Bitter Cold

Wave after wave, the icy realities of cold war--which had not really chilled Americans since the grim days of the Berlin airlift--broke over the nation again last week.

The President's announcement that he had ordered development of the hydrogen bomb was a decision that most U.S. citizens obviously approved, but about which none could be happy; driven by inexorable forces, the U.S. was setting out to make a weapon that would pale the deadliness of the atomic-fission bomb (see SCIENCE). As events had turned, it was essentially a defensive measure. The Russians could build and doubtless were building their own hydrogen bomb. If undeterred by threat of retaliation in kind, the Russians could deliver it by aircraft almost anywhere in the U.S.; by submarine, or in a sneak attack from a commercial freighter in the harbor, they could use it to devastate the great coastal cities of the U.S.

Almost as President Truman's decision was announced, the U.S. learned it had been playing the game of survival with the enemy looking over its shoulder at all its top-secret cards. The arrest in London of Communist-Scientist Klaus Fuchs, a spy who had worked at top level atomic jobs in the U.S. (see INTERNATIONAL), led a jittery Washington to wonder whether even the deepest of military or state secrets were safe from the U.S.S.R.'s agents. It also wrote a chilling epilogue to such recent demonstrations of the meaning of treason as the trial of the U.S. Communist hierarchy and the case of Alger Hiss (see below).

Allies Split. The hydrogen bomb and the story of Communist Fuchs were the developments that seized the headlines. But there were other items in the news that also had prospects of peril. England and the U.S., allies in defense of a common way of life, seemed to be heading down diverging roads in Asia; the Chinese Communists, after a leisurely four days, had accepted Britain's recognition; by harshly treating its consular officials, they had made sure of U.S. hostility. To compound these complications, the Russians reached across Communist China last week to extend official recognition to the Communist rebels of Ho Chi Minh in French Indo-China.

Berlin, uneasily quiescent since the airlift, had felt again the ruthless, unpredictable stranglehold of the Russians on its transport and western supply lines, and now asked: "What next?" And Western Europe, which seemed to be convalescing, was in some danger of running a temperature again. ECAdministrator Paul Hoffman, who usually walks with a salesman's buoyant tread, reported in Washington last week that a "single new incident" might cause European Communist movements to remobilize.

Strident Footnote. War might be no nearer, but the tension was undeniably greater. Receiving an honorary degree at Baylor University in Texas, Air Secretary Stuart Symington told his audience that the U.S.S.R. now has the biggest army, air force and submarine fleet in the world, repeated what every military man knows: the U.S. has no sure defense against surprise atomic attack. To this sober judgment, Defense Secretary Louis Johnson added a strident footnote. Speaking off the cuff to a University of Virginia alumni gathering in Washington, he said: "I want Joe Stalin to know that if he starts something at 4 o'clock in the morning, the fighting power and strength of America will be on the job at 5 o'clock in the morning . . ." The U.S., he said, should have a military establishment big enough "to lick hell out of her if she doesn't stay deterred." In contrast to this anachronistic, horse-pistol threat, Harry Truman, who usually manages to be cheerfully confident of the hope of peace, was in a pessimistic mood that was rare for him. "We sometimes think," the President told 24 Baptist missionaries who called at the White House, "that we are approaching a solution, and then sometimes we're not so sure."

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