He was treated to a display of the legendary Churchillian wrath when, at one point in the well-lubricated lunch, Clementine reflected that perhaps the good citizens of Britain, who offered tea and cigarettes to downed Luftwaffe pilots, could never work up a really deep, abiding hatred of the Germans. Churchill pounced on the remark and growled that before the war was over, the British would be hating their enemies, all right. According to Churchill biographers William Manchester and Paul Reid, his “calculated quotient of righteous anger” was entirely for Conant’s benefit. The Germans had just dropped a four-thousand-pound “monster bomb” on Hendron, instantly killing eighty civilians. “To address such dastardly technologies and tactics with an overly generous heart would undermine Churchill’s status as warlord in front of an important luncheon guest,” they wrote. “He had to appear resolute yet not bloodthirsty.”
At that point, Charles Eade asked if the big German bomb contained “any new form of explosive.” His query, which was more on the money than Conant cared to admit about a journalist, sparked a lively conversation about the ingenious new instruments of death being invented by scientists in what Churchill sometimes referred to as the “Wizard War.” Lindemann, an eccentric Oxford physicist commonly referred to as “the Prof,” and known as the PM’s “pet scientist,” appeared to be following his own train of thought and began to ruminate aloud about uranium, saying, “Uranium is continually halving itself. Why is there any uranium left on earth?”
The little-known element meant nothing to most of the guests at the table, but the Harvard chemist immediately grasped its significance. Bill Richards had fantasized about a uranium bomb and the possibility that a multiplying chain reaction might explode with force. Conant still thought it far-fetched, though, at Bush’s invitation, he had attended a Conference on Applied Nuclear Physics at MIT the previous fall. He had listened to an interesting presentation by Fermi on nuclear fission and was familiar with the outlines of the theory of the use of uranium for power. He understood there were several promising approaches to separating the uranium-235 isotope from the heavier, far more abundant uranium-238. One was to place the unseparated uranium in a “pile,” or reactor, with graphite or heavy water as a moderator (a way of slowing down the neutrons) to increase their chances of being captured by another atom of uranium-235, thereby increasing the chances of a chain reaction. Calculations indicated that if one gradually increased the size of the pile, a self-sustaining nuclear reaction would take place. But all the diffusion methods presented great difficulty, and Conant did not believe the many obstacles would be overcome anytime soon.
Roosevelt, prompted by Einstein’s letter, had turned over the problem to a secret Advisory Committee on Uranium headed by Lyman J. Briggs, director of the National Bureau of Standards, and then asked Bush to take it on as part of his NDRC responsibilities. The subject had come up in a number of NDRC meetings, but Conant recalled the discussion was always about “exploiting uranium fission as a source of power rather than a means of destruction.” At the time, he had questioned squandering men and money on atomic energy. Priority had to be given to weapons likely to be of practical value in the current war, not the next. In any case, uranium was not part of his London portfolio, and he put Lindemann’s comment out of his mind.
The luncheon conversation bothered Conant for other reasons. He did not think Churchill had been entirely frank—though in his view, “no responsible statesman was required to be completely candid”—but the PM’s gloomy frame of mind was extremely disturbing. Even though he suspected it had been, at least in part, a performance to stir him up, Churchill “had succeeded.” Conant was so agitated that on his return to his hotel, he immediately cabled Calvert Smith demanding to know if the White committee and other proponents were doing all they could on behalf of Lend-Lease: “AMERICAN NEWS VERY DISCOURAGING IS EVERYONE GIVING ALL AID RAPID PASSAGE.”
On Friday, March 7, he received Smith’s cabled reply informing him that final passage of the bill, without hobbling amendments, was expected within days. The president signed it into law on March 11. All of London seemed to celebrate. The British understood what most Americans did not: that the real significance of Lend-Lease was that it brought the United States one step closer to war. Roosevelt was heaped with praise. “Your great president” was all Conant heard, over and over again. From then on, he noted in his diary, all bureaucratic obstacles to scientific exchange disappeared as “the gratitude of the British for this act swept all difficulty away before us.”
At his next meeting with the prime minister, a luncheon at Chequers, a big, drafty house an hour’s drive from London that was his official country retreat, Churchill was in excellent spirits. There were a number of American guests present, including Ambassador Winant, Major General Harry J. Malony, and Averell Harriman, FDR’s special envoy to Germany who had arrived a few days earlier to take charge of the Lend-Lease operation. All the uneasiness Churchill had displayed ten days earlier was gone, and he was relaxed, witty, and voluble. Putting aside the subject of Anglo-American relations, he held forth on the battles of the American Civil War, proving well versed on the subject. When he came to the Reconstruction period, he remarked sagely that “the men who can win a war can never make a peace.” Somebody suggested there might be one exception. No one vied for that flattering trial balloon.
Conant was very impressed with Churchill. He was even quite likeable in his way, despite being too bombastic and given to making provocative statements. What sealed their friendship, however, was the discovery that they shared the hobby of painting, though neither had any time for it now. Many years later, Brendan Bracken, the prime minister’s chief advisor on public relations, told Conant that Churchill was initially appalled at the prospect of entertaining the president of Harvard. “What shall I talk to him about?” he had asked, according to Bracken, who recounted the story with glee. “He thought you would be an old man with a long white beard, exuding learning and academic formality.” Instead, in walked the surprisingly informal, boyish American sporting, of all things, “a tweed suit.”
