World War II and the Atomic Bomb: One World or None

            The first Princeton Preceptorial of the Air, the University’s series of radio broadcasts, was devoted to discussion of atomic energy. Participants, in addition to Professor Roy D. Welch, chairman of the University committee on radio, were Professor Harold H. Sprout, political scientist, and three faculty members who worked on the atomic bomb, Professor N. Howell Furman (1913), analytical chemist, Dean Hugh S. Taylor, chairman of the department of chemistry, and Professor Henry Dew. Smyth (1918), chairman of the department of physics. The broadcast opened with a discussion of atomic energy, the history of its development and its unleashing for military purposes. The Weekly presents herewith the concluding portion of a transcript of the broadcast.

PROFESSOR WELCH: Professor Sprout, as a political scientist does this revolution in science involve comparable revolutions in political and social thinking?

           PROFESSOR SPROUT: It does indeed. Of that there can be no doubt. But such a revolution in political and social thinking was long overdue in any case. Politically speaking, we are still living in the horse and buggy era. Yet TNT, the internal combustion engine — with its application in motor vehicles, submarines and planes — as well as many other advances in science and technology, have long since created a world in which no people can guarantee their own immunity from destructive attack.

           The bomb that shattered Hiroshima has pushed all nations to the very edge of the abyss. It political impact can be likened to the combined effects of all military inventions, multiplied say by a thousand, since the invention of gunpowder spelled the doom of the medieval knight in armor.

           It is too soon, of course, to diagnose fully the specific political and social consequences of this revolution in science and technology. But certain things are perfectly clear. As Professor Taylor has just said, the value of armies and navies, as we have previously known them, is drastically reduced, if not wiped out, at a single stroke. The enormous increase in offensive striking power, with no effective defense in sight for protection against new weapons, renders almost meaningless the time-honored concepts of national defense. Political isolation and no entangling alliances in the future may mean simply freedom to commit national suicide.

           Every sudden and disproportionate increase in the offensive power of weapons has provided in the past an irresistible temptation to would-be aggressors. Nazi Germany’s use of the plane and the tank is but a recent example of a phenomenon repeated time and again throughout history. This danger raises up a host of new problems — problems respecting the terms of peace; problems respecting the terms of peace; problems respecting ways and means of enforcing these terms of peace; and problems respecting the treatment of all dissatisfied peoples. The danger also puts a higher premium on maintaining the solidarity of the principal United Nations. Above all it highlights the supreme importance of achieving stable, friendly relations and mutual understanding between the Soviet and American peoples.

           Who can say what is the course of wisdom in this emergency? Shall we share our knowledge and technological “know-how” with other nations? Shall we join with them in a determined effort to create ways and means of bringing the new force under effective political and social control? Or shall we guard our secret, and go it alone? Before choosing the latter course, every American should ponder the sobering thought that no nation has ever succeeded in keeping for very long a monopoly of any new scientific discovery or industrial process. If history teaches anything, it is that any prolonged attempt to keep the secret of atomic power away from other peoples can be expected to produce but one result: Intensive research in the countries excluded from the secret, accompanied by fear and corroding resentment and distrust of those who already possess it.

           The alternative is clear. Either we shall have one world politically, or we shall have no world at all.

PROFESSOR WELCH: Professor Taylor, we have been talking about the bomb’s use in war. What about possible peace uses of this energy?

           DEAN TAYLOR: Every new tool, Professor Welch, that science discovers can ultimately be converted to man’s peace-time needs. That was true of the wheel, of fire, of electricity and it will be true also of atomic energy. The expected military advantages or uranium bombs were much more spectacular than those of a uranium power plant, so they came first. But, in the processes of production of materials for the bomb, major quantities of power become simultaneously available. We read in Smyth’s report that the piles at the Hanford plants in the early summer of this year were all operating at the designed power, producing plutonium, and, so Smyth relates, actually heating the Columbia River. It is not hard to visualize therefore the development of power plants in which nuclear fission will provide the energy. Other applications will surely follow…

           PROFESSOR WELCH: Professor Smyth, as a citizen as well as a scientist, have you any comments on the significance of the atomic bomb?

           PROFESSOR SMYTH: Yes, I have some comments. Scientists are citizens and human beings. Those of us on this project have been very human. For a good deal of the time in the last five years we have been just plain scared. We were not only afraid that the enemy would get atomic bombs before we did, but we were afraid of what would happen to the world if anyone got them. We discussed this together often. We know that we scientists are ordinary people and we believe that other people in other parts of the world can eventually do what we have done. We believe it will be impossible to keep secret for long the method of making the atomic bomb.

           On this project we have shown that many thousands of men of all kinds — scientists, military men, engineers, industrialists and workers — can cooperate to solve problems that at first appear impossible. No one has been afraid to examine new ideas or dare new methods, however fantastic they might seem. The development of the atomic bomb in the past five years has been an extraordinary example of what men can do when they work together with free minds.

           I believe the atomic bomb will force men and women all over the world to look at the age-old problem of war with minds as free and unprejudiced as those of the scientists in their work. We can no longer think in terms of our old prejudices of nation, class or race. This is in truth one world and to avoid annihilation we must together solve the problem of living at peace. If this involves new social and political methods and ideas, we must not be afraid to try them. If men, working together, can solve the mysteries of the universe they can also solve the problem of human relations on this planet. Not only in science, but now in all human relations, we must work together with free minds. 

This was originally published in the October 5, 1945 issue of PAW.