The Urge to Do Something

I skip over the news of the H-bomb in the papers," said a man in London last week, "and then I look at my neighbor and think: 'How can that fool sit there and read how they're going to blow him up and never bat an eye?' " Doc Hicks, proprietor of a barbershop on South Audubon Road, Indianapolis, summed up for his customers: "I don't think the public understands it. That's why they don't talk much about it." The "it" was certainly hard to understand, and so men talked of the instinct of survival, of the stern obligation of democracy to protect and preserve itself, and, hopefully, of the possibility that the H-bomb might actually preserve the peace. Negative Promise. "The question that must engage us, caught up as we are in this atomic rat race, is whether the effort which is being made away from destruction is as great and compelling as the effort which impels us toward it," editorialized the Louisville Courier-Journal. Michigan's convalescing Senator Arthur Vandenberg proposed that the President formally notify the United Na tions that the U.S. would abandon the H-bomb project as soon as Russia agreed to a program of international control.

Harry Truman replied, at his press conference, that hardly a week goes by that that very matter is not brought up at the U.N., at his suggestion. As for the Vandenberg proposal: he didn't think it necessary or advisable. Two hours later, broad-shouldered Brien McMahon of Connecticut rose to speak in the Senate. No scientist (he was a wealthy trial lawyer, and a New Deal officeholder before being elected to the Senate), he had been shocked into grave concern during long, secret sessions of the Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy over which he had presided. For 30 minutes the Senate chamber was still as he spoke:

"Let me warn, with all the solemnity at my command," he said, "that building hydrogen bombs does not promise positive security for the United States; it only promises the negative result of averting, for a few months or years, well-nigh certain catastrophe . . . We are plunged into a truly terrible arms race." His proposal: 1) broadcast the story of U.S. motives and ideals behind the Iron Curtain by boosting the "Whisper of America" to a real, full-throated Voice of America; 2) offer $10 billion a year--which is two-thirds of the U.S. arms budget--for five years, to develop the technical skills and peacetime atomic-energy possibilities of all nations, including Russia. In return, other nations, including Russia, would have to promise to submit to real international control of atomic energy, and to spend two-thirds of their present arms budgets for "constructive ends."

Sign of Weakness. When McMahon sat down, colleagues rushed over to pump his hand, largely perhaps because he had reflected the general urge to do something, or at least to propose a plan to do something.

But how good was McMahon's plan? Would it work, asked California's big Bill Knowland, if Russia refused to establish adequate controls? "Of course not," replied McMahon. It was the key question, and it precisely showed the impracticality of the McMahon proposal, sincere and well-intentioned though the proposal was.

The other obvious criticism of his plan was that it was based on the let's-buy-ourselves-out-of-trouble approach--never a satisfactory substitute, as the U.S. has long since found, for moral purpose in time of crisis.

At week's end, both the White House and the State Department were still mum about their plans. It was a considered silence: any plea to the Kremlin born of desperation would be interpreted as a sign of weakness and fright, and a sign of weakness in this uneasy hour might prove an ever-greater risk to peace than an H-bomb.

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