The Politics of Atomic Energy

...For scientific growth is almost invariably the result of cross-fertilization between laboratories and groups in widely separated parts of the world...

...Did we achieve our present position of leadership by "control...

...Not knowing <|uite what it means myself, 1 should have a good deal of sympathy with him...

...The release of atomie energy will unleash similar chains of consequences but they will be incomparably more radical in their effects because of the magnitude of the energy involved...

...If we assume that there is no hope of building a durable peace on an international basis, we have a clear responsibility to keep the channels open through which we have achieved our present position of national leadership...

...Morality for an Atomie Age, la one of the meat challenging and valuable contributions to the rapidly growing literature called out by th« control of atomic energy...

...But America has no monopoly on engineering skill...

...The world is tired and suspicious of secret diplomacy...

...The truth is that the vocal brethren in Congress have had more to say about the abolition of war daylight-saving time than they have to contribute to the discussion of atomic energy...

...Perhaps it might be said that the discussion would not be "informed...

...Clearly, the way to preserve leadership in the scientific as well as ihe industrial sense is to keep the channels open through which leadership was achieved—and to adjust our public policies to the impact of scientific developments...

...What I am saying is that these disciplines will lose their authority i unless they, too, become scientific...

...Does the President understand that such a statute might mean that the complete socialization of the American economy will depend upon the development of scientific and technical research...

...Nothing will lie achieved by closing doors and by scientific tariff-mind-edness...

...Perhaps some of the major powers may not lie interested in the proposal...

...It is clearly now a question of world government or recklessly intensified national imperialism...

...I am not loo sure about the integrity of the rhetoric on either side, hut I am certain it would be wiser to lest our chances of building a world government now than at some later, less opportune, moment...

...How does ihii differ from the unilateral power politics we rightly criticize in others...

...We found it first...

...At the best, however, we may be less lucky next time...

...When Marconi first signalled across the English Channel, he was told by experts that radio waves would never be able to cross the oceans, but he spanned the Atlantic with electromagnetic waves two years later...

...Truman has been forced to take the position that it is a matter of industrial "know liow...

...The only insurance against •elf-destruction in such a revolutionary reorientation of power CIHica will be found in a radii re-thinking of our present WKical, economic, and social ¦wietttres...

...The Senator has apparently failed to note the contribution of the British—there was a British Nobel prize winner present at the final trials in New Mexico—not to speak of all the other European scientists...

...Wasn't moat of the oratory in its defense one long stream of proof that our national sovereignty would not be hampered in any vital way...

...Lindeman...

...from scholars everywhere — including refugees from our enemies in this war— played right into the open and free intercourse and reciprocal enrichment of free science...

...Or did we encourage freedom of research with our mental doors and windows wide open to the reciprocal exchange and enrichment of scientific intercourse, including hospitality to refugees from our enemies in this war...

...Rather lamely, the discussion now tends to take it for granted that there is no secret in scientific theory...

...It is easy to say that the only alternatives are world government - or death...

...No one could foresee at that time the use in this war of V-rocketa, radar, or jet propulsion of airplanes...

...Scientific "journalism" has focused on the popularization of the discoveries in physics...

...Lindeman's clear exposition of so great a problem, but unfortunately cannot steal the time from other obligations at the moment There ars some phrases in this article which should not be forgotten, "Does it not seem clear that an age in which moral issues are precipitated by science we must also become more scientific about morality T" Dr...

...May it not be a blessing in disguise to have our public men smoked out by these new developments so that we can see clearly at least that the Senate of 1945 is as unwilling lo grant the essential authority to a world organization as the Senate of 1919...

...eduard i .in dem a n x article...

...And doesn't this confirm some of the implications of the Senate debate on the charter...

...As far back as 1939 the Rockefeller Foundation stated in its annual report: If one is tempted to question the vitality of science in Europe, it is interesting to note that the most dramatic scientific development of the year 1939 originated there, i.e., the splitting of the atom of the heavy element uranium and its transmutation into barium and other elements...

...It is ours...

...At a very minimum such a approach would focus world opinion on the real issues before mankind instead of on the piffling trivialities of power politics such as the control of a piece of Tripolitanian desert or the determination of a non-existent Italian capacity to pay reparations...

...It might give at least a promise of sufficient time to mature a more comprehensive world government to insure a durable peace...

...Such an offer would he an acid test of the sincerity of our own international professions regarding the San Francisco charter—and of those of the Russians...