On Wednesday, March 12, Conant had an audience with King George at Buckingham Palace, where he could see through a window where a bomb had knocked down one small wing. As they chatted before an open fire, the king, a “friendly soul” who greeted him without formality, proved not only up-to-date on radar, then a highly secret defensive weapon, but also knowledgeable about the recent introduction of a device that could identify whether a spotted plane was friend or foe, known as IFF. After a quarter of an hour, “the maximum time an ordinary individual should take of His Majesty’s day,” his time was up, and Conant amused himself by seeing if he could comport himself in the recommended manner and exit “without turning his back on Royalty.” The maneuver was easier than expected.
There was almost constant rain. The cold and damp of wartime London eventually got the better of him. Conant was forced to spend a day in bed, curled up with a hot-water bottle, catching up on his correspondence and sending cables. In a long letter to Patty, written later that evening in the midst of an air raid, he described with genuine excitement hearing the sirens sound at a quarter after eight and experiencing his “first real Blitz”:
About 8:30 the guns began to bark, and you could hear the planes overhead very plainly. The waiter who was bringing me dinner assured me it was German planes, and from the racket of the guns, I believed him . . . Here sounds one now! As though it were going to land in the courtyard! They say the noise of the guns is very comforting, but I haven’t learned yet how to tell a gun from a bomb.
Probably I haven’t heard any bombs, but I would swear I heard two in the last hour whistling (they do, you know) and then exploding, but there was no concussion in the room and only a slight shaking of the windows, so I may be wrong.
Clearly relishing his brush with danger, Conant tried to analyze the sound in order to determine the distance of the bombs from his room at Claridge’s, telling his wife that the explos
ions sounded like a “cross between fireworks at the [Boston] Braves’ field heard from Quincy Street and a thunderstorm in the ‘Massif Central’ [mountainous region of southern France].”
In a follow-up note, he reported, “Six bombs dropped within a quarter of a mile of Claridge’s. The worst raid on this part of London since October. So you see, living through a raid isn’t such a bad business,” he added jauntily, explaining that he was including a clipping that showed “how large a city London is and how small the chances are” of being killed. The American embassy had furnished him with a “lovely but heavy” US Service gas mask and tin helmet. He did not tell her that the post-Christmas lull in the Luftwaffe’s aerial attacks, which Londoners dubbed the “lullablitz,” was over, and the nightly punishment had begun again. What amazed him the most was that through it all his British hosts insisted on dressing for dinner, and seemed to regard his lack of proper attire as a greater crisis than the possibility of being blown up, forcing him to rent a set of tails from Moss Bros. in Covent Garden.
Conant spent the next month establishing liaison at the highest levels of the British government and defense establishment, arranging for a broad-based exchange of secret scientific military information. He toured Porton Down, the chemical warfare proving ground, and Woolwich, home to the Royal Arsenal, which manufactured guns, cartridge cases, shells, and bombs. He met with Sir Henry Tizard, and visited airfields, antiaircraft emplacements, and coastal defenses. After inspecting a radar unit while it was tracking enemy planes, Conant came away so impressed that he immediately proposed a “wild idea” to Harriman and Colonel William Donovan, who was in London on a special intelligence mission of his own: Why not send a group of American reserve officers with physics backgrounds to England to learn how to operate these “most important and highly complicated gadgets?” This “electronic battalion,” which came to be known as the “Conant scheme,” would serve two ends: the United States could supply the British with much-needed additional operators, and at the same time ensure that if and when America entered the war, it would have radar specialists trained in the use of the advanced equipment.
Having been in the weapons business before, Conant listened with an ear attuned to the hard-won advances and insights that came from frontline experience. The British had nine months of fighting under their belts and had learned some valuable lessons. “One thing they do better here,” he stressed to Bush in an almost illegible letter written in haste in order to make the next morning’s diplomatic pouch, “is to keep their scientists connected with a project from start to the finish.” Conant was all for it. He remembered the value of feedback from the field while working on mustard gas, and emphasized the importance of having scientists carry their work through all stages of development and deployment, collaborating closely with the men actually operating the weapons, “or else much of our usefulness comes to an end at a critical point.”
As more work on immediate battle problems was a priority, he advised exporting manpower from the United States to England. Unceasing effort had to be made to maintain technical superiority in the air, and England had exhausted its supply of physicists. First-rate American scientists and engineers—“not many men but much talent”—should be dispatched to England to familiarize themselves with explosives, war gases, radar, rockets, fuses, and antisubmarine devices under actual combat conditions. A dozen or two, working “right here,” where they could do the most good, would make an “enormous difference.” The burden of more long-term research projects, such as completing the development of the British-designed proximity fuse, improving antiaircraft shells and rockets, along with totally new weapons, should be shouldered by America, because they would become a factor only if the conflict dragged on for some time.
