by Andrew Brown
Whether Polanyi considered Bernal’s politics as reprehensible as the Webbs’ is not clear, but he would remain a trenchant critic of Bernal’s ideas about the nature of science, as we shall see. As practising scientists, however, the two showed mutual respect and were always cordial. Polanyi had read Bernal’s papers on the structure of water and wrote to him soon after arriving in Manchester asking for further details: ‘Could you give me a short list of characteristic distances between oxygen atoms linked together by a hydrogen atom between them? I am writing up a paper of reaction kinetics for which this information would be of great value to me.’31 Bernal replied: ‘The question you ask is rather a difficult one. The actual distances between oxygen atoms, as you have probably seen from the copy of my paper, vary according to the polarizing power of the neighbouring atom.’32 He supplied Polanyi with a list of the varying oxygen radii for the hydroxides of various metals (e.g. lithium, calcium, magnesium, zinc, aluminium, iron and boron).
The year that Polanyi wrote ‘Truth and propaganda’, 1936, saw the start of the Spanish Civil War – a conflict so complicated that propagandists on all sides had little to fear from the truth. It was not a civil war in the style of English-speaking countries, with the fighting confined to opposing armies, but involved vicious street-gangs indulging in fratricide and the grisly killings of neighbours and priests. In England, where the regional and religious aspects of the war were easy to ignore, it came to be viewed as a fight between the democratically elected Popular Front government, the Republicans, and the fascist rebels, the Nationalists, led by General Franco.33 The immediate reaction of the British Government, now headed by Stanley Baldwin, was to sign a Non-Intervention Pact in August 1936 with France, Germany, Italy and the USSR, but the last three had no intention of staying out of the war. Hitler and Mussolini took the opportunity to try out their armies and their burgeoning air power on essentially defenceless targets, while the Soviets enjoyed plaudits from the American and European press for its moral stance on Spain and sent ‘advisers’ there to organize the demise of the non-communist Left.34
For British intellectuals, the Spanish Civil War was the defining event of the decade: it allowed them to display passionate support for the Republican cause, and disgust for the craven neutrality of the Baldwin administration. Leonard Woolf wrote to Margaret Gardiner on 1st August 1936 about a proposed FIL letter on the Spanish Civil War, which he thought would do no harm but could not possibly do any good: ‘It is too vague and mushy; it is the twitter of sparrows under the shadow falling on them from the hawk’s wings. I admit I am impotent and a sparrow; but even a sparrow should refuse to twitter.’35 The FIL letter was sent to The Times and subsequently carried prominently in the Madrid press as a message of sympathy, sent to the Spanish nation by 29 English intellectuals from H.G. Wells to Virginia Woolf.
For some intellectuals, messages of sympathy were no longer enough and they chose the courageous course of direct action. A handful of Cambridge graduates, most notably the communists David Guest and John Cornford, went to fight for the International Brigades and were killed. Very few in the Cambridge Scientists Anti-War Group now held to their pacifist principles, and the group became a Popular Front, anti-fascist organization in all but name, with Bernal as its first formal president. The CSAWG produced numerous leaflets, supporting the Republican cause in Spain, and Sage was an unreserved partisan, as one would expect. In their opinion, the Spanish working-man, ‘standing up to the fascist tanks and aeroplanes’,36 was fighting for more than his own liberty: if fascism triumphed in Spain, France and England would not be safe – yet Bernal was frustrated by ‘a general attitude of apathy and withdrawal’ amongst the majority of people.37 He also found himself at odds with Aldous Huxley, still resolute in his pacifism. Huxley upbraided him for using the word ‘force’ in an abstract sense without ever specifying its nature. Huxley wrote: ‘To speak of “the use of force in a just cause”, or “a just war” is altogether too vague. One should say “the use of thermite, high explosives and vesicants in a just cause”’. He also criticized Sage for being ‘completely self-contradictory’ on moral issues, speaking of ‘just’ wars and ‘noble’ purposes, while denying that there are any absolute moral standards.38
The CSAWG provided Bernal with the complete answer to Huxley’s charge of relying on abstract words to avoid consideration of the unpalatable physical damage of modern warfare. In what Bernal came to regard as the advent of operational research (OR), the Cambridge scientists were spurred by the Spanish Civil War to undertake experiments that directly examined the likely consequences of aerial attacks on the public. Bernal suggested to the CSAWG that they should carry out some studies on poison gases and the efficacy of government-issue gas-masks. One of the main experimenters was a physics research student, John Fremlin, aided by his Wancée, Reinet. The laboratories were in the basement room in Kings Parade and the Woosters’ home. Reinet, a graduate of Newnham, lived in lodgings and was therefore able to spend nights taking readings. John had to be in his college rooms at night, and on one occasion carried out his own experiment on tear gas there. He thought he had cleared the room of the heavy gas by leaving his windows open, but wore a respirator mask in bed, just in case. He woke in the morning ‘feeling a bit odd’ and was greeted by his ‘bedder’, who was ‘weeping copiously. She was very concerned about what was happening to me. But she very nobly went down the stairs, wiping her eyes, and prevented one of the college porters coming up, because this might lead to trouble… As it happened, the gas still had two or three days to evaporate.’39
The CSAWG also examined high explosives and incendiary bombs. One of the few undergraduate members, Maurice Wilkins, ‘was asked to verify by experiment a report from the war in Spain that incendiary bombs, landing on the top floors of high buildings, could burn their way to the bottom. I made incendiary bombs and set up some flooring in the garden of W.A. Wooster, one of my lecturers. However hard I tried, I could not get the bombs to burn through the floorboards. I was very disappointed because we were keen to show that the Spanish report was right. Wooster took such a grave view of my failure that he advised me that, whatever I did after graduating, I must not do experimental science.’40 Wilkins spent so much time on anti-war activities that he managed to take only a low second-class physics degree and could not therefore obtain a research post in Cambridge (none of which stopped him sharing the Nobel Prize with Watson and Crick in 1962).
