The Missing Link in American Science

...to make greater efforts to produce intercontinental missiles and rocket ships...

...Many showed a tendency to hold the United States at least equally responsible for the cold war the Communist world was waging against free institutions...

...But, as the historical event has shown, this choice was a consequence of political ignorance...

...Nothing is said about the UN proposals to control or check the use of such weapons and the consistent Soviet refusal to accept plans of inspection and control considered fair and workable by the great majority of nations...

...Listening to critics of this kidney, one would imagine they had been urging the U.S...

...Why have so many of the best' American scientists withdrawn from, or refused to engage in, weapons research...

...Few American scientists have the knowledge and experience to meet properly the combination of demagogy and bland deception Soviet official spokesmen employ at mass, public meetings apparently envisaged by the Communist political fraction among the Russian scientists...

...A distinguished British psychologist, Professor H. J. Eyesenck, has recently written: "Many laymen have a kind of stereotyped view of the scientist as an inhuman, completely objective and rational sort of a person, who only takes into account facts and is not swayed by feelings and emotions in his judgments...

...Although it possesses powerful nuclear weapons itself, it fears the effects of the retaliatory use of such weapons against its own centers of power...

...An intelligent political and economic program is -also essential...

...It is not the lack of technical scientific education which is the missing link in American education...

...Those who signed the declaration which he circulated were in all likelihood completely unaware of the unsavory role Pauling has played in furthering Soviet policy...

...In our free culture, the scientists have an indefeasible right to choose to engage in or not to engage in weapons research...

...Had the V-2 been invented sooner, it might have affected the outcome of the war...

...They now argue that the Russian lead in missiles and spaceship research proves the bankruptcy of American defense policy...

...Nonetheless, the significance of the Soviet failure to accept the reasonable proposals worked out with the help of American scientists was lost on some of the most influential groups of American scientists...

...This, of course, would he only a necessary condition of survival but not sufficient...

...As the history of science and art in non-democratic cultures of the past indicates, freedom is not indivisible...

...This was followed by a public statement of 196 Soviet scientists, calling in effect not merely for an international congress of scientists but for a congress of representatives of all disciplines...

...After all, the scientists of the Soviet Union, in contrast to those of the Western world, are not free to criticize their own government...

...Some eminent scientists on advisory bodies counseled against developing the hydrogen bomb, not because of any lack of patriotism, but because they underestimated the nature of the Soviet danger...

...It is not likely that any Soviet scientist, no matter what he privately thought, would dare criticize publicly the infamous Soviet repressions in Hungary or the Chinese Communist invasion of Korea in discussing "renunciation of war and war threats as means of solving international controversies"—a point featured in the Resolution of the Presidium of the Soviet Academy...

...The development and application of these principles by Soviet scientists were carried out with the help of German scientists and technical personnel originally connected with the V-2 project...

...I still believe it is worth while to hold one...

...It is therefore aiming to outlaw the possession and use of atomic weapons even for purposes of strategic defense...

...The profession of alarm, however, is only show...

...I suggested that he make clear to them that, in a world where mere numbers no longer count decisively, the only possible defense of the free world lay in its qualitative technological superiority all along the line but especially in the development of deterrent weapons...

...Space satellites and rocket missiles are a development of the principles of the V-2 bomb manufactured by the Nazis in the last war, against which no defense was possible...

...But in the main the effect of this way of thinking led to a withdrawal from any research which was of a restricted nature and in which security regulations were observed...

...The sad fact, however, is that many of our ablest scientists have abandoned weapons research and allied fields...

...Among them are not a few who were active during the war in activities of this kind...

...This answer will not wash...

...Even a man of the stature of the late John von Neumann was made uncomfortable by the social atmosphere of some scientific circles in Princeton because of his immersion in problems of defense and his unabashed declarations that Stalinist Russia was at least as great an enemy of the survival of free institutions as Hitler Germany...

...They are still unaware that until now the free institutions of the West have survived the Soviet thrust for world power only because the West has not disarmed...

...Although the memories of the Soviet massacres in Hungary are rapidly receding, they are still strong enough to inhibit the revival of arguments of this kind...

