Thus the battle lines were drawn in the quest for control of atomic energy, which some had called “the greatest challenge mankind ever faced.” The heat of the conflict between the army and scientists over control of the bomb, and the special capacity of the military to preserve national security, had left the two camps in deep disagreement and greatly widened the ideological divide. Perhaps it was inevitable that such a critical postwar issue would ignite controversy and debate, but by arrogating responsibility for atomic policy to themselves, Conant and Bush reinforced the rank-and-file scientists’ impression that they were once again being cut out of the decision-making process. Their detractors had no way of knowing about the pair’s behind-the-scenes agitation for international control and growing misgivings about the Soviets’ expansionist intentions. Karl Compton, in an attempt to smooth things over, stated that the May-Johnson bill had been prepared with the “wisest of motives” and “nothing of the sinister intent which some people, including a good many of our scientists, have suspected.”
But the ill will that had dominated the prolonged dispute did not dissipate and would soon fuel future controversies. As Richard Hewlett and Oscar Anderson Jr., the authors of The New World, observed, “The same men who could command unquestioned support for a two-billion-dollar secret project a few months earlier were now looked upon as power-hungry connivers.”
* * *
After the president’s reluctance to exercise the powers of his office in the struggle for domestic control of atomic energy, Conant and Bush had little expectation that he would deliver on his promise to move forward on international control. They were dismayed by Truman’s decision not to attend the meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers in London in September 1945, and despaired at the news that Byrnes’s negotiations with the Russians had been acrimonious and unprofitable. Byrnes was convinced, as Stimson put it, that “the implied threat of the bomb in his pocket” would give him leverage. He had wrongly assumed that America’s atomic monopoly would “make Russia more manageable in Europe,” and even enable him to demand geographical, political, and ideological concessions in exchange for the neutralization of the new weapon. Stimson had tried to warn him that unless the United States offered the Russians full partnership in developing atomic energy, it risked embittering relations and beginning “a secret armament race of a rather desperate character.”
As his last act as a member of Truman’s Cabinet, Stimson, his legendary reserves of strength finally beginning to ebb away, had prepared a three-page memorandum outlining his plan to approach Moscow directly about joining the United States and Britain in the effort to control the bomb. He believed an international organization would take too long to create and would never be taken seriously. The point was not whether the Russians got the bomb in five or twenty years, he argued, but whether they were “willing and cooperative partners among peace-loving nations of the world.”
Conant and Bush agreed with Stimson, but they did not enjoy the same close relationship with the new secretary of state, or for that matter, the new president. They could no longer count on being consulted, let alone hope that their advice would be heeded. By then, it was apparent that the Interim Committee, the secret high-level group appointed to advise the president on nuclear energy, was being circumvented and Conant would soon resign from it. In late October he wrote Bush that he felt the time had come to “break his silence,” adding, “It is getting to be a disgrace that the administration doesn’t give the country ‘a lead’ on this issue.”
Bush was equally exasperated. With the Anglo-American-Canadian atomic energy summit on the Potomac River approaching on November 11, and the bomb threatening to overshadow the talks, as it had in London, the administration seemed no better prepared on the subject. “I am very much disturbed at the handling of the matter of international relations on atomic energy,” he complained to Conant on November 7, calling the situation “thoroughly chaotic.”
With nothing to lose and everything to gain, Bush presented Byrnes with a document outlining the full-fledged international inspection and control policy that he and Conant had been working on in tandem for months. It laid out their step-by-step plan in greater detail than ever before, emphasizing that it would take many years to implement, and that the primary objective was to start Russia down the path to collaboration. Bush even included tactical advice, suggesting as a bold opening move that Truman should invite Russia to join the three Western powers in asking the United Nations to create a commission and charge it with disseminating scientific information in all fields, including atomic energy.
Lacking any real plan of their own, Truman and Byrnes proposed the Bush-Conant program almost to the letter to the British prime minster, Clement Attlee, and his delegation—and to the Americans’ great surprise, they accepted it. The Canadian prime minster, Mackenzie King, happy to be included as a full partner, was also amenable. After several more long days and nights of wrangling, and several more drafts, the White House called a press conference to announce the agreed declaration. On the morning of Thursday, November 15, an exhausted Truman, with the two prime ministers slumped at his side, read hoarsely from two legal-size pages: “We recognize that the application of recent discoveries to the methods and practice of war has placed at the disposal of mankind means of destruction hitherto unknown, against which there can be no adequate military defense, and in the employment of which no single nation can have a monopoly.” They proposed that a UN commission be set up to formulate proposals for scientific exchange, for control adequate to ensure only peaceful uses of atomic energy, and to assemble a corps of inspectors to safeguard against violations. The agreement concluded that banishing the “scourge of war” could be achieved only “by giving wholehearted support to the United Nations Organization.”
