"Albert Einstein. The world as I see it (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

pacifism, on patriotic grounds. Such people are not to be relied on in the
hour of crisis, as the World War amply proved.

I am most grateful to you for according me an opportunity to give you
my views in person.


Address to the Students' Disarmament Meeting

Preceding generations have presented us, in a highly developed science
and mechanical knowledge, with a most valuable gift which carries with it
possibilities of making our life free and beautiful such as no previous
generation has enjoyed. But this gift also brings with it dangers to our
existence as great as any that have ever threatened it.

The destiny of civilized humanity depends more than ever on the moral
forces it is capable of generating. Hence the task that confronts our age is
certainly no easier than the tasks our immediate predecessors successfully
performed.

The foodstuffs and other goods which the world needs can be produced in
far fewer hours of work than formerly. But this has made the problem of the
division of labour and the distribution of the goods produced far more
difficult. We all feel that the free play of economic forces, the
unregulated and unrestrained pursuit of wealth and power by the individual,
no longer leads automatically to a tolerable solution of these problems.
Production, labour, and distribution need to be organized on a definite
plan, in order to prevent valuable productive energies from being thrown
away and sections of the population from becoming impoverished and relapsing
into savagery. If unrestricted sacro egoismo leads to disastrous
consequences in economic life, it is a still worse guide in international
relations. The development of mechanical methods of warfare is such that
human life will become intolerable if people do not before long discover a
way of preventing war. The importance of this object is only equalled by the
inadequacy of the attempts hitherto made to attain it.

People seek to minimize the danger by limitation of armaments and
restrictive rules for the conduct of war. But war is not like a parlour-game
in which the players loyally stick to the rules. Where life and death are at
stake, rules and obligations go by the board. Only the absolute repudiation
of all war is of any use here. The creation of an international court of
arbitration is not enough. There must be treaties guaranteeing that the
decisions of this court shall be made effective by all the nations acting in
concert. Without such a guarantee the nations will never have the courage to
disarm seriously.

Suppose, for example, that the American, English, German, and French
Governments insisted on the Japanese Government's putting an immediate stop
to their warlike operations in China, under pain of a complete economic
boycott. Do you suppose that any Japanese Government would be found ready to