Stevenson Stresses Einstein’s Role in Helping U.S. to Win World War Ii

The role which the late Professor Albert Einstein played in helping the United States win World War II and in bringing the Nazi regime to an end was emphasized here tonight by Adlai E, Stevenson, head of the U.S. delegation to the United Nations.

Mr. Stevenson was the principal speaker at a dinner attended by 1, 200 friends of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University. The dinner followed ground breaking ceremonies on the college campus earlier today. At the dinner, it was announced that $7, 000, 000 has been contributed toward the $27, 500, 000 development and expansion program in which the college is now engaged.

Emphasizing that Professor Einstein’s original calculations on mass and energy helped to pave the way for the atomic bomb, Ambassador Stevenson reminded the audience that it was Dr. Einstein who wrote to President Roosevelt at the beginning of the war advising him that the Germans were considering such a weapon. The “Manhattan Project” sprang from Professor Einstein’s initiative, Mr.Stevenson stressed.

Mr. Stevenson recalled that, for a time after World War I, “when all Europe’s governments were more or less civilized and democratic,” Einstein combined support for the League of Nations with a passionate plea for total disarmament. “But such was his down-to-earth sagacity that, on the day that Hitler took over power in Germany, he abandoned pacifism, and even shocked his followers by urging re-armament to resist a government which, he saw at once, had put itself outside the bounds of civilized society, ” the U.S. statesman declared.

“Professor Einstein warned his supporters to beware of the rapturous offers of Communist backing, ” Mr. Stevenson continued. “He was not taken in by Stalin’s peace campaigns. There was at least one man in Europe whom the Nazi-Soviet pact did not take by surprise, ” Ambassador Stevenson said. He added that Einstein spent the last ten years of his life arguing ceaselessly with both sides on the follies of an arms race and the essential need to control all arms in the interests of human survival.

In a special tribute, at the dinner, Dr. Samuel Belkin, president of Yeshiva University, presented silver spades, symbolic of the ground-breaking ceremonies, to donors of over $1, 000, 000. These were given to Mr. and Mrs. Siegfried Ullmann, for their gift of $2, 000, 000, establishing the Ullman Research Center for Health Sciences; and to Mr. and Mrs. David Schwartz and Horace W. Goldsmith, for their gifts of $1, 000, 000 each establishing twin patient care pavilions at the University Hospital.

During the ground-breaking ceremonies, addresses were delivered by U.S. Senator Jacob K. Javits; Professor Hans Albert Einstein, son of the late Albert Einstein; New York State Attorney General Louis J. Lefkowitz; Jack D. Weiler, chairman of the college’s board of overseers; Max K. Etra, chairman of Yeshiva University’s board of trustees, and others.