Remarks to Members of the American Physical Society.

Dr. Townes, Nobel Laureates, most distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen:

In the last week I have visited with the Presidents of our neighboring republics in this hemisphere. Yesterday I came in contact with the leaders of the European community.

I am very thankful that I have the chance tonight to keep a commitment that I had to come here and meet with you, because no group of Americans is more important or really has more to offer freedom in the world and peace in the world and this great land that we all love than you--the American Physical Society.

The world of physics is a new world to most Americans. It burst upon us first as the source of an awesome instrument of war back in 1945--a weapon which continues to profoundly affect the course of our history. And we are only now beginning to truly realize the impact which the physical sciences hold for the work of peace in the world.

We are becoming aware that physics is the source of a great ferment that has penetrated every aspect of our intellectual life:

--It has shaken our ideas of space and of time.

--It has replaced our old ideas of nature with the theory of relativity, and with new theories of the atom, and

--It is very rapidly revolutionizing the most practical aspects of our civilization. So I think it is good for all of us who are here in this room tonight to realize that when the history of our times is written the names of scientists such as Einstein, Oppenheimer, von Neumann, Fermi and many others will figure very prominently among those who helped not only to defend this Nation and preserve it, but to build it. In a time of war, they gave us the nuclear bomb--but they also started us on the course of peaceful nuclear power. They started us to new advances in medicine; to the computer revolution whose scope we are just beginning to imagine.

Those subjects I explored in depth today in connection with the trust and the hope and prayer that we have that we will be able to evolve a nonproliferation treaty.

These men that I have mentioned were great patriots. I think that this Nation and liberty-loving people throughout the world will forever remain in their debt.

The breathless advance of scientific thought has produced a world which our fathers would never have imagined. The transistor radio, the microwave communication links, television, and atomic energy are based on knowledge which had not even been discovered when you were children. The new ultraminiature devices which guide our spaceships and are giving us new medical tools are all the products of the last 10 years. In our universities and in our industries, creative minds are daily discovering new truths and other creative minds put these truths to work for the benefit of all humanity.

We just must not relax our efforts. I have seen in Europe this week, in Asia last month, and in Latin America within the fortnight that the whole world now looks to science to help it meet its growing need--and that need is great for food, for better health, and for a better life. But it looks, too, to science to broaden its horizons, to provide a fresh new view of man and the universe, and, above all, to conquer our ancient prejudices.

You members of the American Physical Society are the workers on the frontiers of understanding. Science is so powerful as a force for change in the world that scientists must play a most important and an increasing role in the international affairs of the world. The country will need the help of scientists, including a large and strong contingent of physicists, if we are ever to be able to deal effectively with the central problems of the present and the future, to deal with the problems of peace in the world, and the welfare of three-quarters of the population of the earth who tonight live on the narrow edge of existence.

I am very privileged that you should ask me to come here. I am very grateful for the contribution you have made. I need your help and your support in the trials and tribulations that go with the leadership that is incumbent upon this great land of ours.

I commend you for the role that you have played in the development of physics in this country. I commend you for the role that you have played in photography. And I commend you for your leadership in fostering international understanding. That is the thing that we need most.

Every day, good people, wise people, say to me, "Why can't we have a political settlement? Why can't we understand our fellow human beings? Why can't we negotiate a solution? Why do men have to die?"

And I ask myself that every morning and I reflect on it every evening.

I want to negotiate. I want a political solution. I want--more than any human being in all the world--to see the killing stopped. But I can't just negotiate with myself.

Maybe somehow, some way, sometime there will be somebody willing to sit down at the table and talk instead of kill, discuss instead of fight, reason instead of murder.

And when they do, I will be the first one at that table--wherever it is.

I should like to conclude now by saying to you that I look forward to your contributions to the progress of mankind in the future, because I have said to that dedicated public servant and my cherished friend, Dr. Hornig, "I know of no group anywhere that has spent more time and more effort in the present to try to bring about a better world." Thank all of you so much.