1965. The Future of Humanity

The Flood of Knowledge

Source: "Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt standing next to a boulder at Taurus-Littrow."

September 30, 1965

BILL DOWNS SUBSTITUTING FOR EDWARD P. MORGAN

Anyone who has a child in school, who takes a Sunday drive in his car, or tries to make a dental appointment knows what the population explosion already is doing to our everyday life. And we've all read the (Malthusian) predictions of gloom and doom about the future of our children in the 21st Century, when there may be so many people around that the earth will be unable to feed them. According to some pessimistic population specialists, the female pelvis is a greater threat to civilization than the hydrogen bomb.

That there is genuine cause for concern over today's unbridled birth rate is generally undisputed. And more and more governments -- such as India -- are seeking ways to cut back their populations as a means of fighting poverty and raising their standard of living. But while the birth rate has been booming, another kind of explosion has been building in our modern societies which is having as much impact and far more promise for the future than the rocketing population problem.

It's an intellectual revolution which sometimes is called the "Information Explosion," and the flood of knowledge now being released on the world may provide many of the answers that our children will need to deal with the plethora of people scheduled to inhabit their future. In fact, illustrating the quantum-jump in man's knowledge during the past 2000 years are estimates from the National Education Administration. The NEA say that the total body of human knowledge has doubled in the period from Year One to the eve of the Industrial Revolution of the mid-18th Century.

In other words, it took about 1750 years of scientific and intellectual achievement for the early British and Dutch colonists who settled in America to develop twice the brain power of the Roman Legions who occupied Jerusalem under Pontius Pilate. However, it was the Industrial Revolution which really produced mankind's first explosion of technology through the invention of new machines and the power to run them. The NEA says that the body of knowledge doubled again in the 150 years between 1750 and 1900.

Then the process began to speed up. There was another doubling of human knowledge between 1900 and 1950, and then came the fourth, and biggest, "Information Explosion" of all, again doubling the available knowledge and technology in just ten short years between 1950 and 1960. The Information Explosion is still going on at an appalling rate, and no single human brain can ever hope to catch up with it all.

What it has all proved, thus far, is that the capability of the human mind is unlimited and infinite. What has not been proved is whether mankind has to good sense to survive its nuclear inventions or its passion for reproduction. As a somewhat cynical optimist, we have to believe that humanity has a better than even change to survive itself.

One of the reasons is that every technology, no matter how specialized, has what the scientists call a "spin off," a kind of scientific bonus wherein the new knowledge can be applied for the general use and benefit of the public.

The problem today is that there's so much scientific and technical know-how piling up -- particularly in the government's $15 billion a year research and development programs -- that the so-called "spin off" benefits, which might be of use to the American people, are in danger of being buried or ignored. This is the significance behind what President Johnson calls a "sleeper" bill which he signed several days ago called "The State Technical Services Act of 1965." The purpose of this new program is to diffuse the immense body of new scientific and technological information to business and industries throughout the country.

Technological information centers will be set up in colleges and universities across the land. The idea is to service the nation's business and industrial community, much as the government's Agricultural Extension Service promoted the development, science, and improvement of American farms -- a program which has made the nation's agronomy the envy of the world.

Probably one of the most common "spin-off" benefits Americans have adapted from the government's military experiments is the automobile seat-belt first proved out for safety but the fighter pilots of the air force. But the taxpayer is due to get many more returns for his scientific tax money the National Space Agency is spending.

For example, experiments made on the Mercury and Gemini astronauts already have provided the medical profession with the means of checking a patient's temperature, respiration, heartbeat, and even his brainwaves -- already a boon to surgeons in complicated operations.

And some day you may be able to check into a hospital where you will be plugged into a number of instruments which will provide more careful nursing around the clock than a whole platoon of nurses could give you now. The Space Age already has produced telemetered monitors for people with heart diseases. The instruments record or broadcast a warning if something is going wrong.

And for the future, other space scientists are working on ways of using the brain to put a person to sleep, or to wake him up to aid the astronaut during long journeys through space. And we're told that it may some day be possible to make people shut up just by pushing a button, like I'll do right now.

This is Bill Downs, substituting for Edward P. Morgan, saying good night from Washington.

