Russia, the atom and the west
- London Oxford University Press 1958
- 120 p.
These talks were begun in the languor of a summer holiday in Norway, by an author happily ignorant both of the dramatic nature of the international atmosphere of the forthcoming autumn in which they would be delivered and of the attention they would attract on the part of a listening audience obviously thirsty for discussions of just this nature. The result was they had to be thoroughly re written, currently, as days for their respective de livery approached, in the effort to make them respon sive to the questions that were on people's minds at the moment.
For anyone who has once worked in the relatively orderly atmosphere of a governmental planning staff, profiting by expert advice and dealing with questions to which he has been able to give at least the major portion of his professional attention, there is a certain inhibition to be overcome in speaking as an indi vidual, from retirement, about matters of which he only reads, most superficially, in the newspapers. The same problem begins to emerge here which we find in so many other questions of contemporary life: the unavoidable gap between specialized knowledge and public understanding. In consigning these lec tures to the publisher I am acutely conscious that I have been talking about things concerning which I know very little. I have had to ask myself more than once whether I had any justification in speaking publicly about these things at all.