einstein

applauded on their way into the theater, Chaplin memorably (and accurately) noted, “They cheer me because they all understand me, and they
cheer you because no one understands you.” 52
Einstein struck a more serious pose when he addressed the Caltech student body near the end of his stay. His sermon, grounded in his
humanistic outlook, was on how science had not yet been harnessed to do more good than harm. During war it gave people “the means to poison
and mutilate one another,” and in peacetime it “has made our lives hurried and uncertain.” Instead of being a liberating force, “it has enslaved men
to machines” by making them work “long wearisome hours mostly without joy in their labor.” Concern for making life better for ordinary humans must
be the chief object of science. “Never forget this when you are pondering over your diagrams and equations!” 53
The Einsteins took a train east across America for their return sail from New York. Along the way, they stopped at the Grand Canyon, where they
were greeted by a contingent of Hopi Indians (employed by the concession stand at the canyon, though Einstein did not know that), who initiated
him into their tribe as “the Great Relative” and gave him a bountiful feathered headdress that resulted in some classic photographs. 54
When his train reached Chicago, Einstein gave a speech from its rear platform to a rally of pacifists who had come to celebrate him. Millikan
must have been appalled. It was similar to the “2%” speech Einstein had given in New York. “The only way to be effective is through the
revolutionary method of refusing military service,” he declared. “Many who consider themselves good pacifists will not want to participate in such a
radical form of pacifism; they will claim that patriotism prevents them from adopting such a policy. But in an emergency, such people cannot be
counted on anyhow.” 55
Einstein’s train pulled into New York City on the morning of March 1, and for the next sixteen hours Einstein mania reached new heights.
“Einstein’s personality, for no clear reason, triggers outbursts of a kind of mass hysteria,” the German consul reported to Berlin.
Einstein first went to his ship, where four hundred members of the War Resisters’ League were waiting to greet him. He invited them all on board
and addressed them in a ballroom. “If in time of peace members of pacifist organizations are not ready to make sacrifices by opposing authorities
at the risk of imprisonment, they will certainly fail in time of war, when only the most steeled and resolute person can be expected to resist.” The
crowd erupted in delirium, with overwrought pacifists rushing up to kiss his hand and touch his clothing. 56
The socialist leader Norman Thomas was at the meeting, and he tried to convince Einstein that pacifism could not occur without radical
economic reforms. Einstein disagreed. “It is easier to win over people to pacifism than to socialism,” he said. “We should work first for pacifism,
and only later for socialism.” 57
That afternoon, the Einsteins were taken to the Waldorf Hotel, where they had a sprawling suite in which they could meet a stream of visitors,
such as Helen Keller and various journalists. Actually, it was two full suites connected by a grand private dining room. When one friend arrived that
afternoon, he asked Elsa, “Where is Albert?”
“I don’t know,” she replied with some exasperation. “He always gets lost somewhere in all these rooms.”
They finally found him wandering around, trying to find his wife. The ostentatious spread annoyed him. “I’ll tell you what to do,” the friend
suggested. “Lock the second suite entirely off, and you will feel better.” Einstein did, and it worked. 58
That evening, he addressed a sold-out fund-raising dinner on behalf of the Zionist cause, and he finally made it back to his ship just before
midnight. But even then his day was not over. A large crowd of young pacifists, chanting “No War Forever,” cheered him wildly as he reached the
pier. They later formed the Youth Peace Federation, and Einstein sent them a scrawled message of encouragement: “I wish you great progress in
the radicalization of pacifism.” 59
Einstein’s Pacifism
This radical pacifism had been building in Einstein throughout the 1920s. Even as he was retreating from the fore of physics, he was becoming,
at age 50, more engaged in politics. His primary cause, at least until Adolf Hitler and his Nazis took power, was that of disarmament and resistance
to war. “I am not only a pacifist,” he told one interviewer on his trip to America. “I am a militant pacifist.” 60
He rejected the more modest approach taken by the League of Nations, the international organization formed after World War I, which the United
States had declined to join. Instead of calling for complete disarmament, the League was nibbling at the margins by trying to define proper rules of
engagement and arms control. When he was asked in January 1928 to attend one of the League’s disarmament commissions, which was planning
to study ways to limit gas warfare, he publicly proclaimed his disgust with such half measures:
It seems to me an utterly futile task to prescribe rules and limitations for the conduct of war. War is not a game; hence one cannot wage war by
rules as one would in playing games. Our fight must be against war itself. The masses of people can most effectively fight the institution of war
by establishing an organization for the absolute refusal of military service. 61
Thus he became one of the spiritual leaders of the growing movement led by War Resisters’ International. “The international movement to refuse
participation in any kind of war service is one of the most encouraging developments of our time,” he wrote the London branch of that group in
November 1928. 62
Even as the Nazis began their rise to power, Einstein refused to admit, at least initially, that there might be exceptions to his pacifist postulate.
What would he do, a Czech journalist asked, if another European war broke out and one side was clearly the aggressor? “I would unconditionally
refuse all war service, direct or indirect, and would seek to persuade my friends to adopt the same position, regardless of how I might feel about the
causes of any particular war,” he answered. 63 The censors in Prague refused to allow the remark to be published, but it was made public
elsewhere and enhanced Einstein’s status as the standard-bearer of pacifist purists.
Such sentiments were not unusual at the time. The First World War had shocked people by being so astonishingly brutal and apparently
unnecessary. Among those who shared Einstein’s pacifism were Upton Sinclair, Sigmund Freud, John Dewey, and H. G. Wells. “We believe that
everybody who sincerely wants peace should demand the abolition of military training for youth,” they declared in a 1930 manifesto, which Einstein
signed. “Military training is the education of the mind and body in the technique of killing. It thwarts the growth of man’s will for peace.” 64
Einstein’s advocacy of war resistance reached its peak in 1932, the year before the Nazis seized power. That year a General Disarmament
Conference, organized by the League of Nations plus the United States and Russia, convened in Geneva.
Einstein initially had grand hopes that the conference, as he wrote in an article for the Nation, “will be decisive for the fate of the present
generation and the one to come.” But he warned that it must not merely content itself with feckless arms-limitation rules. “Mere agreements to limit
armaments confer no protection,” he said. Instead, there should be an international body empowered to arbitrate disputes and enforce the peace.
“Compulsory arbitration must be supported by an executive force.” 65