24
SIDNEY HOOK
istence of countries which either were still free or still hostile
to Hitler. Second, a Communist dictatorship organizes its own
underground the better to destroy it. Third, a Communist govern–
ment with a monopoly of nuclear weapons capable of destroy–
ing any region on earth could deliver an ultimatum demanding that
the entire resistance movement be turned over to
it
on pain of im–
mediate destruction of the community which harbored it. The very
considerations which led unilateralists and pacifists to urge us to
disarm originally would militate against continuation of resistance.
One can hear the argument in advance. Since no one can survive
refusal of the ultimatum, there is no sense to resistance. To be sure,
the underground fighters are saints and heroes, and it is unpleasant
to think of their fate in the hands of the Communist
gauleiters.
But
they will die anyhow if Khrushchev unlooses his rockets. They should
really surrender themselves to save the innocent women and children
who want to live and have no quarrel with the Kremlin. That would
be true heroism!
It is sometimes asserted that any comparison between the past
and present is illegitimate because our situation is absolutely unique.
It
is one in which all life and civilization may be destroyed in a
nuclear conflict. Therefore it is senseless to go down fighting for any
ideal, since all ideals, are meaningless unless we can be certain that
there will be survivors. The very meaning of "right and wrong,"
"good and bad" in the absence of survivors becomes utterly vacuous.
Indeed, we are lectured that those who use such terms in these
extreme situations are either striking a pose or are demented, victims
of a silly rhetoric.
It would require a book to do justice to the fallacies of this
position. I am confident that an intelligent and courageous policy
on the part of the free world will enable us to avoid nuclear war.
If
it is forced on us it
is
the sheerest dogmatism to predict that all
life and civilization will be destroyed. What will happen will to a
large extent depend upon what we do or leave undone. Whatever
the costs, they will be tragic. But mankind has often paid a heavy
cost in defence of freedom. The cost of submission to tyranny is
sometimes equally high. Six million Jews went to their death sub–
missively without humanizing their tormentors. The Jews who went
down fighting in the Warsaw Ghetto in a desperate resistance died