...i Science without a humanistic orientation is likely to culminate in moral I chaos...

...The New York Times has told us that scientists of Hungarian, Russian, and Italian origin were involved in the New Mexico trials...

...We did not achieve our present leadership by policing laboratories or by government control...

...Lindeman's approach to this problem in not that of either "panic thinking" of which we have had so many instances recently, or dogmatism...

...Isn't it clear that the landings would have been of the MacArthur variety in Japan...

...Hut 1 think we should offer to turn it over to the Security Council, on condition that it be reconstituted as a democratic agency without major power veto...

...It was the typical assumption of the victor that the next war would be fought in terms of the technology of the last one...

...How can the American government control research in which scientists of every nationality have participated...

...Wars from now on will be started suddenly, and the ag-gressor will hope to win his victory on the day of aggression...

...Will they also cover other scientists...

...Discussion is distorted by arguments that seen to imply that we must either keep the ideas to ourselves, or "give the secret to Stalin...

...research, its enrichment by free and continuous exchange, the development of all potential human resources in this field by generous federal subsidies and fellowship programs —and avoidance of the official bureaucratic paralysis involved in "official secrets," restrictionisin and scientific tariff-mindedness...

...It will be over before the newspapers can print the headlines about how it began...

...but the disintegration products of uranium were first directly observed in 1939 by Hahn and Strassmann of Berlin...

...If the UNO is this type of agency, is it likely to be anything but a sham...

...Our Congress has set plenty of precedents for speeches by generals, admirals and other outsiders...

...In the next war—inevitable if the world continues to be an arena of conflicting sovereign states—New York City and a score of our principal national nerve-centers might one night undergo the fate of Hiroshima...

...The political response to the release of atomic energy has been pathetically blind...

...we travel the nationul path, we .should redesign our cities, and rrawl into a subway civilization...

...Only rarely does one man or one group of men recite with clear, loud tones a whole important chapter, or even a whole important paragraph, in the epic of science...

...They want to "get the boys home"—no matter what the cost in the occupied areas, and no matter what the consequences to our diplomacy which will soon be negotiating from weakness and not from strength...

...I am not therefore inferring that religion and the humanities are no longer to be thought of as source of moral In{ sight...

...There is no immediate prospect of running automobiles with nuclear energy, or lighting houses with radioactive lamps, but radical developments can be expected within a few years...

...The present status of the technical development is, of course, merely the first step in a long chain of future refinements...

...Thua, in the case of the breakdown of uranium during the part year, (he early tentative questionings came from Rome...

...Or imagine that the Germans had finally developed one hundred atomic bombs one-week before the date of their surrender...

...The release of atomic energy has ended an era in history...

...It should begin with an Anglo-American nucleus as an unquestioned center of world power, and expand as far as American, Western European and British Empire units might care to carry it by voluntary adhesion...

...In other words: we need the very opposite of "security regulations," police control and "secrecy...

...It would maintain an area of freedom, of reciprocal scientific enrichment and stimulation, and it would exercise an enormous gravitational pull on Western Europe...

...It has lyrically described how man may have overcome "the gravitational pull of the earth," thereby introducing an "inter-planetary era"—or more prosaically, it has in a characteristically modern materialism, stressed the economic abundance which may lie derived from industrial applications...

...There can he no new polity without a new emotion...

...That in itself would be enlightening...

...Senator Connally has proposed to enforce the decisions of the Security Council of the United Nations Organization by "retaining the secret of atomic energy" and furnishing an American air contingent with "a bucket full of atomic bombs" to stop outbreaks of war...

...Why shouldn't we arrange for a joint discussion of the report of this commission by one hundred representatives of each of the Parliaments of all 'he major powers...

...I do not mean a federation of nations that continue to enjoy their sovereign rights...

...Just as the use of coal and oil revolutionized the economic life af the world, the release of atomic energy will subvert all established economic and industrial stability...

...This might be followed by an address by a student of the social and economic implications of inventions— such as, say, Professor Ogburn, the preiding genius of the huge social lieiuls survey published in 1933...

...How are our congressmen reacting to these developments which have a more revolutionary significance than anything that happened in France in 1789 or in Russia in 1917...

...President Truman tells us that "a new era in the history of civilization" began with the release of atomic energy...

...This suggestion completely overlooked the probability that the technique now applied lo uranium will shortly be transferred to other—and less scarce—materials...

