemy will attack in too little force, destroying only 13 cities, or to assume that he will attempt to occupy until we have surrendered, or to assume that we will be able to strike back after we are attacked.
It is not safe to assume that the enemy will be either faint-hearted or foolish. If he follows our example with Japan, he will smash us until we surrender, then land. If his saboteurs are worth their blood money, our own rocket emplacements may be blown up by concealed atomic bombs just in advance of the attack.
Atomic rocket warfare has still another drawbackЧ it is curiously anonymous. We might think we knew who had attacked us but be entirely mistaken.
You can think of at least three nations which dislike both us and Russia. What better joke for them than to select a time when suspicion has been whipped up between the two giants to lob just a few atomic rockets from a ship in the North Atlantic, or from a secret emplacement in the frozen north of GreenlandЧhalf at us, half at Russia, and with the attack in each case apparently coming from the other, and then sit back while we destroyed each other!
A fine joke! You would die laughing.
DonТt think it canТt be done, to us and to Russia.

What can we do?
The first thing is to get Congress to take a realistic
view of the situation. The most certain thing about LIFEТs description of the coming war was the destruction of Washington. Washington is the prime military target on earth today for it is the center of the nervous system of the nation that now has the Bomb. It must be destroyed first and it will be destroyed, if war ever comes. Your congressman has the most dangerous job in the world today. You may live through World War IllЧhe canТt. Make yours realize this; he may straighten up and fly right.
What we want him to work for is world order and world peace. But we may not get it. The other nations may be fed up with our shilly-shallying and may not go along with us, particularly any who believe they are close to solving the problems of atomic weapons. We may have to go it alone. In such cases, is there anything we can do to preserve ourselves?
Yes, probablyЧbut the price is high.
We can try for another Buck Rogers weapon with which to ward off atomic bomb rockets. It would need to be better than anything we have now or can foresee. To be 100% effective (with atom bombs, anything less is hardly good enough!) it should be something which acts with much greater speed than guns or anti-aircraft rockets. There is a bare possibility that science could cook up some sort of a devastatingly powerful beam of energy, acting with the speed of light, which would be a real anti-aircraft weapon, even against rockets. But the scientists donТt promise it.
We would need the best anti-aircraft devices possible, in the meantime. A robot hook-up of target-seeking rockets, radar, and computing machines might give considerable protection, if extensive enough, but there is a lot of research and test and production ahead before any such plan is workable. Furthermore, it could not be air tight and it would be very expensiveЧ and very annoying, for it would end civilian aviation. If we hooked the thing up to ignore civilian planes, we would leave ourselves wide open to a Trojan Horse
tactic in which the enemy would use ordinary planes to deliver his atomic bombs.
Such a defense, although much more expensive and much more trouble than all our pre-War military establishment, would be needed. If we are not willing to foot the bill, we can at least save money by not buying flame throwers, tanks, or battleships.