Arms and the Man: The Brave New World for Scientists
Speyer, Edward
All the benefits mankind may some day gain from atomic energy and space travel cannot hide the fact that the main reason science has recently been catapulted into importance is its ability...
...But only political rhetoric, not political policy, is affected by the ballot box, and petitions do not change major policies...
...Techniques currently available...
...Still, quite a few scientists did protest the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan...
...For example, the most strongly worded section ("The Responsibility of Scientists") of the declaration issued at Vienna in September 1958, never gets beyond such phrases as, "In the eyes of the people of many countries, science has become associated with the development of weapons...
...Scientific ability is only one of many talents to be converted into an important commodity...
...the scientists have been assimilated...
...Should scientists stick to their laboratories and let the paths that science should follow be decided by non-scientists...
...The most active among a membership of about 500 are largely Quakers, and shy of political action...
...ANYONE WHO BELIEVES, as the author does, that the questions raised in the third paragraph of this article should be answered in the negative, ought to welcome the resurgence of an anti-war movement such as a boycott of weapons research...
...If one considers side by side the willingness to sacrifice innocent lives in wartime and the present unwillingness to protest the preparations for the next war (or the similar unwillingness before the last war), it is hard to accept at face value the justification that scientists in every country must help to kill as efficiently as possible whenever political and military leaders offer to pay them...
...they would have to forfeit their jobs and their "recognition...
...The Franck Report was a credit to the moral character of those who initiated and supported it, but it was doomed to failure...
...Weather studies themselves, especially possible weather modifications, are considered as military strategies, e. g., in terms of starving or freezing an enemy country...
...Michael Amrine writes at the end of his history of the Manhattan Project, The Great Decision: "The dreams of victory ended with the reality of achievement, and ever since we have been troubled by the face that victory wore...
...We deplore the conditions which lead to this situation...
...We were there as individuals, not representatives of the government, although I think we carried with us the confidence of the government...
...What would have happened if they had taken a strong stand against dropping the A-bombs on Japan...
...and recognize them simply as fellow citizens in the marketplace...
...1. Why Did They Work to Create the Atom Bomb...
...Subsequently, the leader of the group, von Weizsacker, backtracked...
...Such discussions were held among the colleagues of the men who, at the beginning of the war, had been terrified that the Germans might develop the Bomb without "moral restraint regarding its use...
...To this day, the atomic scientists have not publicly denounced the use of the weapon with "no moral restraint" which our side showed the world...
...The American delegation included the recently appointed Special Assistant to the President for Science and Technology...
...God forbid...
...The SSRS raises no questions as to the causes of the decline of the scientific conscience (just as the Women's Christian Temperance Union sees no reason to investigate the social or psychological roots of alcoholism...
...An historical task seems to rally to itself the kind of people who are capable of performing it...
...Scientists boycotting (and picketing) weapons research is just such a visible "unfair" tactic...
...Ryokichi Sagane of the Imperial University at Tokyo...
...The internationalism of science and the ready friendship extended across na tional, political, and racial boundaries is further exemplified by the subsequent his tory of this letter...
...For better or worse, ours is a government of, by, and for pressure groups and lobbies...
...They do not stray far from the "line" of their own countries' politicians...
...The 1960 conference, held in Moscow, was attended by every member of the Presidium of the Soviet Academy of Science—and science is nationalized in Soviet Russia...
...B. Society for Social Responsibility in Science The purpose of the SSRS, according to its constitution, is "to foster throughout the world a functioning cooperative tradition of personal moral responsibility for the consequences for humanity of professional activity, with emphasis on constructive alternatives to militarism...
...Many scientists and non-scientists seriously misunderstood (i.e., had "dreams" about) the nature of the war they were aiding, and the postwar period has been remarkable for its lack of rethinking and hindsight re-evaluating...
...All the benefits mankind may some day gain from atomic energy and space travel cannot hide the fact that the main reason science has recently been catapulted into importance is its ability to advance the technology of warfare...
...The Bulletin limits its horizons to what "now seems practicable" to everyone...
...Why was Einstein out of it altogether...