...Both these scruples and the reflections which quieted them did the American scientists credit...

...Not all scientists realize that there is no transference of training from one field to another, despite the graphic illustrations provided from Newton to (and including) Einstein...

...They can do this without the help of a prescribed course of study designed to make every dullard in our school population learn something of trigonometry or calculus...

...At present, a meeting between American and Soviet scientists—along the lines suggested hy the declaration of the Presidium of tbe Soviet Academy of Sciences and the statement of the Soviet scientists—would lead to a rape of the political virgins...

...They have also assured us that Russian intentions were altogether peaceful, and that the best way to get thieves to reform, to adapt one of Charles Poore's delicious ironies, is to remove the locks from our doors...

...The easy answer is that they were driven away from such work by the demagogic activities of Senator Joseph McCarthy, by the inanities and injustices of the security program, and by the undoubtedly foolish decision in the case of J. Robert Oppenheimer...

...A few influential scientists, but not as many as McCarthy professed to believe, supported Communist peace fronts and organizations...

...American scientific resources are vastly greater than they were in the early Forties when American scientists developed the atom bomb, a feat incomparably more difficult in relation to what was previously known than launching the sputnik...

...as an official spokesman for the National Council of Arts, Sciences and Professions (which Harold Ickes had earlier denounced and exposed as a Communist front), he attacked the whole idea of international control of atomic energy and inspection to safeguard against its diversion to military use (cf...

...They became advisers to the President, to Congress, to the various departments of the Government and to the American delegation at the UN...

...To be sure, Corliss Lamont used to argue that the Moscow trials and purges could not have been violations of justice because Soviet airmen flew over the North Pole, that (in his own words) "The Soviet regime and its achievements are indivisible...

...Before meetings of this character are held, American scientists would be wise to make a beginning by discussing the defense of the free world among themselves, and not only among themselves but together with those of their colleagues who are informed students of political, social and economic affairs...

...They still insisted that the United States was as much at fault for the division of the world as the Soviet Union...

...Undoubtedly McCarthy, the security provisions and the absurd Oppenheimer decision played a mischievous role...

...These weaknesses are shared by all human beings, and scientists should not be singled out for them...

...For many of the scientists, the use of the atomic bomb represented a crisis of conscience...

...and we cannot believe that its system of justice is completely out of step with its splendid achievements in practically all other fields...

...I was confident that a sincere and sober presentation of the mortal danger in which the United States and the West found itself would bring back some of the ablest men to the research frontiers of the embattled free world now making a last-ditch stand against the rising seas of totalitarianism...

...More accurately, the American scientists would find themselves endorsing documents and programs which would be used by the Kremlin in its war against freedom and against the survival of the free governments of the world...

...In this way, the free world will become even weaker than it is...

...A few years ago, acting on the right of any American citizen to petition his Government, I made a proposal to the White House that the President address a thousand of the leading scientists in the United States in a specially ¦convoked conference...

...Realizing that the governments of the free world are aware of this maneuver, the Kremlin is now attempting to build up behind their backs and over their heads, so to speak, a popular clamor which will compel them to divest themselves of the only defense they have against Communist aggression...

...The mistakes that the United States made in the groping effort to defend itself were seized upon to justify a kind of plague-o'-both-your-houses psychology...

...American scientific education is just as good, if not better...

...The behavior of the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe, the Communist coup in Czechoslovakia, the blockade of Berlin, the invasion of South Korea, the scores of Soviet vetoes in the UN, the suppressions in East Germany, Poland and Hungary tell only part of the story...

...But as soon as victory against fascism was assured, these scruples flared up again...

...But the major withdrawals from weapons research and from the entire national defense setup took place long before McCarthy achieved notoriety, long before the publicized cases of security bungling made headlines...

...Few have sought to recall the pertinent events in our recent history which actually hold the key to the future...

...All criticism, if the past is any clue, will be directed against the West, mainly against the United States...

...No one in high Government authority described the critical position in which the United States and the free world currently found itself...

...The lone voices which seek to present a more balanced view will be hushed lest Communist feelings be hurt...

