It’s all very well, Mr Foster, to call for a rational process in political discussion of science policy, but how do you propose to obtain it? Suppose there were political charges that the Army had been stabbed in the back in the last war, and that only military strength could return the country to its former status? Suppose the legislature and Executive were filled with politicians who propagated fear of subversion and maleficence from vaguely motivated evil-doers all around us?

No matter that our country had a magnificent tradition of humane culture, of the highest standards in research of both physical and biological sciences, our country could still be captured by the Nazi Party. Certainly the honor roll of politicians defending our civil liberties is as short of the same roll in 1933 Germany.

I to my sorrow have no sure answer to the question myself. I submit the situation is not in any real way addressed by asking the political system suddenly to adopt rational processes of consideration, that’s all.

I submit that an organized party separate from the two compromised and corrupt parties presently engaged in irrational posturing in our nation’s capital has a greater sense of fitting the proportion of the solution to that of the problem.