“This time last year,” I thought. For the voice, asking its rather staggering questions over the long-distance wire, yesterday, was the same voice that had telephoned this time last year, almost to a day. It belongs to a friend who has spent a good many years in public life and public service. There was the same tenseness in his voice now as there had been a year before, but for reasons as different as if, in the meantime, the world had spun over on its axis and reversed its poles. Then the voice had seemed to me curiously optimistic (the Hungarian revolt was on). Now it seemed to be speaking from the bottom of a pit (Sputnik II had been launched the day before). Until that moment, I had not realized, could scarcely have believed possible, the degree of alarm that the second Communist moon had stirred in the West.
The voice said: “Suppose the Russians have one hundred rockets of the thrust that launched the second Sputnik, and that the rockets have hydrogen warheads. Suppose they are trained on the United States. Will the Russians first give us an ultimatum in the hope of taking our technology intact? Or will they launch the rockets without any ultimatum? Certain quarters,” the voice went on, “have put that question to their Communist experts. What would your answer be?” As put to me, it was a purely personal, unofficial question; I am not a Communist expert. Perhaps that is why, instead of reaching for a graph, I thought: “This time last year . . .” Let us remember that time a little, because it bears both on my friend’s question and my answer.
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