Letter from Ruth Ellsworth to President Harry S. Truman

25 E. Palmer Avenue Detroit 2, Michigan January 15, 1950 The President 692-8 The White House Washington, D. C. miscel con Dear Mr. President: E The news this week-end has so discouraged me that I can't do the work I am supposed to do, so I am writing you in order to register the thinking of one American citizen and to enlist your added efforts toward world order and not destruction. I have just learned of the possibility of building a hydrogen bomb with destructive powers far greater than those of the atomic bomb. I fear that you who made the decision to use the atomic bomb will make the decision to make the hydrogen bomb. I don't see how you can do it. This is a wonderful world, and we can have a fine time in it if we decide to go on living. But, unfortunately, we are devoting most of our resources and thought and efforts as a nation now to preparing to destroy ourselves. The war to "make the world safe for democracy" made it more unsafe for democracy than before. The war to secure for people freedom from want, and fear resulted in more widespread want and fear. There is no chance to win a modern war. Another war with hydrogen bombs, atomic bombs, and perfected biological warfare will finish us all off. And before we finish ourselves off we will have impoverished ourselves by resources practically to kill ourselves. Are we going to be spending our all on weapons. It will cost us all of our chance so for survival. So why not take the other way which is stupid? If we build the bomb and have a war we have no NATIONAL our only chance? RECORDS SERVICE I regret greatly that Mr. Lilienthal has resigned his post as chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission. He is one of the most intelligent and practically capable men in our country, in my opinion, and most devoted to the nation's welfare. I sincerely hope that the military forces in our government-- the men who know only war and simply do not understand the power of the Christian way of life, will not succeed in forcing the resignation of another smart man, Secretary Acheson. It is right, I am convinced, to stay out of Formosa. I wish that our military leaders could have comprehanded the power of Ghandi's peaceful way of life. They simply don't understand anything