...The questions asked above can only be answered from a standpoint which unites, rather than separates, the ideals of science and of social welfare...
...However, they have been all but taken over by the government agencies they were by-passing...
...The majority of jobs in science today are subsidized, directly or indirectly, by military agencies, so that if any considerable number of scientists were to refuse further military work, their alternative would not be to return to nonmilitary research, but to leave scientific work.* They would thus set themselves off from their colleagues and from society at large, for it is more respectable to accept the new state of affairs than to resist it...
...The only limits and denials accepted have been those imposed by the scientific problems themselves...
...The Bulletin is a liberal monthly magazine, comparable in political outlook to the Reporter or the New Republic...
...The letter, surprisingly, reached Sagane, who after the war sent it back to one of the three senders...
...It warned of the increasing difficulty of outlawing atomic weapons, of the effect on America's moral and political prestige, of the need for American and British public participation in the fateful decision...
...The more our society is diversified, the more alike become the problems faced by different sectors...
...The conferences have discussed, and issued statements on, such problems as nuclear disarmament, inspection and control, and the need for negotiations between the two Power Blocs...
...Since the survival of civilization itself is at stake, is not opposition to, or abstention from, the defense effort hopelessly idealistic...
...The historic fact remains, and must be judged in the after-time, that the decision whether or not to use the atomic bomb to compel the surrender of Japan was never even an issue...
...Although work on the atomic bomb was carried on in several widely separated localities, only in the Metallurgical Laboratory (a code name) in Chicago did the scientists hold organized discussions on the larger issues raised by the new weapons-to-be, and only among the Chicago scientists did energetic protest arise against the planned dropping of bombs on Japanese cities...
...they have become "realistic," i.e., oriented toward co-operating with • Just how ambiguous such phraseology is, can be seen from a similarly worded concluding sentence in a personal letter to Prof...
...It was one thing to join the war effort to defeat Hitler, and another to give carte blanche to the military and political leaders who were running the war...
...This shortage of bombs was also used as an argument against a demonstration on some desert island: if the demonstration failed to impress the Japanese sufficiently—the scientists themselves grossly underestimated the Bomb's power—instead of a "rain of death" the Americans would be able to wipe out only one Japanese city...
...Every step appears as the unavoidable consequence of the preceding one...
...the continued development of poison gases, deadly bacteria, radioactive dusts...
...Should people crusade for their point of view and put pressure on their government, or should people limit their protests to letters and meetings and voting at election time...
...they would have to assume political leadership...
...The Pugwash conferences began as a more or less maverick attempt to by-pass official power politics and conservatism...
...What would happen to respect for government...
...Many non-scientists share the scientists' deep belief in the potentialities of human reason, but political ability, like competence in scientific research, is developed only through involvement, and consciously directed training...
...The scientists had their private motivations, but they were hired to develop weapons against which there would be no practical defense, just as the missile scientists are today...
...Do They Have the Right to Strike...
...The research scientists have come out of their ivory towers to encounter schedules and budgets, technical proposals and administrative duties, security clearances and government advisory boards, teamwork and press releases...
...What such a unification involves is illustrated by the atom bomb...
...As Churchill wrote in Triumph and Tragedy: to bring the war to an end, to give peace to the world...
...The struggle has not been bitter or protracted, or carried on with theoretical clarity...
...It has carried employment ads for scientists which state "U...
...4. The Franck Report was a belated attempt to get a declaration of atomic policy...
...It represents in fact a force from outside the scientific community —the Society of Friends—who are somewhat like Marxists in the trade unions...
...ment lies in its apparently compulsory trend...
...The Post-War "Struggle" The Federation of American Scientists and its Bulletin of the A. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Atomic Scientists arose directly from the ashes of the Franck Report, but never reached the level of the original effort...
...The SSRS publishes a four-page offset monthly Newsletter...
...Is not support of weapons research politically and morally the lesser evil...
...For example, Rabinowitch rejects out of hand "a threat of scientists to go on strike, or refuse cooperation with their governments...
...Similar figures apply to the papers presented at the annual scientificmeetings...
