MOSCOW

IME will come when no-
where on the earth will
man exploit man, when the
causes that engender jars and

prevent the peoples from end-

ing poverty and hunger will,

no longer exist.

Rid of capitalism, the peoples
will, at long last, be able to tackle
the job of remaking our planet
according to a scientific plan.

With a thrifty master’s careful
eye, man will examine the con-
tinents and oceans, the moun-
tains and the plains and decide
what has to be altered and re-

shaped.

He will institute a balance
sheet of matter and energy, of
water and~coal, oil and metal.

And first of all he will turn his
mind to preventing the squan-
dering of sunshine, of the light
and heat which the sun sends
down to our earth.

The earth is a huge receiver.
All the greenery that grows on
it collects the sunshine and con-
verts it into the fixed chemical
energy of leaves, branches, tree
trunks, fruit and grain.

But it is not only the plants
that absorb the energy of the
sun, It is that energy ‘that
warms the soil under our feet,
that sets in motion the ocean
currents and the air currents
over the earth. :

By turning water into steam
the sun’s rays lift 608,000 cubic
miles of water a year, which is
equivalent to the amount of wa-
ter in eight such large bodies of
water as Lake Baikal.

All the electric-power plants
and other generating machinery
created by man produce 100,000
times less energy than the earth
gets from the Sun.

What share of this bounty does
man avail himself of?

Plants convert into chemical
energy only from one to two per-
cent of the sunshine that falls
on the leaves. And cultivated
plants occupy only one-tenth of
the earth’s land surface.

In other words, plants gather
for us no more than 0.1 or 0.2
percent of the solar energy that
reaches the earth. :

By extending the agricultural

area and increasing harvest yield, --

man will go beyond this limit
and make plants collect more
and more sunshine for him.

Then again, he will intervene
imperiously, in the work of an-
other sunshine-consumer, namely
water.

Like a giant motor, the sun
drivas the water along the ocean
— land — ocean cycle.

To prevent energy from being
wasted here too, we must direct
thig cycle rationally and accord-
ing to plan.

The water must not be allow-
ed to reach the ocean until it
has done everything it can for
man.

By changing the flow of rivers
in Africa, man will be able to
irrigate the Sahara and Kalahari
deserts with the moisture that
falls in the equatorial zone.

Australia suffers from droughts
which often recur several years
in succession. But there is plenty
of water below the surface in
Australia and all that is required
is artesian wells.

In India, the harvest depends
upon the rains brought by the
monsoons, In rainless years the
country is afflicted with famine.
But India can alter this state
of affairs by harnessing the swift,
fickle rivers flowing down from
the Himalayas.

Water must be made to work
more, much’ more, than it is
working now.

In India, 70 percent of all the
power used for economic pur-
poses is the muscle power of
humans and beasts, while the po-

tentialities of water power re--

main untapped.

Man gets 1,500,000. kilowatts
from the Niagara Falls — he
‘could get 5,000,000.

The great rivers of Africa flow
to the ocean over gigantic ter-
races, forming rapids and water-
falls. These rivers too could be
put to work for man.

But rivers are not only sour

_ the

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This map shows part of the Soviet plan for the “transformation of nature.”

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ces of power and irrigation, they
are transportation routes. Sub-
merging the rapids in the Afri-
ean rivers could provide great
waterways in places where loads
are still carried on the backs of
camels or human beings.

Africa has more than double
the water power resources of
North America. Land suitable
for farming, but practically un-
touched as yet, covers an area
one and a half times the size
‘of Europe. t

The malarial mosquito will dis-
appear together with swamplands
which will be drained. f

And where there is a dearth

_ of water, man will slow down its

journey to the rivers, as is being
done in the arid steppelands of
the Soviet Union today. y

The eresult will be a more hu-
mid climate in the steppe. And
drought will be dispensed with,
for the fields will receive more
water. Tamed rivers will no lon-
ger flood cities in the spring,
and will have a greater volume
of water in the summer.

e :

One gram of Uranium-235 pro-
duces as much energy as three
tons of coal. Professor Joliot-
Curie tells us that a single car-
load of nuclear fuel would pro-
vide twice as much energy as
electric power plants of
France generate in a year.

