Freedom vs security in the modern world

MAR 01, 1949

The patterns of secrecy are more difficult to shed than they are to assume and Professor Cushman analyzes them in relation to freedom and security which, he holds, need not become mutually exclusive. This is the text of a speech given before the American Physical Society at its winter meeting banquet in New York City, January 27, 1949, at the Hotel New Yorker.

DOI: 10.1063/1.3066423

Robert E. Cushman

You physicists have pretty well altered the face of the earth. By the atomic bomb and other achievements in nuclear physics, you have revolutionized the science of warfare, upset the equilibrium between nations, and recast many of mankind’s traditional and basic patterns of thought. The physicist of yesterday has plumped himself squarely into some of the toughest issues of statesmanship; the statesman and politician of yesterday is fumbling with the implications of scientific discoveries which he only vaguely understands. While this has been going on, and partly because it has been going on, our relations with the Soviet Union have steadily worsened, until Russia and the Western Democracies now sit glaring malignantly at each other, each wondering what cards the other actually holds, and how and when he proposes to play them.

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More about the authors

Robert E. Cushman, Cornell University.