...Examples are just as plentiful in other directions: considerably more than half the papers published in Physical Review, the biggest and probably the most respected physics journal in the world, are credited (usually in a footnote) with being subsidized by either a military agency or a semi-military agency like the Atomic EnergyCommission...
...Johnson's insight is proved sound once again when, after the deaths are dealt out and the crisis is, at this price, successfully surmounted, the killers and their superiors and weaponeers "resume the follies which had so nearly cost them their life" (Churchill...
...scientists are burdened with a special, additional difficulty: they are, by tradition and training, averse to letting political considerations interfere with scientific work (which is not at all to say that scientists were or are uninterested in politics...
...Morally, one cannot go much further than to insist that everyone is responsible for the likely consequences of his work, and to point out the contradiction between dedication to the ideal of a better world through science and the practical goal of more widespread death through science...
...D. Declaration of 18 German Atomic Scientists In April 1957, eighteen of the most eminent German atomic scientists publicly declared that they would not participate in any way in the production, testing, or use of atomic weapons...
...The scientists should strike, but they won't...
...Why then were the eminent scientists who wrote and supported the Franck Report of different opinion than the eminent scientists on the official Advisory Panel...
...It was a clear, forceful presentation of the political and military considerations for demonstrating the atomic bomb to the world before being used in warfare...
...They are thus one step behind even the official diplomats...
...covery has been put, but we can assure you that unless Japan surrenders at once, this rain of atomic bombs will increase manyfold in fury...
...Nobody asked, for example, as military intelligence continued to find no German counterpart to the Manhattan Project, "If the Germans aren't working on an atomic bomb, why should we...
...In the absence of such involvement and training, what is learned is learned the hard way...
...5. After Hiroshima, and after the even more inexcusable Nagasaki, why were there no protests and resignations...
...The protest did not cause even a delay in the frantic effort to "deliver" the bomb at the earliest possible date...
...The following excerpt from an official statement, printed in the Bulletin, March 1958, is illustrative: The FAS has previously advocated an initial test ban agreement limited to weapons of such a size that testing could be detected by monitoring sites outside the territorial limits of the nuclear powers...
...From a self-directed discipline followed by a small and quiet fraternity, science became an indispensable part of the military services during the war years...
...The outlook of the SSRS is not that of scientists in protest, nor of citizens engaged in stemming a tide, nor yet of political thinkers feeling their way, but that of an inward-facing sect...
...Scientists will not be allowed to "interfere" in military and diplomatic decisions...
...Oceanography, a poorlysubsidized science until recently, is now receiving largesse in the interests of submarines carrying the Polaris missile, etc...
...to embody in this tradition the principle that the individual must abstain from destructive work and devote himself to constructive work, drawing the line between the two according to his own moral judgment...
...Three of his former colleagues there, all eminent physicists on the Manhattan Project, wrote and signed the letter, which was dropped simultaneously with the atomic bomb on Nagasaki: "As scientists, we deplore the use to which a beautiful dis official diplomacy...
...They have thus traded all chance of developing an independent role or perspective in return for respectability...
...This sender did not destroy it, as some might have done out of a sense of shame, but returned it with the inscription, "To my friend, Sagane, with best regards...
...II...
...intercontinental missiles, etc...
...In view of the increasingly positive attitude of the major powers toward at least limited mutual inspection, it now seems practicable to proceed directly to a test ban including even the smaller nuclear weapons...
...As Oppenheimer put it, "...when you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success...
...THE ANSWER to all of these questions lies in realizing that the atomic bomb was developed for the same reasons that chemical and bacteriological weapons were, and still are, being developed...
...Artistic gifts, personal charm, ideas, athletic prowess, and now scientific ability, all are converted into commodities...
...On a television panel discussion (reported in the Christian Science Monitor, Jan...
...If the democratic process is interpreted realistically, then the scientists, having an interest in the control of their own work, have the duty to resist its misuse...
...Scientists who work on such weapons for reasons of their own ignore the extent to which they are captives of the war apparatus...
...It has an average circulation of 18,000, and its directors and sponsors include many of the best known names in American science...
...In common with much of the pacifist movement, the SSRS sees the misuse of science as a primarily personal problem...