...Can't we translate this into Anglo-Saxon 7 I know no one better qualified to do so than Dr...

...Such developments will not ealy undermine property values and the bargaining power of labor skill based on the old methods and materials, but a few swift technical strokes may suddenly make the possession of oil, coal, and other power sources as obsolete as the horse became after the development of the automobile...

...I ' would not like to try that out on the man in the street...

...Much more often the start comes from some isolated and perhaps timid voice, making an inspired suggestion, raising a stimulating question...

...They are interested in probing and re-probing Pearl Harbor ("That man in the White House" is still alive in their political nightmares...

...Any one who thinks of the shifts in commercial, industrial and power relations ihat came with coal and oil will mslizc that this is no pipe dream...

...Does any one doubt that their effect on British and Russian strategic and industrial centers would have changed absolute defeat into complete victory...

...The atomic bomb is to humanity what ODT is to fleas and Mosquitoes...

...Our present economic institutions are tqually obsolete...

...It is notorious that our enemies were far advanced in their research this time...

...The primary challenge is to prevent war...

...oil implications of our own scientific genius, we shall also fathom the moral void which our secular culture hss left as the spiritual cement with which we must begin lo build a world government...

...Later on the President proposed to extend the public monopoly to "any minerals or other materials from which the sources of atomic energy can be derived...

...Thirty-five years ago, the English Channel had not even been crossed by air...

...When atomic energy is debated, the argument is concerned with the preservation of "secrets" and the limitation of free science...

...No one seems to perceive that the economic and social implications of the release of atomic energy are clearly and emphatically that there will be no "normalcy" - no stability—for this generation...

...Our advertising lias given us a wholly distorted perspective on our own achievement!!—and those of other nations...

...What are our political leaden doing about the moot revolutionary scientific development in human history...

...An oftcial military statement on the control of the atomic bomb has stressed that we should not turn the idea over to the new Security Council until we have developed a defense against it Doean't this really amount to saying that we want the Security Council to be impotent in ha relation toward us...

...It might give us a breathing spell of peace based on clear predominance in science, technical skill and available wealth...

...they were caught up at Berlin, were eagerly heard at Paris and Copenhagen, and then spanned the Atlantic and were seised upon here so enthusiastically that literally within hours, rather than within days, the critical experiments had been checked and extended at Columbia University, at the Carnegie Institution of Washington and in Lawrence's laboratory at the University of California...

...In the light of pr"-'enl Russian policies, few would wholeheartedly advocate turning our present "secrets over to Stalin...

...Why not invite the whole of this international inter-parliamentary group to Washington by Army Transport planes to spend a week in joint session with their colleagues...

...In passing, wc might also raise again the question whether selective service should not review its present policy of treating potential scientists as if they were more valuable to national defense as buck privates than they would be in their laboratories...

...Chairman, Freedom House IT is three months since Hiroshima and Nagasaki...

...This first whisper echoes about the world of science, the reverberation from each laboratory purifying and strengthening the message, until presently the Voice of science is decisive and authoritative...

...The only fault that I can find with , this clear statement is the use of the | phrase "humanistic orientation...

...I would gladly comment at length in admiration of Dr...

...N«w Morality ¦y Prof...

...If the inertia of political nostalgia should he too great to make a suitable "One World" adjustment to man's scientific genius, the next best program would be an effort to maximize the Anglo-American nexus of strength...

...To channel the debate, we might begin with an address by some outstanding scientist—such as, say, President Conant--on the larger scientific issues...

...President Truman also told us he would propose to declare uranium deposits a public monopoly...

...It does not know what the issues are...

...I mean merged world sovereignly with adequate power to go everywhere, to inspect any laboratory or industry anywhere, and to police scientific or industrial activity thai might have tary significance...

...How comfortable does the Senator expect the rest of the world to be if law enforcement is to be vested in one major power...

...Our present polit-kttl initiations are obsolete, both nationally and internationally...

...The new raw materials may be located in geographical centers that are far from the present •enters of industrial and political dominance, Wholly new power relations will crystallize around the control of the ¦en strategic materials...

...The first need is therefore s full appreciation of the political and social impact of the new developments...

...For colleges and students it is first of all a challenge to keep America in the vanguard of scientific advance, and this is not accomplished by "controlling" research but by sponsoring and promoting it...

...Our science had its doors and windows open to the entire world...