...No one explained to them the defense needs of the West in their relation to the preservation of free institutions...

...The aim is to denounce the use of all atomic weapons and urge the immediate discontinuance of all tests to develop nuclear arms...

...They are really wallowing in a sort of simpletonian glee about our relative backwardness...

...And until now it has refused to accept an efficient supervisory check, backed by international sanctions, to enforce agreements of any kind...

...Their laudable desire for peace led them—the late Albert Einstein was representative of this sentiment—to endorse a policy of appeasement toward the Soviet Union...

...That the Soviet scientists could detonate atom and hydrogen bombs is evidence enough of their scientific progress and achievements...

...It was they who were primarily responsible for defeating the May-Johnson Bill which would have turned over all atomic-energy installations to the military...

...Although there is more excuse for laymen not realizing this, the consequences of their failure may be graver...

...American scientific personnel is more numerous and far more knowledgeable...

...Understanding of Communism the missing link in american science By Sidney Hook The recent Soviet advances in science have evoked all sorts of responses in the community except the appropriate one...

...They led the fight for the McMahon Bill...

...Second, the scientific achievements of the Soviet Union were impressive even before the launching of the satellite...

...Further, these meetings will be held primarily in Western countries...

...nor is achievement indivisible...

...They heard denunciations aplenty but no reasoned analysis...

...Most important of all, it was they who induced the United States Government, when it enjoyed a monopoly of atomic weapons, to adopt the Acheson-Lilienthal plan for the international control of nuclear energy—a plan subsequently approved by all nations except those of the Soviet bloc...

...There is no question that the United States at present has the scientists of sufficient quality and of sufficient number to keep the lead in weapons research...

...Fourth, the indisputable advances of Soviet scientists no more establish the superiority of the Soviet social system, or even its efficiency in other respects, than the triumphs of the German scientists under Hitler did for fascism...

...It is readying itself for a massive propaganda drive...

...At the very least, the Kremlin hopes that it can convince the scientists of the West of its own sincerity, despite the record of its brutal duplicity and crass betrayal of its past promises, treaties and conventions, so that if the governments of the free world refuse to abandon their most effective defense, Western scientists, exercising their prerogatives as citizens of a free world, will withdraw from, and in effect boycott, the defense activities of their own governments...

...They were never properly answered...

...This declaration was circulated last spring by Linus Pauling, one of the most notorious supporters of Communist peace fronts...

...Another observation seems called for by the current reactions to the Soviet feat of putting a satellite into the sky...

...It knows that in its own empire there is no independent public opinion...

...Subsequently, some of the most distinguished of the scientists who still remained in weapons research were severely criticized by their colleagues...

...To meet this problem, a high degree of political sophistication is required...

...The statement of the Soviet scientists makes reference to a declaration signed by 2,200 American scientists demanding immediate cessation of tests of atomic weapons...

...Once this is achieved, it is liberated from the fear of retaliation in the event it decides to let loose its seas of men with conventional weapons against the West...

...In principle, there is no objection against meetings between Soviet and Western men of art, science and letters...

...Nothing came of the proposal for such a meeting...

...The most astonishing of these reactions has been that of the ritualistic liberals, of the pacifists, and of yesterday's fellow-travelers...

...Such a judgment, it seems to me, strikes the wrong emphasis...

...It knows that an agreement to destroy atomic weapons would be honored by the West because of the existence there of an independent public opinion, and because of the state of public morality in democratic countries...

...Not only was he a militant sponsor of the Communist Waldorf Peace Conference...

...Third, as impressive as these achievements are, they do not represent any revolutionary breakthrough in the field of fundamental research...

...The missing link is the inadequacy of the political education which most American scientists have received...

...American scientists exercised a profound influence on certain aspects of American defense policy at the close of the war...

...It is their ignorance of the nature, history and organizational structure of Communism and the Soviet Union...

...No one taught them about Communism in their college or university careers...

...Far and away the most important reason why so many scientists drifted away from defense work was the feeling that the foreign policy of the United States was mistaken...

