Evening star., 1946-01-20
Atomic Energy Experts
Face Grave Responsibility
Federation Formed Among Young Scientists
Who Have Found Key to Secret Holding
Fate of Entire World
By Thomas X. Henry

By Thoma
The scientists who made the atom
bomb and who know better than any
body else its potentialities are moved
today by an intense awareness of social
responsibility for its impact on the
future.
1t is difficult to exaggerate the feelings
of these men, with their very thinly
yelled distrust of the capacity of
politicians, military leaders and busi-
nessmen to deal with this new and
terrible thing that has come into the
world.
Up to now the scientists have made
only small beginning with organiza-
tion headquarters on the fifth floor of
a made-over dwelling at 1921 K street.
Almost without financial backing of any
kind, paying expenses out of their own
pockets, they have organized themselves
under the name of the Federation of
Atomic Scientists. However small the
organization at present it has great
potentialities. For, in the final analysis,
the men who are eligible for member
ship control the secret of perhaps the
greatest force for good or evil that has
come into the world.
Secret Held by 1000.
The "art and mystery" of making
atomic bombs is the exclusive property
of about 1000 men in the entire world.
They are Americans, Russians, Ger
mans, Englishmen and Frenchmen, with
sprinkling of other nationalities. Even
though mostly unorganized and split by
national and political allegiances, they
constitute at this moment the most
esoteric society that ever existed on
earth.
All OF these men are young-mostly in
their early 30s. One easily might mis-
take one of their gatherings for college
fraternity convention.
These men are the nuclear physicists.
They constitute a factor in the atomic
energy problem which largely has been
overlooked by statesmen and military
leaders. It is these men who hold in
their heads today the power to wreck or
save the world, provided they ever get
together and act as a united body.
This, of course, is just a potentiality
rather than even a remote possibility,
however. They usually are overlooked
when folks discuss keeping or revealing
the secret" of atomic power. The ma
jority of them at the present moment
probably are American or British citi-
zens, but they include considerable
number of prewar refugees from Gen.
trail Europe.
Hundreds of Problems Solved.
The United States employed several
thousand men and spent $2,700, 600, 900
developing the atomic bomb The
workers ranged from common laborers
to world renowned physicists and chem
lists. The latter solved hundreds of diff
f1cult, practical engineering problems
but all these were essentially routine
matters which could have been handled
in an equally satisfactory fashion by an
equal number of equally competent
scientists and craftsmen anytime or
anywhere. Their success largely was
due to the titantic industrial and man.
power resources of the United States.
1t was job Of splendid organization
for which the Army, spurred by the
personal interest of the late President
Roosevelt, deserves unstinted credit.
But this great assembly of workers never
could have made an atomic bomb by
themselves. 1t all depended, in the
hnal analysis, on very few men-not
all Of them Americans-who belonged to
the ultra-exclusive group of nuclear
physicists. Without them all the money
and all the hand and brain labor in the
world would have been essentially USE
less. Without their knowledge all the
resources Of the United States could not
have produced enough atomic power to
have broken single strand of spider
web.
They were men who possessed the
capacity to think in terms beyond the
possibilities Of human experience. This
Is the secret" of the atomic age. It is
a secret which anybody can learn who
has the right intelligence, pointed in the
right direction-the type of intelligence
that is capable of transcending reality
and commonsense and which has the
courage to venture beyond the boun-
daries of the human sensory world OF
space and time. 1t is secret which
nobody can learn, regardless of how
completely the whole process is ex-
planned, without that kind of mind
which has had that kind of experience.
The atomic bomb is far more than an
explosive projectile few thousand
times more powerful than any explosive
projectile of the past. There is great
gulf between it and anything man ever
has knoEn. 1t is safe to say that SO 999
per cent of all men and women now liv-
ing have not crossed this gulf and can
not cross it because they either were not
born with the right kind of brains or
were sorn too soon. Most of the FORE
most physicists in America have not
crossed it and have not the faintest idea
they ever could cross it.
Group Personally Friendly.
Most of these men, the world over.
are personal friends, regardless of ma
tionality or political allegiance. They
are widely travelled citizens of the world.
Little groups of them from different
lands have had heated discussions over
cocktails in terms of hyperdimensional
mathematics in Washington, London,
Berlin and Moscow. In every large
world capital they form a "set." Their
wives are personal friends-which is
perhaps Of even more significance.
They constitute, in effect, the most
exclusive Of secret societies though
the doors Of their lodges are wide open