...Imagine that we had developed the idea eighteen months earlier, and had dropped an atomic bomb at weekly intervals on Germany before the Normandy invasion...

...the argument is that this would be unprecedented, does any 'me think there are precedents for the re!ease of atomic energy...

...Modern man has slipped so far from the moral anchorage in which the best of his culture is rooted, that a moral as well as a political revolution will he required to stretch his secular and political imagination to the point where it will have resilience adequate to match the physical force which the boldness of our scientists has set free...

...IIt is not only our military and ¦aval idea* and technologies tint are obsolete before the end mi the war which they did ho ¦such to win...

...We have had a gap of four years in the training of scientists...

...There are two channels of approach...

...The alternative is to use the brief period of Anglo-American control of the present form of the idea lo maximize the extent of international governmental control...

...It will help to prepare us for the Mope of the readjustments that are ahead...

...Do we really think our secret service will ferret out such "secrets" more effectively than a flourishing free scientific community...

...He has asked the Cong rem "to control all sources of atomie energy and all activities connected with its development and use in the United States...

...Perhaps we can demonstrate our ability lo match the intellectual boldness of our physical scientists with spiritual imagination and political adjustment...

...e • IF the Security Council procedure fails because of Russian, or American, failure to accept the loss of the privileged "veto" status of a major power, then a vigorous campaign to maximize the area of possible federation (merged sovereignly) would be next on the agenda of priorities...

...This time, instead of focusing on the past, we might focus on the future...

...In a basic scientific sense there is no atomic secret at all, and there is no assurance that the United States will fare well in scientific isolation...

...The language is far more comprehensive than the President or the Congress teem to realize...

...That means the stimulation of scientific...

...The only political framework for a world in which atomic energy can be released for military purposes is world government...

...It would he strong because it would he the -largest possible area of free trade and free interchange of scientific and cultural achievements...

...This une the speed of transition will he greater because the increase in energy U likely to be so much larger...

...There will be no time for debates, consultations, simian verbalism...

...Could we more eloquently say that we think the San Francisco charter it mere verbiage...

...Will we place the physicists in a concentration camp...

...In view of the prevailing policies and the temptation to neglect the pressing realities of a new power world, a dramatic program of public education would seem to be one of the first requirements...

...It is an indefensible policy both from a scientific and from a strictly military point of view...

...It may end human history altogether—or dpen a new chapter...

...When we fully understand the so...

...Perhaps public imagination has not been sufficiently challenged to digest the full implications of the new developments because we were able to use them in a military way on only two occasions at the very end of the war...

...Combined with the major power veto provisions, how does such international police power differ from old-fashioned imperialist hegemony...

...Historically as well as geographically, it would be an accident if the new materials should happen lo be available in the countries that are now dominant because of their control of present strategic resources...

...The President proposes lo continue the present "security"' regulations governing the scientists who worked on the project under official auspices...

...Will we forbid them to use what they know in their teaching or in further research...

...Thus Navy anen oppose the modest proposal of an Army and Navy ¦anger We are in acute danger of aaspli' "ting the experience of the French aaatrtal staff after the first world war...

...What about the spirit in which the Congress is debating this issue of the century—or of the ages...

...This realization of the old dream of the alchemists was based upon results obtained in 1934 by the Italian physicist Fermi...

...Part of the drive toward secrecy i* the usual effort o( endangered tested interests in the Military profession to protect their invest memt in the ii.etWU and akills of the past...

...Will not every other country close its doors to our scientists if we close ours to theirs...

...Perhaps the Congress of the United States should invite the British Parliament to establish a joint commission to discuss the political and economic implications of atomic energy...

...Research will cross with economic motives, and in the search for lower costs the principles involved in the present technique will be transferred to some, method of converting a common raw material into energy...

...The world can rest assured that we shall never use it except in our necessary self-defense or in the interests of ihe peace of ihe world...

...They, too, were certain that World Wsr II would be decided by the same ideas that had served them so well in World Wa...

...Such an introduction would initiate the discussion on the proper level...

...The dominant atmosphere is a temper of "back to normalcy" nostalgia...

...It has telescoped time and questions that might have called for answers in a decade or so before atomic energy became available, are now in an Immediate "do or die" category...

...J AMI S T. SMOTWf It Director, Carnegie Endowment for International Pence Or...

...Contribution...

...e • WkR, as we have seen it in the past, will clearly be revolutionized by «¦ new developments...