William Jennings Bryan Quotes
In war, science has proven itself an evil genius; it has made war more terrible than it ever was before. Man used to be content to slaughter his fellowmen on a single plane — the earth's surface. Science has taught him to go down into the water and shoot up from below and to go up into the clouds and shoot down from above, thus making the battlefield three times a bloody as it was before; but science does not teach brotherly love. Science has made war so hellish that civilization was about to commit suicide; and now we are told that newly discovered instruments of destruction will make the cruelties of the late war seem trivial in comparison with the cruelties of wars that may come in the future.
Bryan participated as a prosecutor in the infamous Scopes Trial in Tennessee where a school teacher was convicted of a crime for discussing the idea of evolution in a high school classroom. He had written this for his summary to the jury, but the summaries were dispensed with when it was obvious that Scopes would be convicted. He had admitted to breaking the law, but the law itself was on trial.
William Jennings Bryan, 1860-1925, U. S. Secretary of State, U. S. Congressman (Democrat, NB), 3 Time Unsuccessful Democratic Presidential Candidate, Summation written for the Scopes Monkey Trial (1925
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The most important weapons of the time involved gunpowder or other explosives, and the chemist was the most important weapons maker until the middle of the 20th century when a weapons system was first designed that did not use chemical explosives—nuclear weapons. Then the physicists became predominant.
Some think that for Europe, Nuclear Weapons performed this function.
This declaration, drafted by Russell and Einstein two days before Einstein’s death was signed by a number of other prominent scientists.
The atomic bomb had just been used the year before. However, in the next decades, nuclear weapons were not used again as those nations with nuclear capability also had potential enemies with nuclear weapons. The fear of Mutually Assured Destruction prevented nuclear weapons from being used for a long time.
His wife also had a Doctorate in Chemistry—the 2nd woman to achieve that in Germany—and she was distraught that he had been the leading scientist developing not only the poison gas which the Germans introduced in WWI, but he also developed the tactics of use and personally went to the battlefield and supervised the first major gas attacks. This was much against the ethical value of most scientists and Jewish ethics in particular. Haber had been a close colleague of Albert Einstein and the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, and while Einstein was trying to get scientists to sign a petition against the war, Haber was developing the first weapon of mass destruction. After Haber gave this response to his wife, we left to go to the front to supervise another major gas attack. His wife committed suicide. Haber, while a German national hero to militaristic Germany, never again had the kind of pre-war relationship that existed with Einstein and many other fellow scientists.
He was the author of the first “spy novel” and one of the first English writers to use his art and craft to promote public opinion to support more military spending to defend against Germany.
William Jennings Bryan was an American orator and politician from Illinois and Nebraska. Beginning in 1896, he emerged as a dominant force in the Democratic Party, running three times as the party's nominee for President of the United States in the 1896, 1900, and 1908 elections. He also served in the United States House of Representatives and as the United States Secretary of State under Woodrow Wilson. Because of his faith in the wisdom of the common people, he was often called "The Great Commoner".
