Above all, do no harm

Callinicus contains an outstanding example of each error, and I rest my case for moral restraint here. Haldane does consider the argument that further development of chemical and biological weapons might prompt an investigation into even more powerful technologies of destruction-in particular, to unleashing the forces of the atom. But he dismisses this argument on scientific grounds of impossible achievement:

Of course, if we could utilize the forces

which we now know to exist inside the

atom, we should have such capacities for

destruction that I do not know of any

agency other than divine intervention which

would save humanity from complete and

peremptory annihilation .... [But] we

cannot utilize subatomic phenomena ....

We cannot make apparatus small enough to

disintegrate or fuse atomic nuclei .... We

can only bombard them with particles of

which perhaps one in a million hit, which

is like firing keys at a safe-door from a

machine gun a mile away in an attempt to

open it .... We know very little about the

structure of the atom and almost nothing

about how to modify it. And the prospect

of constructing such an apparatus seems to

me to be so remote that, when some

successor of mine is lecturing to a party

spending a holiday on the moon, it will

still be an unsolved (though not, I think,

an ultimately unsolvable) problem.

To which, we need only reply: Hiroshima, 1945; Mr. Armstrong on the Moon, 1969. And we are still here, in an admittedly precarious atomic world-thanks to moral and political restraint.

But the even greater danger of arrogant and "rational" predictions unwittingly based on unrecognized prejudice led Haldane to the silliest statement he ever made--one that might be deemed socially vicious if our laughter did not induce a more generous mood. Haldane tries to forecast the revised style of warfare that mustard gas must impose upon future conflicts. He claims that some people have a natural immunity, differently distributed among our racial groups. He holds that 20 percent of whites, but 80 percent of blacks, are unaffected by the gas. Haldane then constructs a truly dotty scenario for future gas warfare: vanguards of black troops will lead the attack; German forces, with less access to this aspect of human diversity, might be at a disadvantage, but their superior chemical knowledge should see them through, and balances should therefore be maintained:

It seems, then, that mustard gas would

enable an army to gain ground with jar less

killed on either side than the methods used

in the late War, and would tend to

establish a war of movement leading to a

fairly rapid decision, as in the campaigns of

the past. It would not upset the present

balance of power, Germany5 chemical

industry being counterposed by French

negro troops. Indians [that is, East Indians

available to British forces] may be expected

to be nearly as immune as negroes.

But now Haldane sees a hole in his argument. He steps back, breathes deeply, and finds a solution. Thank God for that 20 percent immunity among whites!