International: Safety in a Package

Jimmy Byrnes’ chief aim in going to Moscow was to clear the air. That meant getting a Big Three agreement on how to deal with the atom. With no trouble, Jimmy got it. But he ran into a senatorial hornets’ nest just the same.

Byrnes stuck to the terms of the Truman-Attlee-King statement on atomic energy (TIME, Nov. 26). Following its terms closely, the Foreign Ministers proposed an atomic energy commission under the UNO Security Council, to make suggestions in four stages: 1) free exchange of basic scientific information; 2) controls to see that atomic energy is used only for peaceful purposes; 3) elimination of atomic and other mass-destruction weapons; 4) effective international inspection of atomic activities. Each stage must be successfully completed before the next is undertaken.

Even before Byrnes left for Moscow, the Senate had second thoughts about this sequence. Key Senators warned him that such stages would release far too much information before there were any real safeguards. They wanted the whole problem wrapped up in one package, so that complete, adequate and dependable inspection and control would be included from the beginning.

When the Foreign Ministers’ communiqué showed that the successive stages had been kept, Republican Arthur H. Vandenberg of Michigan hit the roof. With ample senatorial backing, he stormed to the White House, got a Truman promise that no U.S. atomic secrets would be released until a full security system is in effect. He also got assurance from the State Department that the four stages were really meant to be simultaneous. If so, this passage in the Moscow communiqué was even more cryptically worded than other Big Three statements.

From the world viewpoint, America had the atom and did not want to share it. From the U.S. viewpoint, it had the atom—but there was no telling when some other country might get it. From either viewpoint, foolproof international control of the atomic bomb seemed a long way off, and Moscow had been only a tentative step forward.