Once again we are practicing brinkmanship in a manner that even the late Secretary of State Dulles would have envied. How we have done so and why the American people in the Atomic Age have permitted their government repeatedly to get itself into perilous situations which could escalate into a general nuclear war cannot really be understood without reference to the background of our thinking since World War II. We must separate fact from fiction, which means that we must re-examine critically and objectively the premises and conclusions from which our actions have sprung.