International: Terribly More Terrible

One of his colleagues described Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, head of the Los Alamos branch of the atomic bomb’s Manhattan Project, as “the smartest of the lot.” Last week, just before he resigned to go back to teaching physics, tough-minded, 41-year-old Dr. Oppenheimer made the smartest statement of all the scientists who were cautioning Congress to watch its atomic step.

Dr. Oppenheimer halfheartedly supported the Administration’s May-Johnson bill, but insisted that its concept of total control should not be the “pattern for the future.” Some enforced secrecy was obviously necessary, he said. But he added: “The gossip of scientists who get together and chew the rag is the lifeblood of physics. . . .

“By our works we are committed . . . to a world united before this common peril. . . . What happened during the war . . . was not science, and its whole spirit was one of frantic and rather ruthless exploitation of the known; it was not that of the sober, modest attempt to penetrate the unknown.”

A Senator asked him if it were true that one raid on U.S. cities could kill 40 million Americans. Said Oppenheimer: “I am afraid it is.” He also suggested that in the long run the bomb would weaken, not strengthen, the U.S.’s military and international position. His reasoning: “The advent of atomic weapons has perhaps weakened the general military position of the United States, because we are a concentrated and highly industrialized nation. Atomic weapons ten or 20 years from now will be very cheap. . . .”

Before Oppenheimer went to Washington from New Mexico to testify, a newspaperman asked him whether the atomic bomb had any significant limitations. Said he: “The limitations lie in the fact that you don’t want to be on the receiving end. If you ask, ‘Can we make them more terrible?’ the answer is yes. If you ask: ‘Can we make a lot of them?’ the answer is yes. If you ask: ‘Can we make them terribly more terrible?’ the answer is probably.”