THE WEEK

• Ellis Island is for sale again—reportedly because no governmental use can be found for it. Why not establish on it a government-financed research project, to do research on the question, What governmental use can be made of Ellis Island?

• Is there more to the menace of the Sputniki than the rocketry needed to put them into orbit? Numerous Washington rumors answer Yes. And so does a cryptic statement in a recent television interview by Lt. General Clarence Irvine, Deputy Chief of Staff for Material. Rockets may not cut much ice in the all-out wars of the future. What we may get instead is peace-platforms, manned by human beings, able to terrorize nations by threatening to release their hydrogen bombs. In a word, we move closer and closer to the imaginaries of science fiction. If space platforms are the ultimate weapon, who will have the first one? Dr. Edward Teller’s mood about these things is not reassuring. He told someone the other day, in response to a question, that he did indeed think that in his lifetime Americans would reach the moon. What would they find there? “The only thing I’m reasonably sure they would find,” said Dr. Teller, “is Russians.”

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• Ellis Island is for sale again—reportedly because no governmental use can be found for it. Why not establish on it a government-financed research project, to do research on the question, What governmental use can be made of Ellis Island?

• Is there more to the menace of the Sputniki than the rocketry needed to put them into orbit? Numerous Washington rumors answer Yes. And so does a cryptic statement in a recent television interview by Lt. General Clarence Irvine, Deputy Chief of Staff for Material. Rockets may not cut much ice in the all-out wars of the future. What we may get instead is peace-platforms, manned by human beings, able to terrorize nations by threatening to release their hydrogen bombs. In a word, we move closer and closer to the imaginaries of science fiction. If space platforms are the ultimate weapon, who will have the first one? Dr. Edward Teller’s mood about these things is not reassuring. He told someone the other day, in response to a question, that he did indeed think that in his lifetime Americans would reach the moon. What would they find there? “The only thing I’m reasonably sure they would find,” said Dr. Teller, “is Russians.”