Perhaps the greatest outrage in the Middle East is the way the Israelis have been treated in comparison with the Egyptians. That this has been allowe… - Frederick Lindemann, 1st Viscount Cherwell

Why is it that we have nothing to compare with these great technological universities in this country? The main reason, I fear, is because we suffer from a most lamentable type of intellectual snobbery which causes the majority of our so-called educated people to look down on science and technology as some form of menial intellectual activity, on which civilised, cultured people need not embark and indeed are better without. I am not sure that traces of it have not survived even to this day in this House. I well remember—admittedly it was a good many years ago—mentioning to a Member of your Lordships' House a relative of his, the great Lord Rayleigh, certainly one of the six greatest physicists in the world. His comment was: "Oh, yes, he is a little odd, isn't he?—interested in chemistry and that sort of thing." That was what he said of one of the greatest physicists this country has known. It is to that attitude of mind, which has by no means died out, that many of our troubles are due.

[W]e are told that no nation can stand out against world opinion; that we can rely upon the moral forces of the Assembly's resolution. Surely this is more wishful thinking. What is more, it is flatly contradicted by experience. For several years now U.N.O. has condemned Egypt for refusing to allow the passage of Israel's ships through the Suez Canal in direct conflict with its obligations under the 1888 Treaty. Has the moral force of this condemnation had any effect on the Egyptians? None whatever. By a huge majority U.N.O. has called upon Russia to withdraw its troops from Hungary. Has the moral force of this resolution had any effect? Ask the Hungarians. If the Russians do not comply, we are told, they will be branded by the Assembly. The trouble is, that they have been branded already, and they do not seem to mind.

Man is indeed a strange mass of contradictions. Here we are, microscopic creatures scuttling about on the surface of a minor planet circling round a second-rate star in one of half-a-million galaxies. In some ways our minds are so capacious and penetrating. We can judge the weight and composition of stars whose light started before man appeared on this earth. We can unveil the secrets of the nuclei which are so small that if we could put together as many of them as there are drops of water in the ocean they would together scarcely form a particle visible with a microscope. Yet we seem to be unable to order our own affairs so as to avoid exterminating one another. Perhaps the threat of this new weapon may in the end bring home to the various nations the overriding need of finding means, at no matter what cost and sacrifice, of reaching agreement without resort to force. We must pray that this will be achieved in time, for if it is not then the end of civilized life on this planet is at hand.