Then as the crowning savagery of war, we Americans wiped out hundreds of thousands of civilian population with the atom bomb in Japan, few if any of the ordinary civilians being any more responsible for the war than were we, and perhaps no more aiding Japan in the war than we were aiding America. Military men are now saying that the atom bomb was a mistake. It was more than that: it was a world tragedy. . . . And the worst of the atomic bomb tragedy is not that not only did the people of the United States not rise up in protest against this savagery, not only did it not shock us to read of this wholesale destruction of men, women and children, and cripples, but that it actually drew from the nation at large approval of this fiendish butchery. . . .

Thus we in America are now deliberately seeking out and developing the most savage, murderous means of exterminating peoples that Satan can plant in our minds. We do it not only shamelessly, but with a boast. God will not forgive us for this.

If we are to avoid extermination, if the world is not to be wiped out, we must find some way to curb the fiendish ingenuity of men who have apparently no fear of God, man, or the devil, and who are willing to plot and plan and invent instrumentalities that will wipe out all the flesh of the earth. And, as one American citizen of one hundred thirty millions, as one in one billion population of the world, I protest with all the energy I possess against this fiendish activity, and as an American citizen, I call upon our government and its agencies to see that these unholy experiments are stopped, and that somehow we get into the minds of our war-minded general staff and its satellites, and into the general staffs of all the world, a proper respect for human life.

May God give us the strength to stand in these times of stress and trial and crisis. May he give us the wisdom and the inspiration to put hate out of our hearts, a hate that is consuming us. May he give us the power as a people to bring our influence to bear that men, mankind, may be saved. I humbly pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.