1945. First Impressions of a Postwar Europe

En Route to the Pacific Theater

Downs approaching Hamburg in May 1945

August 1, 1945

Dear Folks,

For once I have some time to write. Right now we're traveling up the eastern side of India towards Calcutta. After that it will be Chungking, then Manila and then Guam.

Although it's not quite two weeks since we left, it seems more like two years. Impressions have become so mixed and nations so jumbled that I haven't had time to sort out impressions. London, Hamburg, Berlin, Marseilles, Rome, Athens, Cairo, Abadan, Karachi, and Ceylon have made this sort of a kaleidoscope Christmas pudding, but it has been wonderful in its way.

London and Paris were much the same, except that London has the lights on and it looks good after living there in darkness for a couple of years. Ed Murrow was fine and the office was very cordial. Then there was the tragedy of Germany—Berlin is the worst city of the lot...4½ million people once lived there...but it's not fit for 100,000 people now. Paris was the same beautifully gay place, but the French are on the verge of political crisis which may break out this winter. Rome also has the same troubles...a kind of revolutionary atmosphere, although the Italians are fed up with war and strife as everyone else. The right wing politicians and the Italian royalists want us to keep troops in the country. They fear that if we leave them alone they will find themselves with a communist fight on their hands. Greece is the same way...as a matter of fact, everyone seems to be seeing communists behind every tree in Europe these days.

Cairo, where few people ever knew the war was on, now seem little impressed that the war is off. However the businessmen are sad that the soldiers have gone and that they no longer can sell cheap Egyptian souvenirs at ridiculous prices. Then there was that fantastic trip out of the modern world into the Middle Ages, flying over Baghdad and into India...to Karachi on the northwest Indian coast with its sacred white cows and its people with the sensitive faces and the wet sympathetic eyes of the animals they worship. We spent overnight there and everyone managed to get a touch of the notorious eastern dysentery...mine was not so bad and I think I'm about over it now. Then the long flight down the east coast of India to the island of Ceylon, landing at Colombo. Ceylon is far and away the most beautiful place we have touched upon. Paris and Rome have their civilized beauty, but this jungle island with its clean, picturesque natives seem much more genuine than the rest of civilization put together.

We should arrive in Guam about the 15th of this month. It'll be good to get to a base that you can call home for three or four days running at least. We all are running short of clean clothing...someone stole my house slippers you bought me and I'm getting saddle sores from riding this B-17. Incidentally, we've christened her "The Headliner." We have a combat crew that did many missions over Europe and they fly like demons. So everything is okay.

Until we get settled down you will be getting my letters sporadically...but don't worry about me. As you know by now, I can take care of myself. The feeling about the Jap war out here is moderately optimistic...some people give it another six or eight months, but personally I think it will be more than that. Still there is some serious hoping and anticipation that the whole thing will be over before Christmas. If that sounds familiar, remember we were doing the same kind of predicting last year in Europe, so don't take any predictions too seriously. As a matter of fact, no one knows when the damn thing will end.

Give my regards to everyone. All of you write me the news...I hope to have a bale of mail when I get to Guam. Take care of yourselves...and Suze and Randy...

Love,

Bill

____________________________

August 13, 1945

Dear Folks,

Well, I finally made it...and apparently not a minute too soon either. We now are preparing to go into Japan, provided this surrender comes off. Don't know what's wrong but it already has taken three days for the details to be ironed out. We're going to try to be the first into Tokyo...don't know what we're going to meet with, but we have to operate on the assumption that when a nation says it will surrender, it means it. However Jap treachery is notorious...and we'll just have to wait and see.

We went down to Ceylon to Mountbatten's headquarters. It's a lovely place. Then on up to Calcutta. India has to be seen to be believed. The millions of people who live in the world's most abject poverty—the classes and castes. Human dignity gets an awful kicking around there. Then we got into Chungking on the day the Russians declared war on the Japs. I got a story out okay, and during our 24 hour stay managed to have the same poverty as the Indians. But they seem much more alert and happier than any of the Asiatic peoples. Their children are like dolls, and everyone has a great curiosity and is friendly and they laugh a lot.

We went on to Manila, flying over Jap territory in the night, and arrived there in time for the Tokyo announcement of the surrender. Meanwhile we had dropped the first atomic bomb. Manila went wild that night and John Adams, our man there, and I were up all night broadcasting. I think we did a half-dozen broadcasts, then the next morning we got on our plane and came here to Guam. We are billeted in Quonset huts—sort of a modified Nissen hut—sleep four to a room on army cots. All in all it's okay...messing is good for the army.