Big technical difficulties have
to be surmounted before atomic
energy can’ be made to run air-
craft and automobile engines. As
things stand today, reinforced
conerete shields weighing dozens
of tons would be required to pro-
tect the driver or pilot from the
effects of harmful particles and
rays. But even now or in the
very near future, men could build
in many spots of the earth pow-
erful electric plants using eee
lear fuel.

Plants of this kind are oe
most in places with little coal
and water power. Atomic energy
will help to develop the “blank
spots” on the world’s economic
map, the barren expanses which
are still without rail transport.
for it is easier to ship a ton of
uranium by plane than to build
a railway to transport millions
of tons of coal.

As time goes on’and new me-
thods are devised to protect man
from harmful rays, the atomic
engine will appear first on big
ships, and then on locomotives,
aircraft and automobiles.

‘

yt ay i

By M. ILIN

AE ee

And the long-awaited day will

then also arrive when the first
interplanetary craft, equipped
with an atomic jet engine, will
take off from the earth.
e
In the USSR atomic energy is
already becoming a powerful new
means for remaking the pattern
of nature. The words of the So-
viet Union’s Foreign Minister, A.
Y. Vyshinsky, spoken at the UN
General Assembly here, have re-
sounded throughout the world:

“We have set atomic energy
to perform great tasks of peace-
ful construction, we want to
put atomic energy to use in
levelling mountains, changing
‘the course of rivers, watering
deserts, and laying new life
lines in places where the foot
of man has rarely stepped.”

One has only to glance at the
map of the world to see that
there are many places where the
earth’s surface ought to be
changed to serve the purposes of
man,

@:

With the aid of atomic energy.
we could make the African cli-
mate more humid, by changing
the course of the rivers and di-
recting them into the heart of
the continent. Trapped in the
huge bowl that occupies one-third
of Africa, the water could not
get away to the ocean so quick-
ly. It would evaporate again and
again from the reservoirs and
the leaves of plants and return
again and again in the form of
rain. Thus, a continent now
scorched by the sun would be

made much more congenial to

human. habitation.

_ Africa has few natural har-
bors. But its coast line could be
altered and artificial harbors con-
structed where required. :

In South America, the Cordil-
leras wall off the continent from
the ocean, Trains have to vie
with aircraft in the Peruvian
Andes — they climb to a height
of close on 16,000 feet. A few
atomic explosions could cut a

wide gateway in the Andes, giv-

ing convenient access to the sea-
board. And the winds from the

‘sea would come in through this

gateway, bringing moisture to
fields that constantly suffer from
drought.

Just as the seulptor moulds
clay to the desired form, man

Pree tL LT Gee eo

could remould the features of the
earth and alter the coast lines
to fit in with his plans and pur-
poses, '

With the help of atomic ener-

gy man will in time learn to
make air currents as well do his
bidding. By causing artificial
cyclones in the Arctic, by eva-
porating sea water with the aid
of “atomic” heat, by warming
the masses of cold Arctic air,
he will ‘manage’ the weather
and produce conditioned climates
for whole continents.

The earth does not always use
the energy of the sun to man’s
best advantage; it may expend
too much heat in April, and too
little in May.

But when man becomes strong
enough to intervene and adjust
nature’s allowances of heat, he
will be able to divert heat to the
cold regions and send currents
of cool air to high-temperature
areas,

Inspecting his balance sheet of
matter and energy, he will trans-
fer thousands of cubic miles of
water, millions of tons of matter
and billions of calories of heat
to where he requires them.

Whenever the cities and fac-
tories in the north find them-
selves short of power, their sup-
ply will be augmented from the
south or if water is needed for
the fields in the east, it will be
directed there from the wést.

