ABSTRACT
The most important lessons of this terrifying chapter of human history, now mercifully ended. It seems that there are only two. One is entirely negative, but has at last been recognized by the governments of the super-powers, if not as yet by the governments of other minor nuclear powers. The second lesson, although apparently positive in form and content, calls for so many qualifications and is as patently incomplete as it stands, that it can hardly be regarded as a great leap forward in the history of the nuclear age. The supreme lesson of the nuclear age is that the most urgent interest of all governments is human survival, and that for this reason the strongest instruments of war will have to be given a radically altered role in human life. These lessons make up the intellectual capital which mankind has accumulated from the years of Cold War.
