The issue at hand.

This, the sixtieth anniversary year marking the end of World War II, has received a notable amount of attention. Victory in Europe Day was celebrated May 8 (May 9 in Russia). Victory over Japan Day will be August 15 (August 14 in the United States). But because, as Winston Churchill declared, "History is written by the victors," there has been an overwhelming focus on the virtues of the winners. Given this, it falls to the Humanist to redress the imbalance by offering sober reflections and a broader view. The two articles that constitute this issues cover story thus restore to consciousness significant sagas repressed from that era.

In "The Forgotten Heroes of a Greater Generation" Denis Brasket asks that we give long overdue recognition to those brave individuals of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade who, before it was fashionable and before world war had erupted, fought Adolf Hitler's forces in Spain in the 1930s. Not only were no parades held for and no benefits conferred upon these blooded veterans on their return home, but they were and continue to be vilified, blacklisted, and harassed.

In "How the United States Reversed Its Policy on Bombing Civilians" Sherwood Ross unravels the chain of events that led the United States away from its original, principled opposition to terror bombing and to the deliberate practice of this atrocity in a way that outdid the Axis. Its ultimate expression became the first use of atomic weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, on August 6 and 9, 1945.

But such articles aren't offered as a corrective or rebuttal to mainstream accolades. Their purpose isn't to defame veterans or diminish citizen sacrifices. They are provided as a supplement to an otherwise nearly total devotion to patriotic honorifics. They are published as a reminder that no story is one sided and no victor in war, no matter how noble, is without blemish. And their purpose is to call us to even higher moral aspirations.

Because, in our time, the need for such aspirations is greater than ever. As David Krieger shows elsewhere in this issue, our world harbors some 30,000 nuclear weapons, more than 4,000 of which are maintained on hair-trigger alert. He tells how, fifty years ago, Bertrand Russell, Albert Einstein, and nine other leading thinkers--many of them Humanists--first warned the world "that a war with H-bombs might possibly put an end to the human race." It had been only a decade since Hiroshima but humanity had gone from the ability to destroy cities to the ability to end nearly all life on Earth.

To mark the half century since the Russell-Einstein Manifesto was issued, we reproduce its text in full, calling for a greater moral awareness of our past deeds and misdeeds in war. Perhaps then we might finally, as Russell asked, pressure the governments of the world "to allow their citizens to survive."