THE CAMPAIGN: The H-Bomb Argument

After his defeat in 1952, Adlai Stevenson discovered that a good number of the nation’s idealists, reformers and vocational do-gooders were still willing to beat a path to his door. Most of the grand designs got a polite brushoff. But one that caught Stevenson’s eye was a proposal for the U.S. to halt its hydrogen-bomb tests. Over the months, Stevenson studied the proposition, deemed it worthy. Last April he advocated it publicly during his heated campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. After that he became so preoccupied with the subject that his staffers began griping because he was always closeted with “some scientists”-at the cost of paying attention to more mundane, but equally important, political chores.

During his West Coast campaign trip (TIME, Oct. 22) Stevenson again struck for an end to U.S. H-bomb tests. Some what to his surprise, the proposal received enthusiastic applause. Thus encouraged, Stevenson’s professionally intellectual, politically amateurish advisers pushed their advantage, urging him to make the H-bomb his top campaign issue. Arguing against them in a top-level Chicago conference was Campaign Manager Jim Finnegan, a tough-minded political pro. Finnegan finally gave in on the ground that the H-bomb was “a way of talking about peace”-and peace was an issue that Finnegan was distressed to see the Republicans monopolizing. The strategy settled, Caltech Geochemist Harrison Brown (who had argued against the H-bomb before the H-bomb was ever developed) flew into Chicago to give technical advice on a 30-minute Stevenson television speech.

Simple, Safe & Workable. Despite Brown’s help, last week’s thoughtful speech was distinctly Stevenson’s own. He recalled that he proposed last April that the U.S. take the initiative “by announcing our willingness to stop these tests, ‘calling upon other nations to follow our lead,’ and making it clear that unless they did likewise we would have to resume our experiments too. That was my proposal. It was simple. It was safe. It was workable. And since that time both Russia and Great Britain have declared their willingness to join us in trying to establish that kind of policy . . .

“Therefore, if elected President, I would count it the first order of business to fol low up on the opportunity presented now by the other atomic powers. I would do this by conference or consultation-at whatever level-in whatever place-the circumstances might suggest . . . ” If one of the other powers were to break its agreement, Stevenson argued, the U.S. could resume its hydrogen tests in “not more than eight weeks.”

“A Valid Subject.” On the television program with Adlai, heartily approving his ideas, was New Mexico’s Senator Clinton Anderson, chairman of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy (who had previously said he did not believe the U.S. should call off its tests). Also there was Missouri’s Senator Stuart Symington (he quickly changed the subject to the need for greater national defense). Public backing for Stevenson came from ten Caltech scientists (including Speech Adviser Harrison Brown). They were promptly rebuked by Caltech President Lee DuBridge for their “partisan stand.” Sixty-two scientists from the Atomic Energy Commission’s Brookhaven Laboratory edged in with a notation that the dangers of Strontium 90 were “a valid subject for further discussion and study”-as indeed they are.

For a few days the issue ballooned in the headlines, and President Eisenhower, after slashing back at Stevenson in his Portland and Hollywood Bowl speeches, announced that Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, Defense Secretary Charles Wilson and Atomic Energy Commissioner Lewis Strauss would prepare a full-dress answer to Stevenson and explanation of the Administration’s thermonuclear program. Although no one knew precisely how much new information they might bring to bear, some of the obvious answers were that Stevenson:

¶Grossly exaggerated the dangers of fallout from H-bomb tests; the four-month-old, nonpolitical National Academy of Sciences report found that the radioactive fallout from hydrogen tests, if continued for the next 30 years at the rate of the last five, would amount to about one-thirtieth of the dose the average person would receive from routine X ray and fluoroscopic examinations. Atomic Energy Commissioner Willard Libby has said that even if tests were to continue at the present rate indefinitely, the quantity of radioactive Strontium 90 in humans might increase only to 64/1,000ths of the “maximum permissible concentration.”

¶Erred grievously in his claim that if the Russians violate the ceasefire, the U.S. can set up tests and get going within eight weeks; a major test requires about two years’ preparation, involves a task force of more than 10,000 scientists, technicians and military men, along with fabulously intricate and delicate instrumentation that changes from test to test.

¶Missed the basic point of atomic weapons research: nuclear experimentation is in its infancy. To stop thermonuclear testing now would mean that scientists might not discover their mistakes until too late (some of the most profitable tests have been the fizzles), might miss a breakthrough to a whole new magnitude of nuclear understanding.

When Stevenson first broached his H-bomb proposal last April, he seemed to be arguing for unilateral U.S. action in halting tests. Last week he was talking about a treaty arrangement-without conditions beyond mutual promise to stop testing H-bombs. He found a ready taker for that sort of arrangement. In the United Nations, Chief Soviet Delegate Arkady Sobolev said Russia is ready to enter into an agreement for “an immediate halt” to the hydrogen tests-“without conditions.” For years, the Russians had been arguing for nuclear disarmament -without conditions. Dwight Eisenhower, and Harry Truman before him, have rejected the proposition. Reason: the U.S. insists on at least one condition, mutual inspection, that would make the Soviet word worth the paper it is written on.