Conant was pleased with how the talks turned out, given the hasty and haphazard preparations. The three governments had agreed not to use their present knowledge as a threat, and had embarked on the program of international control that he and Bush felt was imperative. While the November 15 declaration did not include the direct approach to enlist Russian cooperation they had wanted, it also did not rule it out. At least now the United States government was publicly committed to taking the all-important “first steps” at the United Nations in January. Conant credited Bush’s skillful leadership with carrying the day, but, in a nod to political realities, he sent Truman a telegram of congratulations and urged him to move rapidly to translate the agreement into action.
The Truman-Attlee-King agreement was intended to show that America did not wish to hold the atomic sword over the world, but Moscow chose to draw the opposite conclusion. The Soviet newspapers ran a rash of alarming stories implying that the Anglo-American bloc, armed with the atomic bomb, was intending to turn the United Nations against Russia. If the president and the secretary of state had any lingering doubts about approaching the Soviet Union, they were dispelled by the discord being stirred by the bad press. Recognizing the need for diplomatic intervention, Byrnes sent Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov a cable on November 23 suggesting the moment was ripe for another gathering of the foreign ministers. Just as he had hoped, Molotov extended an invitation for a Moscow meeting, setting the date for December 15. When Bush fell ill with the flu, Conant, as one of the leaders of the Manhattan Project, was asked go in his place to help facilitate the negotiations. He just had time to visit his son Jim, who was recovering at Bethesda Naval Hospital, and tell him of his unexpected plans before rushing off to National Airport to catch his plane. Byrnes had assured him he would be back by Christmas, but Conant thought the man a “cheerful liar” and told Patty not to count on it.
Before he had agreed to join the delegation, Conant had sounded out Byrnes about his aims and was satisfied “his policy was that of paving the way for a scheme of international control and release of our information as the scheme develops.” Worried about the risk of alienating the Russians, Conant was eager to secure Soviet
support for the idea of a United Nations commission, and his fingers were “still crossed” on the promise of a scientific exchange to help win their cooperation. But Byrnes did not want to lose the advantage of secrecy. Catering to Conant’s liberal inclinations to share all scientific information also invited trouble at home. Groves had insisted that American negotiators should offer no more than the exchange of basic scientific data, and felt so strongly about the issue that he sent Secretary of War Patterson a letter warning about the risks inherent in reciprocity. Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal had even graver doubts about the release of information until a firm agreement and safeguards were in place. The senators on the Foreign Relations Committee, and members of the Special Committee on Atomic Energy, already annoyed at being briefed at the last minute, had protested the presence of idealistic “college professors” in the delegation, arguing that it would surely lead to revelations of atomic data during the conference.
Conant got nowhere trying to convince Byrnes to initiate the scientific interchange before they left Moscow. It now seemed that they were poles apart. He could not persuade the secretary of state that it was not a matter of disclosing the “secret”—that it was only a question of a year or two before most of their technical information regarding the bomb reached the Soviets anyway by one route or another. As Conant had argued in a speech on December 3 at the Harvard Club in Boston, hinting at the case he would make to the Russians, fears about the time required before another nation would be ready to use atomic bombs—he estimated not fewer than five years but less than fifteen—were not as important as they first seemed. “The really crucial time interval,” he warned, “is between today and the date on which the international political situation might become frozen in so ugly a pattern as to make impossible any control of the atomic bomb.”
To the American delegation’s amazement, however, the Russians showed little of their usual evasiveness and intransigence. No special inducements proved necessary. The agreement the foreign ministers reached followed the Truman-Attlee-King formulation. They ran into a little trouble when Molotov expressed concern about the language referring to proceeding “by stages,” but when Byrnes argued it was central to the whole proposal, he withdrew his objections. It was also agreed that the UN commission report to the Security Council rather than to the General Assembly, and that the council deal with all matters affecting security. All told, there was far less difficulty over the proposal that the United Nations establish the Atomic Energy Commission than expected, and Byrnes apologized to the Harvard president for having dragged him into the icy depths of the Russian winter for no reason. Conant suspected Byrnes was more interested in scoring a public relations coup than in actually initiating atomic cooperation between the two nations, finding him “a little cynical about the whole business.” Nevertheless, the conference was “headed for a large success,” he noted in his diary, “but my fingers are still crossed on the bomb and will be until the commission is set up.”
When he returned from his Christmas visit to the Soviet capital, Conant was of “good cheer.” He still nursed the hope, expressed in a speech that November, that “very soon all the nations involved would agree to dismantle all their bombs.” They could arrange to store the fissionable material or use it in the future in atomic power plants. He had faith that through the internationalism of science, they might yet avoid an arms race, although he knew better than to trust too much in the promises of the “dwellers of the Kremlin.” His optimistic view of the future was reflected in a December 28 editorial in the Boston Herald, which called the Moscow agreement for the establishment of a UN commission the “most comforting news since the bomb fell on Hiroshima,” and a sign that their leaders were transforming the technology of war into an instrument of peace.
