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&gust 1.

8,1945
tothe Chinese Communists. But a Ghungking attack on
,Yenan would probably bring Russia tot the aid of the
left-wing Yenan regime. Should this happen, the United
States would b e placed in a diacult position, particularly
in view of the Gm-Hurley policy of supporting Chungking. It is reported that American mlitary equipment has
already been used against the Communists by Chiang Kaishelis forces .
Chiaags atttitude ParalleIs that of certain circles in our oq7n
State and War departments which were opposed to Russian
p d u p a t i o n m the Far Eastern war and have been hoping
for peace with Japm before the SOT& armies establish
themselves lfDo strongly in Manchuria and Korea. W h t 1s
now needed is rbser liaison with the Russians, swift measures to epd ithe Chunghg-Yenan tension, and new men and
policies in dealingwith the problem of post-war Japan.

OBe Worldor Nune


BY FREDA KTRCHWEY,

i
h~

HE bomb &at hwried Russia into the Far Eastern


war a week ahead of schedule and drove Japan to snrrender has accornphshed the specsc job for which it was
created. From the ppint of view of military stlakegy,
$2,OOO~OOO,OO0 (the cost of the bomb and the cost of n i n e
days of war) was never better spent. The -suffering, the wbksale slaughter it *enta&J, have beencmtwmghed by its
spectacularsuccess;
Allied leaders can rightly claim that
the ~ O S Sof life ,on both sides would have been many times
greater if the atomic bomb had not been used and Japan
had gone on fighting. There is no answer to khls argwnznt.
The danger is thatitwill
encourage those in power to
assume that, ,once accepted as valid, the argument can be
applied equally well in the future. If that assumption should
be permitted, the chance of saving civilization-and perhaps
the world itself-fcom destructmn is a remote one.
Solemn .offidti1 talk IS goiag on in Britam ana here abmt
controlling the u5e of the new force. But the tdk is unzonvincing. The atomrc ,bomb represents a revolution in science
t h e greatest revolution ever accompl~shed.It calls f u r a
comparable revolution in mens thinking and in their
capacity for political and social readjustment. Not it hint of
that has so far emerged in high places, either here or in
Britain. And so far no leader of one of the lesserstates,
from which the new howledge has been withldd, has presumed to open his mouth. NOone has spoken the simple
truththatthe
exploding atom has exposed to the whole
wo;ld.
Pr,esident Truman announced that he would recommmd
t o Congressthe establishment of an appropriate commission
to control the production adld use of atomic power within the
United States. Me has promised that the secret of the bomb
will ke kept by the three nations that hold it until means
haye been found to control the bomb so as to protect ourselves and the rest of the world from the danger of total
destruction. Sefretary !?Jtimsonsays that substantial patent
rights havebeen assured to the American, Canadian, and
British governments to prevent independent exploitatim ,of

443,
&
l
e discovery. Do these pIans and promises mean anyhng?,
Or are they c o m e n t i o d , official, high-sounding nonsense?
First, If aryhimg is sure about the atomic b&
it is h a t

no physical pratedon agahst it will ever be paa&le. Thebomb dropped on Nagasaki was far more a d v a n d &
a
n
that dropped two days earlier on Hiroshima. Both were crude
beginnings. We have already been prorued that their successors will be enmmonsly improved. Soon they will be pmpelled by rocketssmilar to Hitlers V-2s-and
directed
exactIy to their &stinatLon b y radar. When & i s is achieved,
not d y will ,armies and fleets and island bases and stmtegic frontiers dl have been macle obsolete, but widespread
annihilation can be accomplished by any power, or e m n
group of men, that can command atomic m~rgy,
A n d that leads t o the absmhty of an attern# to limit:mntIDl of this force to the d o n s that now hdd it. President
Truman is whistling to keep OUT courage up. He &mowsthat
other nations are working on .atomic explosives, Before its
defeat Germany was on the edge of s~1cce5s. Sweden and
Denmark are carrying out intensive experhentak. It .is
not likely that Sussia-which knows how to keep a secret
better than any other country-has lagged behiad the rest.
Are we t~ be asked to have that fie Anglo-Saxon peoples
have alone bmn g m t e d the god-like power to.crack atoms?
The secret was guarded long enough t o en&& us to smasli
Japan. It wdl not l a s t mu& h g e r . T h e present tmstees.4
of this force had .better stop thinking in terms of CQJI~TO~ by
themselves and bcgin to figme how a world is to be run in
w4Licb every nation equipped for research and m ~ d e mproduction will soon be able t o make and propel atomic b ~ m b s .
So what sense is fhere in seiking vp an A d a n cornmission to control the production of atomic power? Perhapsa&.
Already certain private interests i n this country
have let il be known that, white t h y recogah the government.s present right to r n o x ~ o p o ~the
r : manufactureof atomc
bombs, they ate not prepared to accept government c m t m l
over future use cd .&e new energy.And Secretary Stimsons
phfase, substantial patent rights, is at best equivocal. It
suggests that certain Jess substantial ,but ,perhaps highly valuable patents m a y already be in *e hands of D u Pant: or
Gmelal Eleckric. And so a rmnmission may be of same value,
at least as an jrtterjm safeguard. But it w d be well for us to
1.emind Congress &
h
a
t the merx it appohts will be dealing
with a source Df power discovered through &e expenditure
of $2,000,000,00~1
sf public money-taxpayers mmey. That
power belongs to the people if no other ever did.
Suppose t h e United States, h a d a , and Briiain attempt,
as theyseem prepared i o do, to corner the husviedge Qf
atomic pow= even for a brief p d ~ d What
.
will be the
effect of this monopdy ? First,
mill convert thethree
Anglo-Smon nations into a monstrous threat to the rest of
the world. h e other counkies likely to accept with equanimity the fact that we and the British hold the seast of total
destruction? Who brzt Durselves is going to trust us with
such fantastic power? It would ,behealthy if Americans, just
for a moment, w ~ u l dput themselves in.the position of, kts
say, f i t h e Fhxians or &
h
e Chinese, and try to see what this
demcrdic trusteedip looks like from the vmtage-point
of Afosww or Chmgking. N o nation shut out fiom our
closely guarded knowkdge can posshIy do other than speed

