The First Hope

Last week brought a gleam in the darkness, a first soft glow in the terrifying gloom which seven months before, after the blinding flash over Hiroshima, had engulfed the world. Perhaps there was a workable and reasonable way of saving the world from the atom.

This hope, springing from a new proposal, did not reach the majority of mankind. But it reached a certain handful of experts (including scientists and soldiers and diplomats) precisely because they had been aware of great defects in all previous proposals.

The new suggestion was not the bright idea of an armchair strategist. Five carefully chosen men, working twelve to 18 hours a day for eight weeks, had finally brought it forth. When it was done, the State Department's Committee on Atomic Energy passed it along to Congress, without endorsement but with unanimous agreement that it made the most sense of any proposal yet. Not even Major General Leslie R. Groves, unreconstructed defender of military-security-before-all-else, objected to the letter of transmittal in which Under Secretary Dean Acheson's committee declared:

"In our opinion it furnishes the most constructive analysis of the question of international control [of atomic energy] we have seen and a definitely hopeful approach to a solution of the entire problem."

Five against Destruction. The scene of the eight weeks' mental fight was the loftlike top floor of the American Trucking Association Building, at Washington's 16th and P Streets, N.W. There each of the five workers had a table or desk and a kitchen chair. Telephones stood on the floor or on window sills.

No cleaning woman could be let in, because the workers were busy at all hours and highly secret papers were strewn everywhere. The only decorations were cobwebs until one of the group, Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer (Caltech physicist and former director of the Los Alamos atomic bomb laboratory), returned from getting an honorary degree at the University of Pennsylvania. Looking around him, he exclaimed that he could not stand the dirty drabness any longer. Reaching into his suitcase, he pulled out his red and blue academic hood and hung it on a wall bracket--the only note of color in the dust and grime. After a day or two no one noticed it.

The group was a mixture of scientific and industrial talent. Chairman was David E. Lilienthal, head of TVA. The members, besides Dr. Oppenheimer, were Chester I. Barnard, president of New Jersey Bell Telephone Co.; Dr. Charles Allen Thomas, vice president of Monsanto Chemical Co.; Harry A. Winne, G.E.'s vice president in charge of engineering. The eldest member was Mr. Barnard, 59; the youngest, Dr. Oppenheimer, 41.

A Considered Proposal. In the beginning all had divergent views. At times the thinking that went on aloud was "so painful" that only the tactful intervention of two secretaries with coffee could break the tension. Discarding this as inadequate and that as unsound, they slowly sweated through to unanimous agreement about what was most workable.

Dean Acheson described the report accurately as a "history of the mental travail of men who struggled with the problem." It was distinctly not a "selling" document. Like no other Government report ever written, it was an almost rambling account of five men's argument.

"To establish the boundaries between international and national action," they reported, "we have grasped the fortunate circumstance that a dividing line can be drawn between dangerous and nondangerous activities." In short, they based their plan on scientists' belief that 1) atomic bombs can be made only with uranium, or with plutonium produced from it,* 2) neither uranium nor plutonium in certain mixtures (which are called denatured) can be made explosive except by extremely difficult, large-scale, time-consuming processes.

Therefore the chief points of their proposal are simply that:

An international Atomic Development Authority should be set up to own and work all usable uranium deposits and to do all the dangerous processing of uranium throughout the world. The Authority would release only denatured uranium to individual nations, which would in turn sell it to their citizens for scientific and industrial use. "Not the least in the fortunate circumstances that we have observed," said the five, "is the fact that the field of nondangerous activities [including industrial power, medicine, etc.] is so challenging that it provides an opportunity to avoid such centralization of authority as might make the price of security seem too high."

The Atomic Development Authority would pass through a series of stages. First the Authority would be given enough of the U.S. knowledge about uranium to plan its work. At other stages it would survey and obtain effective control of all the world's uranium raw materials, set up its own research organization, take possession of the U.S. uranium-producing plants and uranium stockpiles (but not remove them from the U.S.), build and operate similar p'ants in other nations.

These stages would be carefully scheduled. The U.S. would not give up its present monopoly of knowledge and equipment much faster than the rate at which other nations could develop their own atomic plants independently. The U.S. would not hand over another piece of knowledge or equipment until the Authority provided adequate security by mastering the previous stage of its job. If at any point the Authority broke down, the U.S. and other nations would be left with just about the same advantage (in stockpile of bombs, uranium plants, know-how, etc.) which they could expect to have in an unrestricted atomic arms race.

The whole process would take a (still unestimated) number of years, and it would end when the U.S. had gradually, completely transferred its present monopoly to the Authority. Then there would be no more atomic secrets.

An important part of the plan is that the Authority's plants for producing "dangerous" uranium or plutonium would, like the know-how of the bomb, ultimately be distributed with equality among all important nations. "The real protection," said the five, "will lie in the fact that if any nation seizes the plants or the stockpiles that are situated in its territory, other nations [besides receiving clear warning] will have similar facilities and materials situated within their own borders so that the act of seizure need not place them at a disadvantage."

Concealed Merits. The first response of press and public was deadpan, for the five cautious authors neglected to point to the strongest point in their proposal's favor: the pitfalls that it dodged.

Previous proposals, more hastily offered, all raised serious objections in the minds of cautious men:

P: To the proposal that the U.S. keep its atomic secrets to itself, the objection was that other nations were certain to master those secrets soon.

P: To the proposal that the U.S. give away its present security as sole possessor of the bomb, the objection was that the only gain would be the world's transitory gratitude.

P: To the proposal that the U.S. give the atomic bomb to UNO, the objection was that, if the bombs and plants remained in the U.S. (were they could be seized in case of war), other nations could feel no more secure than at present. To proposals to control atomic bomb manufacture by international inspection, the objection was that, if inspection failed, the consequences would be fatal to all nations which had observed the rules.

Admittedly, the new proposal would be difficult to work out in satisfactory detail. But by providing a practical quid pro quo, the plan dodged one sort of difficulty. By placing a minimum reliance on international inspection, the plan greatly reduced another objection. And by providing that, in case the whole scheme failed, no nation would suddenly find itself in greater peril than it would otherwise, the plan avoided the greatest objection of all.

Those who had begun to fear that no workable plan could be found for international control of the atom had still to be shown that this was really such a plan. But the report raised hopes that the 20th Century's most impelling quest was not necessarily doomed to failure.

-Atomic physicists generally do not see a pos sibility of producing an atomic e-:-)'onion from the light elements (hydrogen, heHum. etc.) -- in which lies the danger of some atom!c experiment accidentally blowing up the whole e?rth. Says Dr.

Oppenheimer: "By all we now know, and it is not inconsiderable, such fears are groundless."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.