...Today's scientists work under new conditions because their work has a different social significance...
...The Cold War raises fundamental questions for scientists: is the present weapons research program a means of strengthening democratic forces, or at least of holding off totalitarianism...
...Meaning, if one wishes, that people in one country think this about scientists in other countries—E.s...
...Science, like any other healthy discipline, has progressed through the efforts of eager and bold men...
...If scientists were to try, they would encounter hostility from the entire official and unofficial apparatus of the government and its propaganda machines, including the veterans' organizations, newspaper columnists, university administrations, etc...
...However, such information is freely available to the governments represented, and many of us have been busy, since returning, communicating and transmitting this information to our own government...
...The union also made plans to help scientists who lose jobs because of refusal to work on atomic weaponry...
...In a series of essays ("Mit der Bombe Leben") which expressed a point of view similar to that of the German Social Democrats, he inserted a sort of backhanded apology—an explanation that the refusal of German physicists to work on atomic weapons should not be equated with the proposal "that the Americans should withdraw their atomic weapons from Germany...
...Why then, when the Franck Report was summarily rejected, did no one resign from the Project...
...Another discussion, apparently, involved the idea of first detonating some aerial fireworks, so that the Japanese would be looking upward when the atomic bomb exploded, and would be blinded...
...but in the failure of such an appeal to indicate what is involved...
...There ensued then no struggle or long debate—the politicians simply found other scientists who disagreed, and took the latter's advice...
...Sagane, a nuclear physicist, had studied at the U. of California in1935...
...their laboratories have simply become dependent on defense funds...
...This diverts science from its true purpose...
...Bertrand Russell has been a leading organizer, and Cyrus Eaton, a retired millionaire, has subsidized the conferences...
...As for the scientists' belief about their own motivation, the Franck Report states that "the main motivation of the initiative which American scientists took in urging the development of nuclear power for military purposes...
...Pugwash participants present no political perspectives of their own...
...Happily, von Weizsacker's vacillation was not typical of German physicists...
...the use of scientific knowledge to manipulate people for economic advantage...
...Four Japanese cities had been designated as targets in Truman's military order...
...We must cease to expect exceptional political or moral behavior from scientists (did we ever have the right...
...Fortune, in an editorial in February 1961, asserts that the military now controls "some 80% of all U. S. funds for research and development...
...3. Why were the scientists willing to work on the Manhattan Project without any commitments, declarations of policy, or whatever, as to the use of the Bomb by their employers...
...Johnson called it—the last refuge of a scoundrel—if it disregards the criminal negligence which causes the disasters and says only: "In this critical time of life and death, human slaughter is the only way out...
...A few thousand scientists cannot regain freedom from military and industrial domination without changing the whole power structure of American society...
...The story of the Manhattan Project contains in dramatic form much of the larger story of how scientists became transformed into pawns of power politics...
...The scientists were naive about the political beliefs of their employers, and, as is still true today, in ignorance of the degree to which they, the scientists, are the pawns of the High Brass...
...even the proposal of a Hippocratic Oath for scientists is opposed by many members on the grounds that they are opposed to taking oaths...
...But it is unjust to single out the scientist as the man to abandon the career he prepared for, the creative work he likes, the source of his social status and his self-esteem, and the only way he knows of supporting his family in their customary comfort, because his laboratory is now subsidized, and his reports used, by persons not interested in science...
...Retorted the American: "And what kind of men did you expect to attract to jobs like that...
...it therefore is blind to the inadequacy of opposing a powerful trend with moral exhortation...
...A majority of scientists know they cannot separate themselves from their national communities by individual non-cooperation, or establish themselves, by threats, as arbiters of international relations...
...The Franck Report was the political climax of the protest movement among scientists...
...these misuses of science by our society are paralleled by misuses of every artistic and intellectual talent that human beings have developed...
...If scientists in other countries would do the same, the prospects for world peace would look less gloomy...
...C. The Pugwash Conferences Six international non-governmental political conferences of scientists have been held, attended by scientists from both sides of the Iron Curtain...
...But suppose the Advisory Panel had supported the Franck Report...