...

We are drawing kit all over the place for the stay in Japan. No one expects it to be pleasant. I don't know what's going to happen when the war's over. I undoubtedly will be stuck out here someplace for a while. Maybe some place like Tokyo...or Shanghai or Singapore. It's too early to say. But there are a half-dozen guys who have home leave coming before I'll be eligible again...still, it may not be so long at that. The CBS outfit here is like the outfit in Europe...a nice bunch of guys more interested in seeing that the news gets over our network first rather than thinking in terms of personal aggrandizement.

That's about all the news now. You probably won't be hearing from me for a while, but we should be broadcasting like mad. That will keep you in touch. Don't worry about this next show.

...

Love,

Bill

1943. Ambiguity in Soviet-U.S. Relations

Mutual Sympathy Between Peoples

Advertisement in Newsweek, September 20, 1943, p. 37

The parentheses indicate text that did not pass Soviet censors for military security or propaganda reasons.

(For more, see the complete 1943 Moscow reports.)

Bill Downs

CBS Moscow

March 8, 1943

America's ambassador to Russia, white-haired Admiral William H. Standley, tonight (made a statement which is likely to be significant in future relations between the United States of America and the Soviet Union.)

(Ambassador Standley) met news reporters at the big American embassy here in Moscow and made the following statement:

"Ever since I have returned to Russia," he said, "I have been looking for evidence of some recognition of the aid that the Soviet Union is getting from America. I mean not only through Lend-Lease, but also through relief organizations and the Red Cross."

(Ambassador Standley then said that he had seen no sign in Russia that any kind of American aid had reached this country. He said that his figures of arrivals of all sorts of materials confirmed the statement of deliveries to Russia made in Washington the other day.)

The ambassador sat calmly in his chair in his study at the embassy, and declared that, apparently, it was the desire of the Soviet government to give the impression that it was fighting the war on its own resources rather than acknowledge that Russia was receiving help from anyone else.

"In America, the people know all the facts," Ambassador Standley said. "In Russia, the people know very little about it."

Then he added: "It isn't fair to the American public to mislead the people of the United States to think they are helping the Russian people—when in fact, the Russian people know nothing of this help."

Ambassador Standley continued: "The American people, in their sympathy, are digging into their own pockets thinking that this help is going to the Russian people," he said. "Maybe it is, but the Russian people don't know it."

Admiral Standley has been well-liked in Russia for his matter-of-fact frankness. And he was being frank when he went on to say: "Russia is trying to create the impression abroad as well as at home that she is fighting the war alone. She is creating the impression among her own people that they are pulling themselves out of this war by their own bootstraps."

The Admiral continued: "The United States Congress is sensitive. It is generous and big-hearted as long as it feels it is helping someone. But give it the idea that there is no help—then it is a different story."

Earlier, Admiral Standley was asked whether there had been any increased liaison between Russian and American military men regarding exchange of military information for mutual prosecution of the war. The Admiral replied that last year there had been statements about increased exchange of such information. "However," he said, "there has been no change in attitude because of those statements."

(The Admiral said that, even in his personal contact with Russian officials "there has been no recognition of American aid to Russia." "The attitude," he added, "is that there is not enough coming.")

Admiral Standley's statement to the group of American and British reporters comes at a time when the Lend-Lease bill is up before Congress for renewal.

Whatever effect this statement which I just read you is going to have on this bill depends, of course, on domestic statesmanship. And I mean statesmanship, not politics.

Admiral Standley did not say that Russia was failing to recognize aid from the United States because he wanted the Soviet government to issue a statement patting America on the back for what she has sent over here; his statement was designed to bring full knowledge of this aid to the Russian people. I have personally talked to him about this problem before. He believes that it is important that the American people and the Russian people should fully understand each other and their relative positions in this greatest of all wars.

As he said in his statement tonight, the American people realize and sympathize with the stupendous courage and effort with which the Russian people have met the Axis onslaught. But, he said, the Russian people have little idea of the American's feeling for them. Admiral Standley does not want pats on the back—he wants, somehow, some way, to have the feeling of the American people expressed to the people of Russia. He considers this mutual sympathy between peoples as important to the future of the world as an Allied victory over the Axis.