:I50
up its own collectiveeffort to gain the same ground. The
policy announced by the President is power politics raised to
a cosmic degree ; if continued it will insure an era of desperate cumpetitlon in destruction, which can have only one
outcome.
Atomic energy should- no more be controlled by a few
sovereigh nations than it should beby a f e w private comBY J. ALVA,REZ DEL YAY0
panies. Free enterprise for nations has been wiped out b~
the discovery. When President Truman went to the microMexico City, Azsgust 12
N WEDNESDAY, August 8, the long-desired agreephone to explain the agreement reached at Petsdam, the
first atomic bomb had already exploded. So he discussed
ment between the Spanish Republican parties and orthe Potsdam arrahgements side by side with his proposal
ganizations in Mexico was &ally reached. Republicanleaders
agreed on a procedure which wili,make all the institutions of
for controlling atomic- energy. The fantastic incompatibility
the Republic operative in exile, Having joined with Dr.
of the two items apparently didnot strike him. But it is
clear as water that no collective arrangements can stand in
Negrin in virtualIy all the discussions of the past three
weeks, I know what skill and patience were required to bring
the face of the power held by America and Britain. Even the
t h e factions together; and in the two meetings held last week,
madest, halfway security measures adopted at San Francisco
and wrltten into the United Nations Charter can hardly be
Dr. Negrin surpassed his own previous record of successful
conciliation.
expected to survive such a situation. At the very minimum,
The first meeting of the representatives of &
h
e parties took
the United Nations must $e made trustee of the atomic
place on Tuesday. Twenty-six parties and organizations were
bomb. Otherwise the idea of collectiveagreements to keep
represented, exactly the number of all the political groups in
the peace may as well be abandoned.
But this minimum is far too small to provide any serious
Mexico. A sensational fact was the participation of two repmeasure ofsafety. For the SanFrancisco charter is itself
resentatives of the Prieto faction, Qtero and Albar. The meeting was called on twenty-four hours notice under the presa collective agreement based-on power. As Edward R. Mursure of the news from Spain itself, indicating that Franco
row said the other day, the big nations havecreated an
might replace himself with a new military government crei
organization and made laws from which they are exempt.
ated in his own image. When word of the meeting leaked out
In other words, there is no rule of law to which all nations
to the Spanish colony, the general cominent was, Negrin
are equally subject. The authority of the United Nations
has accomplished what nobody else has been able to do in
rests in the coalition of great powers which form its core.
How muchvaluecansuch
an organization now have even . six years. The same view, in almost identical language, was
expressed the folIowing day by Martinez Barrio when a
if the control of the atomic bomb should be vested in it?
formal agreement was confirmed and signed in the presence
It cannot dominate the world, for a single nation, small or
of Dr. Negrin.
large, possessed of the facilities to make the new explosive,
Uader this agreement a meeting of the Cortes is to be would have asmuch power to threaten peace and terrorize
called to formalize the parties choice of a provisional Presiother nations as one or all of the Big T h r e e - o r F o u r - o r
dent of the Republic, in the person of Martinez Barrio. This
Five. And any one of the large nations, ruled by a new
will make it possible for the present government to submit
Hitler, could reduce the world to slavery-or to dust. In the
its resignation and a new government to be named in acspace of a day the World Security Organization grew from
cordmce with the constitutional procedure.
childhood to senility. Now it must be replaced.
Only two groups failed to sign the agreement. T,hese were
If we are to survive our new powerswe must underthe Socialist fraction gathered around Prieto anda small
stand their full meaning. We shall have to move fast, both
fraction of the syndicalist organization, the C . N. T. Pour
internationally and within each country. No longer canwe
sections of the latter organization did sign. The representaafford a world organized to prevent aggression only if all
tives of the Prieto group failed to appear at the, meeting of
of the great powers wish it to be prevented. No longer can
August 8 but sent instead a letter in which Ithey raise three
we afford a social system which would permit private busi4
points: First,they doubted that there wassuchurgencyas
ness, in the name of freedom, to control a source of energy
N e g r h claimed for reaching an agreement in twenty-four
capable of creating comfort and security for all the worlds
hours. Second,they challenged the right of some of the
people. This seems self-evident, and so it is. But i t calls for
groups invited by Negrin to participate, to demand recognichacges so sweeping that only an immense effort of will and
tion as regular political organizations. Third, they opposed
imagination can bring them about. A tnew conference of the
any solution not based on the sanction and participation of
nations must be assembled to set up a World Government,
the Cortes.
to which every state must surrender an important part of its
The first objection is not shared by obher Spaniards here 1
sovereignty. In this WorId Government must be vested the
or in Spain. On the contrary, everyone has been counting not
fiaal control over atomic energy. And within each nation,the
the days but the moments until an agreement could be
people must establish pubhc owdlership and social developreached, The second objection has a n ironical flavor, for the
ment of the revolutionary force war has thrustinto their
Prieto group, organized in Mexico atthe
instigation of
hands. This program will sound draztic only to people who
Prieto, is only a dissident fraction of the SpanishSocialist
have not yet grasped the meaning of the cew discovery. It is
Party,which has put itself outside thZ control of the p a r 3
not drastic, We face a choice between one world 01: none,

Winning

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