Sage’s main contribution to the CASWG was as a generator of ideas – an inspirational figure to the predominantly young group, and an effective public spokesman. He was very good at presenting information to lay audiences and often dramatized his talks with demonstrations. A favourite trick of his was to breathe out a mouthful of tobacco smoke through a gas mask which had its valve removed and to illuminate the wreath of smoke curling out of the snout by means of a spotlight. This led to a modification of millions of stockpiled masks.41 The greatest public impact of the CSAWG research came with the promotion of their book The Protection of the Public from Aerial Attack by the Left Book Club in the spring of 1937. Among its major charges were:
‘Gas-proof’ rooms prepared according to the instruction given on the ARP handbooks are not gas-tight, and in any case millions of people live in accommodation where they could not set aside a room as a gas shelter.
Incendiary bombs would be used in such numbers that the present fire brigade system would be inadequate to deal with the resulting fires.
No protection for children under five years of age has been proposed.
Bernal led two delegations to the House of Commons to speak to interested MPs. He met complacent Conservatives and Labour MPs, still banking on the League of Nations. As Churchill wrote in a letter to the press baron, Lord Rothermere in March: ‘Parliament is as dead as mutton and the Tory party feel that everything is being done for the best and the country is perfectly safe.’42 A Government spokesman, Geoffrey Lloyd MP, tried to play down the significance of the CS
AWG book, stating that the experiments depended on academic assumptions and that the deductions made from them were open to grave criticisms.
A hostile review of the book appeared in Nature from General C.H. Foulkes,43 a former commander of the British Army’s chemical warfare section. He conceded that ‘in many of the poorer homes completely gas-proof shelters can only be provided with great difficulty; but that is no reason why the remainder should not be protected’. He also thought that the Home Office’s recommendations ‘are generally sound and reasonable, and it is important that public confidence in these measures shall not be shaken unnecessarily’. He saved his most damning remarks for the final paragraph: ‘This book can do nothing but harm. It suggests no better defensive measures than those recommended by the Home Office, while it is calculated to destroy confidence in them and to create panic.’ Predictably, there was a vigorous rejoinder from the CSAWG, three weeks later.44 After defending their methodologies and assumptions, the scientists replied to what they saw as the chief burden of Foulkes’ argument, namely that their experiments were academic exercises with little relevance to actual war conditions:
He considers the measures proposed by the Government as adequate to deal with the kinds of attack which are probable and points to the experience of the Great War. We believe, however, that with the immensely increased potential force of modern air fleets, attacks of a different order of intensity are now possible, and that against such attack the measures are hopelessly inadequate… We have no desire to create panic, but those who persuade the people of Great Britain to believe that they are safe when they are not are inviting panic and worse than panic in the case of war. We would be lacking in our duty as scientists and citizens if we were to accept, without question, assurances of the validity of which we have not been convinced… Experiments are to be believed, not on account of the authority or bias of the experimenters, but because they can or cannot be repeated by anyone who chooses to do so. We would accordingly urge that the whole question of the protection of the population from aerial attack should be studied openly by representative scientists; then a rational estimate can be made of the probable efficiency of any measures which are finally adopted.
