Free Desperate Games by Pierre Boulle

this field wereeven so bold as to suggest replacing the dreadful ‘slowly’ with ‘at a snail’s pace’, but their colleagues had not been willing to go so far.
    Much to their great fury, the literary
Nobels
had not always managed to win their case and it would have been inhuman to refuse them this innocent satisfaction. Besides, when the meaning of the passage from Milton had been explained to the scientists and they had thought about it, they admitted that the quotation was very relevant: Science could be considered as symbolising the spirit of Goodness, and political forces that of Satan.
    Examples illustrating this point were easy to find.
    …We have given you fire. It was intended to keep you warm in the winter and cook your food. You used it to forge swords and burn down villages.
    We have invented machines to bring relief to humanity. You have transformed them into engines of death, on the earth, the sea and in the air.
    We have given you energy in all its forms. You have used it to raze whole cities to the ground…
    At the conclusion of this warning, Honoured Presidents, we take as proven that you are the least qualified to hold the reins of power in this world or in any of its parts. The depressing outcome of your reigns was that you have worn yourselves out with puerile jealousies, in sterile discussions and wretched quarrels, before destroying whole peoples in deadly wars which were contrary to the scientific spirit, wars which you regarded as being impossible to avoid, after you had done everything to provoke them by your blindness, your ignorance and your recklessness.
    Thus we have arrived at the purpose of this message. Having met in a plenary session, all of us
Nobels
, the
Nobels
of science,
Nobels
of peace, and
Nobels
of literature, are
unanimous
in judging that our duty is to terminate a bizarre and dangerous situation.
    We demand of you that you carry out the only action by which you can be of some use to the world: resign, relinquish all your functions and hand them over to Science, which will take on the task of running the Earth in the best interests of all. According to our judgment in fact, Science alone is qualified for this task. The clumsy experiments carried out in the past by other international organisations have all ended in failure, and it was inevitable that it should be so, for their delegates, designated by insane governments, could not help being devoid of intellect and reason.
    Honoured Presidents, we, the
Nobels
, do not demand power for ourselves. We will make sure that it is entrusted to people who are young enough to demonstrate their dynamism and authority and who have shown signs of their wisdom and scientific knowledge, which we alone are qualified to judge.
    After your resignation, which we would like to happen immediately on receipt of this letter, and while we wait for the government which the world feels it urgently needs, we shall play the roles of provisional guardians of the administrative organisations as they exist at present, and which you should kindly leave in place. Those chosen by us will then take charge of concentrating the present hotchpotch into a few central coherent ministries.
    We have only a few further remarks to add. Though we are convinced that your conscience will have been touched by these truths and that you are prepared to retire, we have however anticipated a contrary outcome and have made the following arrangements:
    1. With no consideration of our respective nationalities, we have all exchanged the results of our most recent research in our various fields. We would like to emphasise that some
of the results would be of special interest to you in the improvement of your offensive and defensive armaments. In addition we have vowed that everything discovered by one of us would be immediately communicated to all the others.
    2. Please be aware also of the following fact, which will probably concern you more for the time being: that a large number