THE ATOMIC AGE: Sanctity & Security

Grey, sad-eyed Major General Leslie R. Groves, who supervised development of the atomic bomb, has a symbolic shoulder patch: a question mark with a star, an atom, and a bolt of lightning. Last week when he appeared before the Senate’s Atomic Energy Committee, the emphasis was on the question mark.

Until a workable international policy is established, Groves wants the U.S. to keep on making bombs “under complete governmental control.” His estimate of the annual cost: $500,000,000.

Groves added: “We have got to have inspectors who can go everywhere . . . into every man’s house … in general, nose into everyone’s business throughout the world.”

Two winners of the Nobel Prize followed Groves before the committee. Chunky, aggressive Harold C. Urey of the University of Chicago did not share the General’s fears for the sanctity of the home, felt that international inspection could be made effective.

General Electric’s quiet-voiced Irving Langmuir said that secrecy would not save the U.S. He pointed out that England and Russia had already announced atomic programs, that France, Switzerland and Sweden also have the required technical skills. Overemphasis on secrecy, he added, had backfired even before Hiroshima. The military’s pointed refusal last June to let U.S. and British atomic scientists attend a scientific meeting in Moscow should have tipped the Russians off. Langmuir may credit the Russians with more perspicacity than they had. There are signs that news of the bomb surprised them.