There was some mild concern in the press about the official ARP recommendations, but the Government was not disposed to take any advice from the CSAWG. In November 1937, Mr Lloyd, the junior minister for civil defence, attacked their motivation. He scornfully warned the House of Commons that ‘this group was quite distinct from the general body of Cambridge scientists, and their using a name which was liable to be taken as investing them with a certain authority was gravely resented by the senior members of the faculty. This group, to say the least, has a political tinge. [Ministerial cheers.]’45 Bernal, undaunted, immediately hit back in the New Statesman: ‘Once the Government, by their own propaganda, have roused the country to a realisation of the air danger, the public will demand that it should not be paid for by the people who can least afford it.’46
There was a large and successful meeting of the British Association in Cambridge in the summer of 1938. Aside from a full and high-quality science programme, there were sessions on the relationship between science and society at which Bernal was a prominent speaker. He also spoke at a conversazione organized by the AScW and at packed meetings put on by the CSAWG at Trinity College and FIL at St. John’s.47 The summer drew to a close with Hitler’s troops massing on the border with Czechoslovakia, (Austria having been annexed earlier in the year). The threat of impending war caused Kingsley Martin to write an editorial in the New Statesman (which he soon regretted) suggesting that the existing ‘Bohemian frontier should not be made the occasion of a world war’.48 The softening of the magazine’s anti-Nazi stance at a crucial time seemed an inexplicable betrayal to many of its readers, and Martin was inundated with letters of protest, ‘the bitterest from Professors Lancelot Hogben and J.D. Bernal’.49
Sage also took part in a large demonstration in Trafalgar Square, protesting against the German menace. It was suggested that the crowd take its protest to the German embassy, situated nearby. The embassy was protected by a double cordon of policemen, and seeing them, the urbane British crowd turned back, with the solitary exception of J.B.S. Haldane. He was, in Sage’s words, a man who ‘preferred to express himself in clear and possibly violent ways’ and he made a solitary charge at the police cordon. Their truncheons beat him senseless and he was dragged away by his friends. When he recovered, he said ‘This peace movement is no good, it won’t fight!’50
Haldane had made several visits to Spain and seen the effects of German aerial bombing on undefended towns. Based on this experience and his own war record, he considered himself to be an authority on ARP and entered the debate with characteristic vigour. He was convinced that high explosive bombs represented more of a threat to the civilian population than gas attacks. He argued powerfully for the construction of communal deep shelters in a book that he hastily wrote, and Bernal credited him with making it ‘impossible for the Government to continue with a policy of providing only brown paper refuge rooms’.51 The two men, together with John Strachey, undertook a national campaign, organized by the Left Book Club, to spread the word about the need for purpose-built shelters. Even senior Cabinet ministers were finally realizing that these communist scientists had a point: Sir Samuel Hoare, the Home Secretary, wrote confidentially to Sir John Simon, the Chancellor of the Exchequer:
We are dangerously backward in protection against the consequences of high explosives, especially in the vulnerable areas represented by important industrial cities with crowded populations… It is clear that the country is anxious for large developments in the shelter policy, and the government must adopt measures which will secure vigorous and quick progress with all practicable schemes for providing such protection.52
The date of this confidential memo was 26th October 1938 less than a month after Prime Minister Chamberlain’s triumphant return from Munich, promising ‘Peace for our time’. Hoare and Simon had been two of the leading appeasers of Hitler and Mussolini, although even they were beginning to worry a little. FIL members wrote letters to the press, denouncing the Munich Agreement. Bernal, worried about the lack of resolve that the New Statesman had recently shown over Czechoslovakia, immediately went to see Kingsley Martin and persuaded him that they should organize an anti-Chamberlain meeting.53 He also wrote an editorial for Nature on ‘Science and National Service’54 in mid-October. Bernal saw the post-Munich period as no more than a breathing space – ‘there are clear signs that the peace obtained by consultation is not of a character which will permit of any relaxation of military preparations.’ In order to face the risk of war realistically, Bernal thought that certain immediate steps needed to be taken in the organization and use of science, ‘while others of a more drastic character will be needed only if and when war breaks out’. He identified five principal needs of a modern community under war conditions:
maintenance of the military and civilian populations;
maintenance of war production;
defence against aerial attack;
the carrying on of military, naval and air operations;
care of casualties.
To each of these scientists could make important contributions, but they must be allowed to criticize and not be treated as military subordinates ‘whose business is to obey orders and not to think’. He concluded by warning:
The full utilization of scientific workers requires the use of their ingenuity far more than of their routine service, and this can only be secured by giving them opportunities and liberty of initiative. The degree to which this is done may be a decisive factor; and its neglect might mean defeat in which the prospects of reconstruction afterwards would be irretrievably damaged. It is for the citizens and scientific men in the democratic States to see that this does not happen on their side.
This plea was fully heeded by Sir John Anderson, a crusty, career civil servant, who had been persuade
d to accept a safe Parliamentary seat and was now in Chamberlain’s Cabinet as Lord Privy Seal. Anderson was the only senior politician with any scientific background and was put in charge of civil defence. In January 1939, Sir Arthur Salter, the sitting MP for Oxford University, invited Anderson to a luncheon party at All Souls College. Salter knew Sage from the 1931 trip to the Soviet Union, and although they had political differences, he thought it would be stimulating to expose Anderson to the Government’s most vociferous and informed, civil defence critic. Bernal was therefore invited, along with Solly Zuckerman, who had just woken up to the imminent risk of war, to meet the man whose name would soon be indivisibly linked to a corrugated shelter. Sage, always courteous, never short of quantitative data, and masterly in capturing complicated pictures with a few bold strokes, decimated the Government’s provisions or lack thereof. Anderson, a taciturn but shrewd man, recognized the sincerity and depth of Bernal’s opinions. On his return to Whitehall, he mentioned to his Chief Scientific Officer, Dr Reginald Stradling, that they must make use of this man’s extraordinary talents. Stradling not used to such enthusiasm from Anderson warned him that Bernal was a well-known ‘red’. Anderson replied, with conviction, ‘Even if he is as red as the flames of hell, I want him.’55