OUT OF THE MOUTH OF BABES                                               

                                                                                                      J.C. KUMARAPPA 

                                                                                                           (Gram Udyog Patrika, March 1948)

Great truths are often spoken by the lips of unsophisticated children. Pearl S. Buck reports that on hearing of the news of Gandhiji’s death, her ten year old son with tears in his eyes said, “I wish no one had ever learned how to make guns.”

Guns are as the boy’s catapults when compared to the atom bombs. Even in India our leaders are encouraging researches into atomic energy with the ostensible reason of making use of it for production and not for destruction. This is always the sugar coating for every nefarious purpose. Our moral development lags well behind our mental advancement leading us to use our knowledge for destruction.

From America Reuter’s news item states that the objective of the United States Atomic Energy Commission is to manufacture atomic bombs on a mass production basis and that the expansion of production facilities is to affect a continuous flow of component parts which will mean a speeding up of the final product also. The world is heading to a precipice. Shall we be spared even to say, “I wish no one had learned how to make atom bombs?”