ipped from such a complex topic
as the nature of atomic power, so that men everywhere would understand
it, universal fear would be displaced by universal confidence that
something could be done, and society would be well along the road
toward its control.

In World War I, the men who had the least fear of the effects of gas
warfare were the gas officers who understood their subject right down
to the last detail of the decontamination process and the formula for
dichlorethylsulphide (mustard gas). The man to whom the dangers of
submarine warfare seem least fearsome is the submariner. Of all hands
along the battle line, the first aid man has the greatest calm and
confidence in the face of fire, largely because he has seen the
miracles worked by modern medicine in the restoring of grievously
wounded men. The general or the admiral who is most familiar with the
mettle of his subordinate commands will also have the most relaxed
mind under battle pressure.

This leads to a point, which it is better to state here than anywhere
else. In all military instruction pertaining to the weapons and
techniques of war, the basis of sound indoctrination is the teaching
that weapons when rightly used will invariably produce victory, and
preventive measures, when promptly and thoroughly taken, will
invariably conserve the operational integrity of the defense. It is
wrong, _dead wrong_, to start, or carry along, on the opposite track,
and try to persuade men to do the right thing, by dwelling on the
awful consequence of doing the wrong thing. Confidence, not fear, is
the keynote of a strong and convictive doctrine.

In war, in the absence of information, man's natural promptings
alternate between unreasoning fears that the worst is likely to
happen, and the wishful thought that all danger is remote. Either
impulse is a barrier to the growth of that condition of alert
confidence which comes to men when they have a realization of their
own strength and a reasonably clear concept of the general situation.

Man is a peculiar animal. He is no more prone to think about himself
as the central figure amid general disaster than he is to dwell
morbidly upon thoughts of his own death. Left in the dark, he will get
a certain comfort out of that darkness, at the same time that it
clouds his mind and freezes his action. Disturbed by bad dreams about
what might happen, he nonetheless will not plan an effective use of
his own resources against that whi