...Seizing upon the statement issued at the Pugwash, Nova Scotia conference at which a score of scientists called attention to the dangers of atomic war, the Presidium of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, an official agency of the Soviet Union, adopted a resolution calling for a broad international conference of scientists throughout the world to increase propaganda for the abolition of all atomic weapons and tests...

...If anywhere near the same aggregation of talent had been assembled a few years ago to solve the problem of intercontinental missiles or a space satellite, there would now be other signs in the sky...

...It has taken the offensive to neutralize the scientists of the West and especially American scientists...

...It is not their human prejudices in social and political affairs which constitute the difficulty at the present juncture...

...Why should they profess to be alarmed about the Soviet advances in science, in view of their interpretation of the Soviet Union's peaceful policies...

...Let us begin by noting some things of a non-controversial nature: First, if Britain or any other Western power had launched a space satellite, few if any individuals in the United States would have broken out into chills of apprehension...

...It is an ignorance which is remediable, if only we can count on a willingness to learn...

...This failure to understand the nature of the Soviet threat, and the disastrous consequences of appeasement, did not flow from any sympathy with Communism but from a concern with peace, together with a disregard of the wisdom expressed in an old Chinese saying: "No one can have more peace than his neighbor will allow him...

...This has prevented them from seeing that Communist totalitarianism is just as much an enemy of free institutions as fascism...

...A special problem is created when the Soviet representatives appear as official representatives of their government with a predetermined line, ready to carry on propaganda for the Communist cause with the aid of sympathizers, fellow-travelers and crypto-Communists with whom delegations from Western countries are carefully salted...

...Meanwhile, the Soviet Union is not being idle...

...For glib and smooth talk, whether in or out of their fields, scientist cannot hold a candle to many others one could mention...

...Nothing is said about disarmament in conventional weapons...

...The withdrawal of American scientists from research on weapons of all types began shortly after Hiroshima...

...I also suggested that the record of American and Communist behavior with respect to military demobilization after the Second World War, the aid programs, the willingness to adopt international controls on the use of nuclear energy, be dramatically presented to them together with the astonishing record of broken -pledges, treaties, conventions and agreements on the part of the Kremlin...

...My answer, I fear, will shock even sympathetic readers...

...Our scientific education, whether good or bad (and it can always improve), would certainly not have been subjected to such serious criticism...

...The question, however, still remains: What is wrong with American scientific education and how can it be remedied...

...Some had had doubts about the use of such weapons, but in the end the realization that fascism threatened the survival of free institutions overrode their scruples...

...To all students who have studied the history of Communist front and propaganda organizations on the international scene, the strategy of the Kremlin is transparently clear...

...Unfortunately, there is little truth in such a picture...

...Scientists, especially when they leave the particular field in which they have specialized, are just as ordinary, pig-headed and unreasonable as anyone else, and their unusually high intelligence only makes their prejudices all the more dangerous because it enables them to cover these up with an unusually glib and smooth flow of high-sounding talk...

...The primary source of this mistake lay in what appeared to them to be the disastrously mistaken view that the Soviet Union was an aggressive totalitarian power...

...The basic reason for American backwardness in present-day weapons research is the defects in the political education of American scientists...

...As a matter of fact, these are the critics who have been urging that the United States unilaterally abandon weapons research, especially of a nuclear character...

...American defense policy may be bankrupt, but the defense policy of these critics of American policy has been worse than bankrupt—it has been positively suicidal...

...On the contrary, such meetings should be encouraged—providing they are honestly organized for a free and frank exchange of views, provided that the call for such meetings does not already contain commitments to predetermined conclusions in the guise of slogans...

...Whatever is wrong with American scientific education has nothing to do with Soviet scientific achievements...

...In a special series of conferences, they educated the Senate Committee for Control of Atomic Energy...

...Almost everyone seems to be looking for scapegoats...

...What the Soviet Government is trying to do is to exploit the political naivete of the scientists of the free world, to use them despite themselves as a tool against their own governments in order to strengthen the position of the Communist empire to a point where all real resistance to its goal of world conquest will become impossible...

...Daily Worker, February 14, 1950...