Ore, coal, oil, salt and stone
will all flow in a mighty stream
from the crust of the earth to
automatic factories, there to be
transformed into the things that
man must have.
eo : i

Man individually is small and
weak compared with a mountain

_ or a waterfall, but the collective

minds of millions will compel
nature to remake nature. And
all man will have to do will be
to stand and direct.

All arduous,
uncreative work will be left to
machinery, with people doing
only such werk as is beyond the
capacity of the mindless machine.

Just think what quantities of
human time and labor — the
most valuable of all things in

this world — are being uselessly |

squandered in the capitalist coun-
tries,

There is work without end to
be done on the earth — yet the

capitalist world has 45,000,00 un-

employed, who do not know
where to find work that would

jin. and day out,

monotonous and

save them from starvation.
Human hands, feet, and backs
continue, as hundreds of years
ago, to perform the most diffi-
cult and burdensome labor on
the plantations of Africa and La-
tin America, though this work
could well be done by machines.
And this applies not only to the .
colonies and dependencies; in the
imperialist countries too, you will
find plenty of mines, factories
and construction projects where
human labor is squandered and
where people are employed, day
on work that
ought to be left to machines.
The capitalist system rapaci-

ously destroys and exhausts not a

only the earth, but the people who
live and work on it.

This criminal waste will be
stopped when exploitation disap-
pears from the world and when ~
all the resources of science and —
technology are put to easing the
labor of man and making it a
source of joy to him.

Even now the working day
could be cut in half if people
were freed at least from the
menace of war.

Not so long ago Professor Jo-
liot-Curie ‘told a mass meeting
in Bombay: :

“Do the workers realize that
of eight hours in field or fat-
tory, four are used to pay for
armaments! and armed forces
that are wholly unproductive?
Even more serious is the fact
that these four hours are em-
ployed to prepare the destruc-
tion of alf that is produced
during the other four.”

In the ancient legend Sisyphus
had to push up a hill a huge
stone that kept rolling down
again, The Sisyphuses of today
spend half their time destroying
what has been produced in the
other half. So it is that imperia-
lism dooms hundreds of millions
to truly Sisyphean labor.

Imperialism — that is the force
that plots war and stands bet-
ween humanity and its happi-
ness.

Atomic energy can be a tre-
mendous gain for mankind, but
there are men who would con-
vert it into an instrument for
destroying whole cities and all
the people that live in them, in-
eluding little children, women
and old folk.

In November last year, Law-
rence R. Hafstad, director of
Reactor Development in America
published an articles in the Bul-
letin of the Atomic Scientists in |
which he engaged in some very
peculiar calculations, He calcu-
lated what the atomic bomb is
“worth” on the basis of the am-
ount of destruction it can cause,
arrived at a colossal figure and
drew the conclusion that the
military employment of atomic
energy is much more profitable
than its civilian use. Moreover,
he ‘maintained, civilian use of
atomic® energy is simply “pie in
the sky,” whereas the bomb is
something “real” -

We: would be equally warranted

saat bel producing the following argu-

ment. A match, as everyone —
knows, costs very little. On the
other hand, if used to set fire to
a big house, it can dastroy a
great deal of property.

And so, according to Hafstad’s
line of reasoning, it is much more
_ profitable tc set fire to houses
than to use matches for such
peaceful, but “unprofitable” pur-
poses, as, say, lighting cigarettes.

There you have it — the logic
of those who would ‘set fire not
to a single house — but ‘2 the
whole world!

There! are other reasons too,
why the imperialists are trying
so hard to hinder the civilian
use of atomic energy. One of

. these reasons is that atomic en-

ergy will undoubtedly, in the fu-
ture, be much cheaper than any
other kind.

From the common sense point
of view this would seem a very
good thing, because the cheaper
energy is, the more widely can |
it be used. And cheap atomic
energy could be used, among
other things, to heat houses and
do away with stoves, fireplaces
and kitchen ranges. ce

But here the representatives ‘

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PACIFIC TRIBUNE — NOVEMBER 17, 1950 — PAGE 4

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