...by a manifestation of overwhelming power at the cost of a few explosions, seemed, after all our toils and perils, a miracle of deliverance...
...In the end there beckons more and more clearly general annihilation...
...This is because the diversification takes the form of specialization and atomization and rationalization...
...25, 1961) among five members of the American delegation, one said: The conference was essentially private in nature, in that the discussions were not publicly recorded, and the working papers are only available to the authors...
...At the February 1961 meeting of the American Physical Society, such militarysupported papers constituted more than 55% of the total...
...Scientists are not bribed to work on weapons research...
...The struggle for the "purity" of science is practically over...
...If scientists (and other groups) are forbidden to exert any power, i.e., must limit their political opposition to sterile protests and choices between party machines, democracy becomes a game, a form, a mere exercise in semantics...
...We can do better than guess because the situation was repeated, as far as political situations ever are repeated, a few years later when a similar official Advisory Board unanimously opposed a development project to try to build a hydrogen bomb...
...If the main cause of the frantic effort had disappeared, why was there no reflection of this fact within the Project...
...In October 1958, the Union of German Societies for Physics (3,000 members) "issued a statement condemning the nuclear arms race, reminding physicists that weapons of mass destruction cannot be made without the cooperation of physicists, and reminding scientists of their responsibility...
...Signed by three physicists, three chemists, and a biologist, the Report was submitted to Secretary of War Stimson in June, 1945 (after the Nazi surrender but before the first bomb was tested in the New Mexico desert...
...Equally illuminating is the turnabout of these same (anti-H-bomb) scientists when some time later, a "technically sweet" way of making the H-bomb was discovered...
...today its policies are so moderate, even conservative, that it refutes its own purpose, viz., one can see that if the supporters of the Bulletin were given a decisive voice, little would change in American policy...
...Under the circumstances, the free marketplace of ideas would benefit if the interest groups operated in the open, i.e., if their "unfair" pressure tactics could be observed by all...
...THE QUESTION of a strike by scientists suggests the growing similarity between scientific work and other kinds of work...
...Nonetheless, its insistence that scientists should themselves clas sify projects from the political or moral point of view, instead of leaving classification entirely to the military, reflects a sense of dignity which most scientists have not shared...
...The history of the atomic bomb, and of germ warfare, and of missile warfare, and of the next weapons not yet discovered, is as obvious as it is tragic...
...But moral arguments miss the mark because the primary errors of judgment and fact are political...
...the compelling reason for creating this weapon with such speed was our fear that Germany had the technical skill necessary to develop such a weapon and that the German government had no moral restraint regarding its use...
...Science is the latest major branch of our culture to be infiltrated by the values of the business world...
...Even if one grants that the overwhelming majority of Americans would endorse in a referendum the enormous military budget and the reasoning on which it is based, there remains a contradiction between the liberal idyll of American democracy with its theory of countervailing powers and the admonition, in this case, as to the impropriety of exercising one of those powers...
...The typical liberal will be annoyed by this "dishonest" presentation of the question, insisting that scientists should make their opinions known, but only through the proper channels of discussions, petitions, and ballot box...
...As though these questions are not difficult enough for anyone, * To give a few examples: the study of transmission of radiant energy through the atmosphere is heavily subsidized by the Air Force, not because of its importance inweather studies but in order to protect "aircraft from the thermal radiations generated by atomic and nuclear weapon detonations," e. g., how American planes can"deliver" atomic bombs without being cooked in their own fireballs...
...The collective scientists, that is, the scientific societies, concentrate on their bread and butter problems, too: not one scientific organization took a stand (although many leading universities did) when Congress considered the merits of a special loyalty oath and a disclaimer oath for science students receiving federal scholarships or loans...
...The chief reason that a third atomic bomb was not dropped on Japan is evidence of this: no more atomic bombs were ready at that time...
...Personality testing of job applicants and executives...
...There is a generally held opinion that scientists have no right to use their special position to inflict on the entire nation their own convictions as to what weapons should, or should not, be developed...
...The impracticability of a strike or boycott appeal to scientists lies not in the fact that Russia will get ahead of us (What does "ahead" mean when each nation already holds the life of the other in its hands...
