World Reactions To Atomic Bomb

Manawatu Times, Volume 70, Issue 189, 11 August 1945, Page 5

World Reactions To Atomic Bomb

Received Friday 9.20 p.m. LONDON, August 10.

A telegram protesting against atomic bombing has been sent to President Truman and Mr. Attlee by Professor H. Stanley Jevons, (chairman of the Bombing Restriction Committee). The telegram said: “This committee emphatically protests against the further use of atomic bombs. The indiscriminate massacre of civilians by whatever means creates appalling precedents for the future.”

“Scientific advances which are made possible by the invention of the atomic bomb may include the key to a problem which for centuries has baffled alchemists,” said Professor Low in an interview. ‘ ‘Nobody seems to have realised that now that it is possible to break down the atom in a partial way it must be equally possible to re-arrange it as required. The Russians have been experimenting on these lines for years and a report ten years ago stated that mercury had been transmuted into gold in microscopic quantities. It will be many years before man establishes control of this new source of energy and any talk about driving the Queen Mary across the Atlantic on a cupful of fuel is very exaggerated and premature. ’ * 4 ‘ The atomic bomb raids made AngloSaxons war criminals,” says the Stockholm Aftonbladet in a leader. “Although Germany began bomb warfare against open towns and villages the Anglo-Saxons have now beaten all records in this field. This experiment with entire populations of cities as guinea pigs reflects no martial glory on the authors.” The Lisbon newspaper Voz says: “Even against Pagans, even against the Japanese, we believe the use of the atomic bomb is much to be lamented. Is it really necessary to use such brutal means of destruction when the Japanese have already lost the war and only Japanese fanaticism prevents surrender? ’ *

The Indian Nationalist newspaper Bombay Sentinel states: “It is a tragedy that atomic energy should be used for the first time in history for such destructive purposes. This is worse than raining poison-gas bombs. If the Allies are going to carry out their threat to obliterate Japan then Japan has no alternative but to surrender and allow the nations to extend their empires throughout the world in the name of white civilisation.”

The Tokio radio says: “If one Power succeeds in putting the atomic bomb into use the rest will catch up in no time. The warring countries refrained from using poison-gas because of the ethical standard that no arms or weapons,, capable of the mass slaughter of humanity should be used as actual weapons against man. But the use of the atomic bomb is serving more than anything else to confirm the general suspicion that no international law and no ethical code has any control over the war conduct of people like the Americans.

“It will be impossible to confine the knowledge of the atomic bomb tp the good and socially minded,” said Dr. Hooton, Professor of Anthropology at Harvard University. He expressed the opinion that evil men will seize upon it and use it. Dr. Hooton warned that in the hands of irresponsibles it would invite the destruction of civilisation and the extinctions of the species.