THE TWO BOMBS
DALLIN, DAVID J.
East and West The Two Bombs By David J. Dallin (Second of three articles) WITH MORE THAN ONE-THIRD of the ,'lobe ruled by a ruthless and bellicose lower, no means of eliminating the danger...
...The U. S. had no reason to conclude an agreement with the U. S. S. R. as long as the Soviet bomb was no menace to the West...
...So I pontificated grandly: "These spies go wrong, not because they are worse than the rest of us, but because they are better...
...But that mystery is for the FBI to look into .—not me...
...Anyone could deduce, from what happened in Canada, that we had a gigantic underground subversive movement down here...
...The answer is that, at least for the next decade, such an act is out of the question...
...The twentieth century has become the most crucial period in the history of humanity...
...AN AMERICAN MILITARY EXPERT recently stated in public that if a dozen of America's great centers were destroyed, only one Russian city would be worthwhile attacking in turn—Moscow...
...The number is sufficiently large, and sufficiently varied in time and place, to give a good deal of validity to any conclusions you may arrive at...
...The judge—what a judge he was!, how careful, how sympathetic—tried to discover just where each one of the defendants got off the track What he found was that they all "seem to have begun their Communist association through a burning desire to reform and improve Canada...
...We can only hope to prohibit the use of the most destructive weapons of war...
...We must admit that the preliminary atom battle has been lost to Stalin, ta haw H many battles in these postwar years With the help of spies, foreign savants and Soviet scientists, Russia has at last entered the circle of nations armed with the atomic bomb...
...An agreement signed by Stalin or one of his ministers would be stronger than any statement by a Western nation or group of nations...
...What I care about is what goes on inside people's minds...
...The Soviet Union contains eighty-two cities with populations of 100,000 or more, and in this respect is as vulnerable as any other nation...
...He joined the Communist party in 1932—precisely when a lot of other promising young men joined it...
...It is difficult to understand how an expert could reachthis fallacious conclusion...
...It was exactly three years ago that The New Leader gave the details of the Gouzenko story down to the last disgusting thrill...
...both sides are in a state of feverish preparation...
...A few Western cities could be hit...
...For the first time, the destructive forces invested by man give him power to annihilate all forms of life on the globe...
...Moscow cannot, at this stage, conduct an operation which involves the carrying of A-bombs to so many targets simultaneously, and against the West's excellent aerial defenses...
...Such a statement would be ineffective because it binds only the country which makes it, and leaves the other side free of any obligation whatsoever...
...Governments and peoples frantically expect aerial attack without a formal declaration of war, and because of this possibility each government rcants to attack first, to paralyze the enemy before the real war begins...
...Hiss and Miss Coplon, to be sure, have given us no inside views of the working of their minds...
...The lethargy with which we have followed up the whole business is disappointing...
...Probably the whole thing will be aired completely some day...
...The Fuchs confession goes deeper than any of the others in one respect...
...Think of the twelve distinguished persons who Were brought into a Canadian court after the Gouzenko confessions...
...Mysterious conferences precisely like them are, no doubt, going on now...
...X THE ONE IMPORTANT THING about these people is this: They have gone wrong, not because they are worse than other people, but because they are better...
...New political forms must rise to meet the new Situation: one great state embracing all humanity must emerge in the near future...
...Go on from there to May, Hiss, Miss Coplon and now Dr...
...War is in the air...
...And now this brilliant young scholar, a man who is one of the world's leaders in the crucial science of physics, acknowledges that all of his science and all of his Marxian maneuvering have failed to give him the stability which leads to a decent life...
...Then he came up with: "They may be good, but they are not the best...
...From that point they were led along by the Russian conspirators...
...The records of the twelve Canadians show that they were all fine people: college professors, army officers, civil servants...
...The very youngest of our intellectual boy scouts chewed this over for a minute...
...but, ip...
...East and West The Two Bombs By David J. Dallin (Second of three articles) WITH MORE THAN ONE-THIRD of the ,'lobe ruled by a ruthless and bellicose lower, no means of eliminating the danger of war exists...
...Today the situation is different...
...The barriers blocking our path to this goal must be removed...