Admiral Standley is 71-years-old, but he has the mind and physique of a man of 55. He has had long service in the United States Navy, and several years ago he was retired. He's what reporters like to call an "old sea dog," except a "young sea dog" would be a better way to describe him.

When he is making a point or emphasizing a statement, he looks straight at you—maybe he'll shake his finger. His eyes seem to shoot out sparks when he gets worked up over a subject. And they were shooting sparks tonight. He told us when he started out, "You can quote me in full on this."

The Admiral returned to Moscow from the United States only on January 6. In Washington he conferred lengthily with President Roosevelt concerning American and Russian relations. When he got back in January he carried a personal note from Mr. Roosevelt to Josef Stalin. Later he again visited the Kremlin with the British chargé d'affaires to deliver the joint note from Mr. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill relating to the Casablanca Conference. This was the last time Ambassador Standley saw Premier Stalin.

Admiral Standley is now waiting for another conference with Russia's Supreme Commander-in-Chief. He returned only two days ago from the American embassy in Kuibyshev by train. It was a three day trip.

"Damned interesting," the Admiral said as we filled out the room. "If you haven't made the trip before, I suggest you do it. See some fascinating things."

Reporters in Moscow have run onto evidence that American armament, food, and supplies are being used in this Russian offensive (although the Russians themselves have never hinted that it is true.)

On the front trips that I have made to Stalingrad and Kharkov during the past few months, I have run into innumerable jeeps and scores of Dodge and GMC trucks. When I first came to Russia I spent the night at the airfield at Gorky. There I drank out of cups made from the cans of potted meat packed in Chicago.

Right now, American tanks are being used in the Central Front offensive around Orel. And American planes are playing a big part in the offensive in the Caucasus.

No mention of these things have appeared in the Russian press except as statements from responsible officials in Washington or London. The Russian press has been publishing the details of the Allied fighting in North Africa. It also has been giving details of the round-the-clock air offensive against Germany and Western Europe. The sinking of the Japanese convoy off New Guinea was also published in full.

There has been no question of suppressing foreign news. (But there has been virtually no publicity whatever from officials or the Russian press concerning the amount of American and British supplies, armament, food, clothing, tanks, and planes sent here.) There has been no mention of what these supplies have meant in the present victorious offensive.

(The Russian people also have no idea of the scope of such American and British organizations such as the Aid to Russia funds and the Red Cross. They know virtually nothing of the tremendous personal interest the people of the United States and other Allied nations are taking in their problems.)

1968. In Defense of the American Superpower

Pax Americana

"Harbor tugs move USS Oklahoma City (CLG-5) alongside USS Providence (CLG-6) for change of 7th Fleet flagship July 7, 1964, at Yokosuka Naval Station, Japan" (Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives.)

Bill Downs

ABC Washington

1968

...Perhaps now is the time, and the 1968 presidential campaigns the place, for a national examination of where the US stands as a world power at a crucial time in her history.

The surprisingly vicious communist Tet Offensive almost guarantees that the US defense budget will go above 80 billion dollars in fiscal 1968 to 1969. And these defense dollars support a most fearsome and unprecedented array of national military force.

The country has more than 3.4 million men and women in uniform—more than a million of them overseas, with American soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen on some kind of duty in virtually every spot on the globe. This includes men manning DEW Line consoles in Arctic Greenland and Alaska as well as scientific missions under Navy command near the South Pole.

There are military attaches and missions with every embassy or legation in every world capital Washington recognizes.

As you know, since the end of World War II the national security of the United States has been based on mutual defense treaties with some 40 nations throughout the globe. Because if the Rome-Berlin to Tokyo axis taught America anything in that costly war that Italy's Fascists kicked off more than 30 years ago, it was that international conflicts are epidemic, engulfing everything in their path; that all modern war tends to become global if the fighting is not carefully confined.

An example of how global US national security has become is demonstrated in the Defense Communications Agency. This Pentagon appendage lists more than 4,000 communication stations in 83 countries...an unprecedented radio and telegraph lash-up that keeps an electronic watch on the military state of the globe. And this does not include the score or so of satellites constantly orbiting the earth and supplementing these communications.

