Speech to the UN on Atomic Energy
by British Prime Minister Clement Attlee

June 19, 1946

The coming of the atomic bomb was only the last of a series of warnings to mankind that unless the powers of destruction could be controlled, the immense ruin and almost annihilation would be the lot of the most highly civilized portions of mankind. I welcome, therefore, the decision to remit the whole problem of the control of atomic energy to a commission of the United Nations organization.

In this discovery we can see set clearly before us intangible form, the question that faces the modern world. Here is an invention, fraught with immense possibilities, on the one hand, of danger, and on the other, the advantage to the human race. It is for the peoples of the world, through their representatives, to make their choice between life and death.