...The scientists are going to do none of these things...
...When the Bulletin first appeared in 1945, it campaigned for a liberal policy on international atomic energy control...
...Although it is an organization of scientists and engineers (non-scientists are not allowed to join), the real raison d'etre of the SSRS is not discontent among scientists...
...III...
...Even if the atomic bomb had never been developed, the status of scientists would have changed because modern technology has become directly, instead of indirectly, dependent on science...
...S. citizenship required," i.e., ads for classified military work...
...SSRS Newsletter) With the exception of Japan, this is the only case of which the author is aware of a scientific body taking such a stand...
...There is no doubt that the scientists believed this to be their main motivation, but this explanation raises a number of difficult questions: 1. Why, after Germany surrendered and the threat of an enemy getting the Bomb had evaporated, was there no move, no protest, no thought even (apparently) of halting the development of the Bomb...
...The Bulletin crusades for (a) the right of the public to know the truth about atomic weapons (as though what is already well-known of their long-term and short-term destructiveness were not enough), and (b) the need for scientists to influence national military policy...
...Their announcement stirred up a great deal of interest and sympathy, and disturbed the Adenauer government sufficiently that several conferences were held with the scientists in unsuccessful attempts to dissuade them...
...They would have to oppose and denounce generals and Congressmen...
...In Einstein's words, "The ghostlike character of this develop...
...Patriotism is just what Dr...
...The anti-Nazi idealism of the atomic scientists was very far from influencing the use of the Bomb...
...And as long as there is no solid, collective sentiment among scientists (and others in defense industries) to halt further work on weapons of mass destruction, it is neither sensible nor fair to advocate actions which are doomed to defeat...
...Democracy is meaningless without the diffusion of power...
...Scientists would then discover the true significance of the security clearance system, i.e., a super-blacklist...
...There is a story of an American reporter who was told by a German civilian in 1945 that the atrocities in the German concentration camps were not due to the policies of the Nazi regime, but only to the sadistic guards...
...It is easy to "explain" the behavior of weapons scientists as a failure of nerve, or character, or morality...
...Both Stimson and the official Advisory Panel of scientists (which included none of the signers of the Report) disagreed with its main conclusions...
...There may come a time when they will protest their new role, but the Bulletin, the Pugwash meetings, and even the declaration of the German physicists mark primarily, not the shouldering of responsibility by the creators of a new danger to mankind, but remorse because they did not shoulder it...
...Scientists are politically like other people, and, like them, they learn the hard way—the way the scientists of Germany and Japan learned...
...The declarations are thus, of necessity, carefully limited to ambiguous generalities, which give definitive evidence of failure since the underlying idea of the conferences is that scientists should be able to make better progress in discussing controversial issues than politicians or diplomats...
...The individual scientist wonders whether to work on "bread and butter" problems, leaving interesting and significant scientific problems uninvestigated...
...Influence on the real world, i.e., actually halting the development of new horror weapons, must not be confused with demonstrations of individual moral purity...
...The particular fears of the particular scientists on the particular project had nothing to do with the course of events once the project was started...
...Isn't the only alternative a purely personal attempt to escape responsibility for the evil of war...
...Its members do not face up to the disappearance of "constructive alternatives to militarism," to the fact that today the large majority of scientists are paid, directly or indirectly, by governmental agencies...
...2. Why, even before the German surrender, did the question of whether or not the Nazis were developing atomic weapons cease to have decisive importance for the scientists...
...Although formulated at the very outset of the atomic age, these and other ideas were discussed with greater insight than has generally been achieved in the thousands of articles written after the warnings and predictions proved accurate...
...Its articles deal with fallout, civil defense, deterrence, population problems, criticism of State Department travel restrictions, nuclear reactors, training of scientists, artificial satellites, etc...
...What group would be disobedient next...
...Nor have scientists refused to continue developing "ultimate" weapons...
...Although military research is only a small part of the defense program, which is itself only a part of American foreign policy, the authorities cannot afford to allow any maverick group to be defiant and "get away with it...
Vol. 8 • April 1961 • No. 2