Jerry Green, veteran military correspondent for New York News, wrote recently that "no nation in the world's history—not even the British Empire at the peak of its power—ever committed its military strength so far and so deeply around the earth as has the United States."

In Vietnam, there are more than 510,000 GIs and Marines on the ground. And counting the 90,000 or so men of the US 7th Fleet with its 190 ships and some 700 Navy planes on the carriers there, plus some 55,000 Air Force types under the 7th and 13th Air Force in South Vietnam and Thailand...all told, not counting sea and air logistics personnel which keep the military pipelines to Southeast Asia filled, there are more than 650,000 Americans on military duty in the Southeast Asian battle area.

The military power of the United States is so prodigious that it would be impossible to even list its many missions in the time we have here.

. . .

If you're like me, we come to accept our vast, powerful military establishment more or less like the Americans of the West accept the Rocky Mountains. They are so immensely there that it's impossible to forget their grandeur and their power.

But now the war in Vietnam—and the necessity to limit the fighting to keep it from exploding into World War III—has raised doubts about the efficacy of America's military might. We have failed to force the Hanoi communists to stop their aggression against South Vietnam because we know, and they know, that it is a limited war with limited military and political goals. The opposition by the Viet Cong guerrillas and the regular army units from the North has been much more skilled and dedicated than intelligence reports indicated. The cost of the war in casualties rose to new heights during the Buddhist New Year offensive.

And because of the policy of military restraint, the United States cannot use its Sunday punch: the nuclear weapons which make the nation the most powerful on Earth.

Add to this the American penchant to get any job over with—plus the domestic, economic, and sociological problems with this country—and put it all into a presidential election year. Then it's easy to understand the frustrations of the people. It's even easier to fathom the frustrations of the politicians now running for office.

Some appear to have doubts about the United States' immense power and its purpose, and not only because it has failed to achieve a settlement in Vietnam. There seems to be a growing feeling that even the possession of so much defensive muscle is somehow evil.

They link everyone's aversion to war and the fearful threat of nuclear annihilation with the idea that having tremendous military might makes the United States an automatic bully. They argue that America cannot play policeman to the world, and therefore she should draw in her horns and stop getting mixed up in far away places with strange sounding names.

Some say that a new American isolationism is rooting itself in the frustrations of the US citizenry. And the people who are repeating this arguments, strangely enough, include some of the self-styled liberals; politicians who were among the leaders of economic interventionism and internationalism which made the United States the number one power and leader of the free world after World War II.

As yet, there is no way of judging just how widespread the alleged isolationist sentiment is across the country. But its first manifestations may have come in the New Hampshire primaries, where Minnesota's Senator Eugene McCarthy made such a strong showing.

However, the basic fact remains that, if the United States is going to maintain its world leadership and keep on being a major power among the nations, she is going to have to continue acting like one.

Americans should be proud of their strength and leadership; for their part in building a prosperous world out of the ruins of war; for their ideological leadership toward the goals of freedom and justice; and for the American revolutionary ideals that are still the most powerful political medicine in the world today—and the most enduring, even in the face of the communist promises of proletarian dictatorship.

There's no intent to make with a 4th of July oration here. But when people begin to lose faith in their country, as some appear to be doing in these difficult times, it begins to gall.

For those who say we are over-committed around the world and that the system of mutual defense treaties have no meaning, they should be reminded that, since the formation of NATO, the communists have not been able to take another inch of European territory.

For those who say that freedom is not the business of the United States around the world, let them imagine what the world would have been like had not American arms been ready to repulse the totalitarians over two generations.

And for those who say that the US government should renounce its mutual defense treaties with our allies and retire behind our nuclear-tipped intercontinental missile defenses to a "Fortress America," let them face the consequences of such isolationism without America asserting any leadership or influence on the destiny of the globe outside of this continent.

First, the United States would thus become the world's number one sitting duck and nuclear target.

Second, the country could save a lot of money all right—disregard most of the warships, cut back the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines to continental defense size.

But at the same time, there would be plenty of work for all Americans, because the whole country would be engaged in digging, for the best hope of survival for the United States under such isolated conditions would be to move the whole shebang underground...deep underground.

It's a depressing thought, and I don't believe it will happen. But if the nation had to go into such a whole, there would be little point in ever coming up again.