The Guilty Men

Atomic scientists talked and acted as if they were the world's guilty men. Appalled by their miracle, they rushed from their laboratories into the political fray to oppose the Government plan to control atomic research. They huddled in private, wrote and talked to Congress, cried in the press that something must be done. Some of them, convinced that nationalization of atomic research would be a fatal error, even talked of violating the Army's security regulations to force a showdown.

In Washington the House Military Affairs Committee, flooded with scientists' protests, began overhauling the May-Johnson bill for U.S. control of atomic energy. As amended last week, the bill would permit "free research" in atomic physics. Under another pending amendment control would be exercised by paid, full-time commissioners instead of a part-time board.

But research would be kept within strict bounds. Release of nuclear energy in amounts "of military or industrial value" would be controlled. Fines for willful violation of the future law were reduced from $100,000 to $10,000; imprisonment from ten years to five.

Congress was still "thinking of atomic power in terms of bombs. So, despite all their efforts to think of the atom's kindlier uses, were the men who had unleashed it.*

* A General Electric scientist said last week radioactive disturbances set off by the three atomic explosions had been noticed (on photographic film) all the way around the world.

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