Bush, who missed seeing Conant when he got back to Washington, was also feeling bullish about the future. “The outcome is excellent,” he wrote his wartime partner and close friend in the New Year, his letter brimming with good humor. Looking back on the tumultuous events of the previous summer and fall, he reflected, “It seems to me that the way this whole thing has worked out is highly gratifying. It was about a year ago, or somewhat more, that you and I started down this path of creating an international arrangement along the lines that finally emerged. I had the satisfaction of the Attlee conference, and you have now had the Moscow affair, which are the final steps before the UN is launched. Of course, we can never know how successful UNO will be until some years have passed,” he added, “but there is great satisfaction in the feeling that at least the whole show is started down the right path.”
* * *
I. As more information became available, the death toll at Hiroshima was estimated to be 100,000, with another 130,000 wounded and more than 8,000 missing. Those figures would increase steadily as the Japanese reported fatalities due to injuries and radiation exposure: the total number of deaths was approximately 140,000, with the five-year total estimated to have reached 200,000.
II. In 1946 James R. Conant was awarded the Silver Star medal for his performance as a torpedo data computer operator.
CHAPTER 18
* * *
Atomic Chaos
His success [overseeing the Manhattan Project] does not make Conant altogether happy. He considers control of the Bomb the world’s biggest job.
—Time cover story on JBC, 1946
The New Year did not bring relief from the atomic anxiety still gripping the country. The hopeful spirit that followed the Moscow meeting soon faded, drowned out by the incessant talk of the bomb that dominated the radio, newspapers, and political platforms. The scientists’ movement had launched its crusade for international control. Earnest young chemists, physicists, and engineers were fanning out across the country to lecture people about the danger of atomic warfare, taking their pressing message to churches, community associations, farmers’ groups, labor unions, Elks clubs, and the League of Women Voters. Editorial writers took up their cause, and advice poured forth.
With everyone spouting different doomsday scenarios, an OSRD veteran summed up his colleagues’ frantic response as “the atomic bomb is just too dreadful, too awful, too-too-too—everybody must do something about it quick!” A public opinion poll showed that a majority of Americans agreed the US nuclear monopoly would be short-lived: 60 percent believed the bomb secret was already known to other countries, and nearly half of those surveyed expressed the fear that another world war was either certain or possible in twenty-five years. Time’s annual “Man of the Year” issue featured Harry Truman on the cover, his image dwarfed by a huge mushroom cloud, one hand clamped to a lightning bolt. “In such a world,” the magazine asked, “who dared be optimistic?”
Conant tired quickly of the media hysteria, which he considered to be on a low intellectual plane and counterproductive. There was too much misinformation. Too many ill-conceived schemes were being put forward. Yet in his speeches and comments to reporters, he, too, resorted frequently to dire warnings that people did not understand the “terrifying implications” of the new weapon and the urgent necessity of achieving international control of the atom to avoid the “nightmare of global war.”
In opposing Truman’s flawed proposal for a peacetime draft, he startled members of the House Military Affairs Committee by urging continuation of the existing Selective Service Act and vigorously promoting voluntary enlistment while they studied the new defense situation created by the atomic bomb, emphasizing that America needed to keep its army and navy strong “right now, at this minute, and in every way.” While many prominent educators—and most parents—wanted the boys back home, Conant insisted they dare not let down their guard. Whether or not they could survive the “staggering blow” of a surprise nuclear attack was open to debate, he told the congressmen, but when it came to planning arms and manpower, “We must assume the worst: we have to assume that if the United States by any unhappy chance should find itself in such a position, it would fight o
n; we have to plan how to fight under these adverse conditions.”
In speaking to the public about the bomb, Conant often equated his dilemma to that of a doctor with a diabetic patient shortly before the advent of insulin. If unduly alarmed, the patient could become so pessimistic that he might overindulge, possibly with fatal consequences. On the other hand, if the patient were not sufficiently impressed with the gravity of his condition, he might not obey the dietary rules and die as a result of similar recklessness—“not out of despair but out of indifference based on ignorance.” If those same patients were made to realize the dangerous nature of their malady, however, they might learn to manage it, and be preserved until the discovery of insulin made their plight easier and their lives relatively safe. “If the American people are sufficiently aware of the extreme danger to our industrial civilization which is inherent in the new discovery,” he told a gathering at the Harvard Club of Boston, “we may be intelligent and courageous enough to survive the peril.” The analogy was not perfect, but he believed that if they could just find a scheme that was the “international equivalent of insulin,” it might be possible to “evolve a world order which eliminates the major threat of war.”
Man of the Hour Page 48