SPECIAL EDITIONS OF LONDON PRESS— Reception Of News: Soviet Said To Have Used German Experts

Greymouth Evening Star, 24 September 1949, Page 5

SPECIAL EDITIONS OF LONDON PRESS— Reception Of News: Soviet Said To Have Used German Experts

LONDON, September 23 (Rec 11.50 a.m.).—Within a short time of the official announcement that an atomic explosion had occurred in Russia, the London evening newspapers had special editions on the streets announcing the news in streamer headlines. Reuters says some members of the House of Commons may request an extension of Parliament’s three-day sitting next week so that there can be a second debate on the implications of the Government s statement on the atomic explosion in Russia. It is doubtful, however, whether the Government would desire such a debate at this stage.

The Dean of Canterbury Dr Hewlett Johnson, who was in Moscow recently, said he would not be surprised to learn that such an explosion had occurred.

“I know the ability of Russian scientists,” he .said. “I also know that they are more interested in making atomic power for industrial purposes than in making explosions to kill people.” Reuter’s Berlin correspondent says that Western Berlin was alarmed,but not surprised by the announcement. Official British and other reports have frequently spoken of the tens of thousands of German miners - at Aue on the Czechoslovak frontier working day and night to extract uranium ore., “Neither Side Used It” Dr Otto Hahn, Nobel Prize physicist and pioneer discoverer of atomic fission, said at Bohn when told of the Russian explosion: “Well, I am glad. If both sides have the bomb there will be no war. It will be just as with gas in the last war—neither side used it as they knew others had it too.” The official Soviet news agency, Tass,' in a Washington report it distributed today in London, said that the three-Power Washington negotiations on atomic energy “attest to the grave nature of the Anglo-Ameri-can contradictions in the field of atomic energy.” Tass said the American Government had failed to abide by the terms of the Anglo-Canadian-American agreement of January,- 1948. for the exchange of atomic information, “thus arousing the great discontent of the British.” The latter, in turn, had not only stopped forwarding information to the. Americans on their . scientists’ research but even threatened to demand 50 per cent of the uranium ore produced, in the Belgian Congo, the

bulk of which was formerly exported to the United States and was the basic raw material for American atomic production. ■’ • The United Press Brussels correspondent quotes Belgian Congo uranium experts as saying that they believe the Russians have vast resources of atomic ore, comparable to those available in the Belgian Congo. German Experts Used Allied officials in Berlin say that the Russians apprehended at least 200 German atomic scientists and took them eastward to further Russia’s feverish efforts to harness atomic energy. The Russians also have converted uranium mines in Western Germany into a Soviet trust and are reported to have taken control of the uranium mines in Czechoslovakia. In Eastern Germany, the Russians have recruited at least 25,000 workers, many of them women, for labour in the Saxony uranium mines nearihe Czech border.