Evening star., 1951-08-03
Our Atomic Investment

From its wartime, beginning up to the
present, our atomic project has cost the Nation
about SIS billion. BY the end of the current
fiscal year-aS a result of the huge and porten-
touS expansion that was started last year-the
expenditures will total in the neighborhood of
81 billion. The figures are enormous but what
they represent is an investment that promises
to yield dividends of incalcuable value to all
of us in terms of both our immediate military
strength and our future peacetime progress.
In fact, wholly apart from having brought
a quick end to the war with Japan the invest
ment has already begun to pay off in many
significant ways. Abundant evidence on that
score can be found in the Atomic Energy Com
missions 10th semiannual report to Congress-
For example: We are continuing to advance
with nuclear science in non-military fields full
OF great potentialities for the health and eco
nonic well-being of mankind We have been
steadily improving our uranium supply. We
have Increased our output of fashionable ma
ter1als. We have moved far forward toward
building reactor that breeds" more of those
materials than 1t consumes And we may be
much nearer than most people think to the
atom driven submarine and we are also pro-
crossing, slowly but surely. toward the atom
driven plane and toward atom plants for the
production of industrial power-development
1Il-GIe-naKlIg whose revolutionary character
can hardly be exaggerated.
Above all, since the dangers around us have
forced us to devote most of our atom -harnessing
effort to military production, we have been
building up a great stockpile of A-weapons
The strictest secrecy surrounds the size and
nature Of the stockpile but we do know that it
contains bombs several times more powerful"
than the ones that destroyed Hiroshima and
Nagasaki. We know that this years Nevada
and Eniwetok tests were evidence of significant
new progress, and because each such test
represents an important advance of some kind
we know that additional progress Is on the way
in view of the Aces statement that the tests
will be much more frequent in the future"
In the circumstances, it is not implausible or
unreasonable to suppose that our arsenal may
now include things like atomic artillery shells
and guided missiles with atomic warheads Nor
is it implausible or unreasonable, considering
the magnitude of our plant expansion, to suppose
that we may be moving rapidly toward develop
ing the hydrogen bomb-a destroyer that could
be upwards Of 1000 times as devastating as the
super-deadly A-bomb.
What all this means, in short, is that the
United States today has at its disposal frepower
incomparably more terrible than any nation has
ever had in the history of the world. The men
OF the kremnn despite their one reported
atomic explosion, probably cannot come close
to matching it at this time Undoubtedly it
has been the biggest single factor deterring
them from massive attack on free Europe,
and although it may not continue to deter them,
it is certainly among the very best of the
insurance policies that we and our Allies could
have right now. Indeed, by making aggression
too costly to undertake, it conceivably may even
succeed in putting permanent end to global
war. The wisdom Of our investment in it--not
to mention the grim necessity-speaks pretty
much for itself.