POLICIES & PRINCIPLES: First Atomic Returns

In worn cliches and familiar postures, international politics last week fumbled for the meaning of the atomic bomb.

¶ Britain’s Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin told the Preparatory Commission of the United Nations, meeting in London, that “prodigious inventions in the field of destruction have given an air of unreality to the whole organization. . . .” But he deplored the view “that we must either immediately constitute a superstate or the whole world will blow up.”

¶ Winston Churchill made a speech attacking Russian expansion (see FOREIGN NEWS) and demanding that the U.S. and Britain hold fast to the secret of the atomic bomb. Said he: “The bomb brought peace. . . .”

¶ Izvestia denied angrily that the bomb had brought the Japanese surrender, credited the Russian declaration.

¶ New York’s Communist New Masses feared that atomic power would be turned over to “private exploitation.” The remedy proposed: “. . . not only national but international control under the Security Council of the United Nations.”

In short, atomic energy was no exception to a pre-atomic rule: those who had the power favored keeping it; those who lacked it favored sharing it.