Word: atomics
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Britain was staggered by the realization that, in checking the political reliability of a top scientist working on the atom bomb, British security agents had simply ignored the fact-written black on white in a government file-that he had been a Communist. An indignant tornado swept up from Fleet Street. Lord Beaverbrook's papers even accused newly appointed War Minister John Strachey of being a Communist (see FOREIGN NEWS). Sir Percy Sillitoe, the tall, burly former South African police officer who heads M.I.5 (British counterespionage), conferred with Prime Minister Attlee; a shake-up of British security services...
...know in detail how destructive the A-bomb is. I know quite well how destructive the H-bomb can be, if it can be built. But I ask you: What good comes from the extravagant and sensational picturing of the horrors of atom warfare? Does this serve the purpose of scaring the rulers of Russia and thereby act as a deterrent to aggression by them? Of course not. Men who are frightened by word pictures do not become the iron rulers of a large part of the earth...
...peculiar kind of private citizen," is the way David Lilienthal characterizes his present situation. Just how peculiar that situation is was made clear at the press conference held last week before his Symphony Hall talk--Lihienthal the private citizen, speaking on the peacetime possibilities of the atom, felt compelled to dodge all questions relating to the AEC and the present status of atomic weapons, a matter until quite recently under the considerable control of Lilienthal the government official...
...those fellows who has much faith in push-button peace," he remarked in ducking a question on international atomic controls. He described the atom bomb as "a gadget built up in the public mind to much more than its military value," although he made no bones about it being a terrible weapon, and suggested that the present furor--particularly over the McMahon proposals--might be a similar search for "a gadget for peace." He deplored the tendency for some people "who get attention" to overplay the strength of the atom as a weapon...
There is much that he probably won't say even in the book he plans to write: but Lilienthal is perhaps the one public figure who realizes the importance of discussing the atom. "Fear and anxiety do nothing but put us in the doldrums," he explains. He is one man who exhibits neither fear nor doldrums over his big problems...