Atomic weapons and East - West relations

Author want to express his deep appreciation of the invitation of the Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge, to give the Lees Knowles Lectures on Military Science. He chose for his subject what is by far the most important and the most difficult problem confronting military thought and action today: the effect of atomic weapons on war and on the relations between the Eastern and Western groups of powers. The three chapters of this book follow closely the three lectures as given in the spring of 1956.
In the first he have outlined what, at the present time, is being thought, said and written in Western military and political circles about the acute controversy as to the role of atomic weapons in Western military planning.
In the second chapter he have collected together those main published facts about atomic weapons, their carriers, and the defence against them, which seem of chief importance for the understanding of the factual basis of the present controversies.
In the last chapter he have attempted to do two things. he have tried to filter out from the multitudinous events of the past decade those more important subjective factors, both political and personal, which seem to him to have played an essential part in leading to the past and present climate of opinion. Unless these factors are remembered, much in the present remarkable situation must remain inexplicable.