“If you accept this line of argument,” Conant told Bush, he should further accept that this class of weapons might turn out to be the “determining factor” in the length of the struggle. “We in the US must be willing to take the long gamble,” he argued, “do the long-range research as insurance against a war lasting four years or longer.”
As a result of Conant’s recommendations, twenty-six American scientists would travel to England over the next nine months to exchange secret data and forge close ties. But this was more than just pooling scientific reports and eliminating needless duplication of effort—the men of each country would help to stimulate one another’s thinking, giving rise to new ideas for weapons. “Here he was ahead of his time,” Bush observed of Conant, noting that his approach “speeded work on both sides of the water.”
For the most part, however, his duties were more diplomatic than scientific. His brief was to launch the NDRC’s London base, make contact with as many “brass hats” as possible, and along the way assess Britain’s capabilities and requirements, not to engage in detailed discussions of technical matters. But when Lindemann asked to meet with him alone for a private lunch at a London club and again raised the subject of uranium fission, Conant realized he was “clearly conveying secret information.” He found it curious that the military potential of uranium should keep coming up in conversation. Only days earlier at a Cambridge University laboratory, Conant had met the French physicist Hans von Halban, who had fled Paris with a supply of heavy water, a gram of radium, and a record of his research investigating a chain reaction that might be harnessed to power submarines or possibly a bomb. When the Frenchman began to confide concerns about his work, Conant had quickly cut him off. “Look, you’re not supposed to talk to me about this thing,” he told him. Halban was obviously speaking “out of channels,” and Conant, mindful of the “need to know” principle governing classified material, terminated the conversation.
Lindemann was also way out of bounds, but he was an influential figure and a key member of Churchill’s inner circle. Out of respect, Conant let him finish. Still, he did not trust the motives of the arrogant science minister, an unabashed elitist, who made no effort to conceal his contempt for his social inferiors or devotion to the idea that the British Empire should rule the world. Conant told Lindemann point-blank that while atomic power might have its uses someday, he did not like to waste precious resources on “distant objectives,” adding, “too distant for us to take seriously in these frightening days.”
Lindemann would not be so easily dismissed, however. A large man with heavily set features, he leaned in and said portentously, “You have left out of consideration the possibility of the construction of a bomb of enormous power.”
“How would that be possible?” Conant asked.
“By first separating uranium-235,” he explained, and then arranging for two portions of the element to be brought together suddenly “so that the resulting mass would spontaneously undergo a self-sustaining reaction” of tremendous force—in other words, an atomic bomb.
As Conant recalled later, this was the first he had heard about “even the remote possibility of a bomb.” Until then, he had considered it an unproven concept. He had not known that atomic energy’s use as an explosive had been “made evident”—certainly nothing of the kind had been disclosed in the NDRC meetings he had attended. But, then, Bush was a stickler for going through channels, viewing it as a “grave offense” when people exceeded their authority, and uranium was Briggs’s bailiwick. No doubt both men were aware of the uranium studies being done in England and, because of the “supersecrecy” of the project, had decided to keep him in the dark. He also assumed Lindemann was dropping hints for reasons of his own: perhaps believing the need to enlist the Americans had become urgent and hoping the Harvard scientist had the ear of the president. “Feeling that this was entirely an unofficial and private communication, and represented a highly speculative scheme,” Conant did not pursue the topic further. He decided it would be prudent to keep it under his hat and wait for an opportune moment to tell Bush about the backstairs whispers.
By the end of March, he was sick again. He blamed a long, cold day in Dover inspecting the fortifications. Despite
a “bad throat,” he visited the site of the Harvard–Red Cross Hospital in Salisbury. The next morning, he took a few minutes to see the Salisbury Cathedral, the tallest spire in England, and it looked so beautiful and proud in the quiet town that he felt his throat—which was better—constrict again. “If I were to stay here long (and out of bed and warm), I might easily become a sentimental Anglophile,” he wrote Patty. “It is hard to get this country in focus these days—such a mixture of war and peace, of the normal and the abnormal, of life and death.” He had stayed longer than planned, but two months was not long enough to do half of what he would have liked to do. “I’ve tried to cover so many fronts, all necessary,” he worried. “I believe I’ve done some good. I hope so.”
On April 10, the day before his departure on Pan Am’s new flying-boat service, he called on the prime minister at Downing Street for the last time. A meeting with a group of high-level officers was breaking up, and the maps they had been consulting hung on the walls obscured by protective coverings. Churchill insisted he join him in the Cabinet Room and divulged that the topic of conversation had been the impending debacle in Greece. The retreating Italians had called in the German army, and it would soon overpower all resistance. Over a two-day period, hundreds of German bombers had dropped thousands of pounds of bombs on Yugoslavia and Greece, pulverizing their ancient cities. The battle on the ground was almost certainly lost. Brigadier General Erwin Rommel’s armored divisions had already driven General Archibald Wavell’s weary, underequipped forces back three hundred miles, and would not stop until they reached the Suez Canal. The British troops there were doomed. Churchill was somber. “Here we are,” he said, “standing alone. What is going to happen?”
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