Well, Nigel, apropos of nuclear insanity:

Only part of us is sane: only part of us loves pleasure and the longer day of happiness, wants to live to our nineties and die in peace, in a house that we built, that shall shelter those who come after us. The other half of us is nearly mad. It prefers the disagreeable to the agreeable, loves pain and its darker night despair, and wants to die in a catastrophe that will set back life to its beginnings and leave nothing of our house save its blackened foundations.

[Rebecca West, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon]


President Truman to the officers of the Augusta, reported in the Times on 7 August 1945: The experiment has been an overwhelming success.

The same paper the next day:

The fundamental power of the universe, the power manifested in the sunshine that has been recognised as the sustaining force of earthly life, is entrusted at last to human hands.

Daily Express, 10 August 1981:

The neutron weapon is for Western Europe today what the English longbow was for Henry V and his army at Agincourt in 1415.

Ah yes, all totally sane. Of course! How insulting to declare that advocates of nuclear weapons are insane!