...Fuchs was in this country, from 1943 to 1946, he was reporting regularly to Communist secret service men, NKVD or MVD or whatever they happened to be called at that time...
...These meetings may have taken place right round the corner from where I am typing these words...
...they were weaned from Canada and became obsessed with the idea that they could best help the world through devotion to some vague supranationalism...
...So he had the courage to start his schizophrenic existence, with one side loyal to England and the other true to "humanity in general...
...and perhaps also to have certain cities declared exempt from attack, through a mutual agreement-between the West and the Soviet UnionAgreements that accord with Soviet interests will be kept by the Soviet Govern, ment...
...I have reported here that I live with a youth movement...
...Even in 1942, When he took his oath of allegiance to Britain, he "still believed Russia would build a new world...
...The latter knows that its development of the Abomb, and of its power to produce an H-bomb, is qualitatively and quantitatively behind that of the United Statesf and will probably remain so for a few decades...
...I am not specially interested in the gumshoe aspect of all of this...
...But fear—fear of the newest weapons of destruction—wtecks those diplomatic negotiations and precipitates war...
...This notion is now validated by the news that while Dr...
...First among these Barriers, because it is the strongest, is the Stalinist regime...
...They all possessed sensitive consciences, knew that Canadian society is imperfect, and wanted to do something to make it better...
...During his earner days this man had regarded "left wingers" as the only ones who really count...
...But it was the good impulse which started them...
...To secure the cities of America and of Europe from the fate that befell Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it is imperative that an agreement be negotiated• * < * SUCH AN AGREEMENT will be kept by the Soviet Union if, in addition to it being in that country's interests, it is reinforced on our side by continued production of atomic power, and continued superiority over Soviet output...
...If you add to the men and women I mentioned above the name of Whittaker Chambers, you will have a list of 17 first-class cases to speculate upon...
...If they were the best, they would have something built-in that would keep them from going wrong...
...Now we have this new case of Dr...
...Is it not enough merely to announce, as some scientists nave suggested, that the Western nations do not intend to be the first to use the A-bomb or H-bomb...
...Anyway," came back one of his playmates, "good intentions are not enough...
...It was only when the piled-up sins of Russia made this mental balance impossible . that he began to feel insecure...
...Assuming an atomic agreement can be reached, what is to prevent the Soviet Union from break* ing it by wiping out on the very first day of conflict many of the capitals, industrial centers, ports and military installations of England, France, Germany and the United States...
...Any wavering or slackening in this respect may have disastrous effects...
...Is this sort of agreement really necessary...
...Absence of an agreement of this kind may accelerate the outbreak of war, or even provoke it before armed conflict actually becomes inevitable...
...Klaus Fuchs, He was the son of a German Socialist...
...American superiority continues, but American monopoly has vanished, and it would be wrong to act as if this were not the case...
...But at this point, except for the minute vents in the curtain made by the Hiss and Coplon cases, all remains a mystery...
...But the others furnish psycholgical material in heaps...
...Millions live in anguished anticipation of momentary destruction by unheard-of lethal weapons...
...Meanwhile, attempts are being made to conciliate, mediate, find a peaceful compromise...
...Let us imagine a moment of great international tension like that which obtained in August 1939...
...Treason is still treason...
...retaliation, Moscow, Leningrad, Baku, Kharkov, Kiev, Odessa, Vladivostock and many other Russian centers would be levelled to the ground...
...Near the end of his confession he affirms: "I have come to' see bi many of them a deep-rooted firmness which Enables them to live a decent life...
...And this brings me to a remark which was made the tother day in our office...
...On a strictly class basis he figured that "bourgeois" people are a species of lower animal which hardly flas to be taken into account...
...Dallin will conclude his discussion oi the A-bomb and H-bomb in a final article next weak* The Home Front From Gouzenko to Fuchs By William E. Bohn THE LIST of communist traitors grows...
...It was not just because it gave him an army to join against Hitler...
...I was trying out this column on the younger generation...
...Fuchs...
...For this reason, the outlawing of atomic warftveapons has more than once been advocated bylStalln personally, by Vishinsky in the United rations, and by the Soviet press...
Vol. 33 • February 1950 • No. 8
