Atomic Power

Press, Volume LXXXI, Issue 24741, 5 December 1945, Page 6

Atomic Power

Addressing the Royal Society recently, the British Prime Minister upheld the contention of scientists that science should be international and free, but said also that there must first be the right form of society in which those principles could be carried out. “If we wish “ to make the world safe for scien- “ tific advance ”, Mr Attlee said. “we must promote a completely “ new relationship transcending “ national fioundaries ”. It would be easier to accept Mr Attlee’s statements happily if they had been made when the atomic bomb was still a possibility, a threat, and not an actuality. But atomic bombs have been loosed, and their terrible power proven. The tragedy is that their impact on human thought and imagination, at least as represented by some of the political and military leaders of nations, seems to have been far less salutary than their effect on those Japanese cities, and indeed on the warmindedness of Japan. The plain fact is that what happened there could happen anywhere in the world; and it would not need to happen very often for the whole fabric of civilisation, as we know it, to disappear. There has alreadybeen talk of the storage of such bombs, for international emergency. On only one point does there seem to be agreement—scientists are almost unanimous that the secret of atomic power cannot be held by any one nation or. group of nations for more than a short time. Some experts say two years; others, even less. The difficulty is that in the meantime, while discussion goes on, most of it well-meaning and much of it constructive, rivalries and suspicions, even among those nations lately allied against Nazism and Fascism, have been quickened. It was even reported some time ago that Russian newspapers were using the term “ atomic defnocracy ” —a sinister compound of cynicism and suspicion. Atomic power provides at once both a hope for humanity and the supreme threat to it; but the time for choice is short. It is a gloomy reflection that this is still, in the minds of men, the dark day of the atomic bomb rather than the bright dawn of the era of atomic power. As Professor Julian Huxley said in New York last week; “ Too much emphasis is “placed on the atomic bbmh and “ not enough on the industrial “ peace-time use* - of atomic energy This time of unique crisis in human affairs brings a sharp reminder of the great loss civilisation has suffered . by the death b£ President Roosevelt, whose wisdom, vision, and statesmanship would undoubtedly be doing much now to clear and light the way.