Charles Snow - The New Men

It was no use arguing just then. Instead, I asked about friends of mine working on the American projects, O—, S—, Kurt Puchwein.

‘Puchwein moved from Chicago to Los Alamos,’ said Pearson. ‘He was said to have done a good job.’

He yawned, stretched his legs, and announced, ‘Oh, well, I think that’s all, I may as well be going.’

‘Thank you very, very much for coming here so promptly this morning,’ said Rose. ‘I’m immensely grateful to you, many, many, many thanks.’

When Pearson had shut the door, we heard his slow steps lolloping down the corridor. Rose was sitting with his arms folded on his desk, his glance meeting mine; we were each thinking out consequences, and some of our thoughts were the same.

‘I must say I’m sorry we didn’t get in first,’ he said.

‘Yes.’

‘It’s clear to me that the Pearson man is right. This information is restricted to us and the committee, and that there’s nothing that we can usefully do at this juncture.’

‘When can we do anything?’

‘I think I know what’s on your mind,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’

Rose said: ‘Now that the American party has produced this bomb, you’re thinking it’s obviously unreasonable for our people to break their necks trying to save a couple of months. I need hardly say that I agree with you. I propose to take it upon myself to prevent it happening.’ He added in a polite, harsh, uneasy tone: ‘Please don’t think I’m taking care of this arrangement for the sake of your brother. We simply want to avoid unnecessary waste, that’s all.’

I thanked him, uneasy in my turn. Even that morning, we could not be natural to each other. Curiously, although Rose had picked out and settled what was most likely to be worrying me, at that moment it happened to be taking second place.

‘It’s important,’ I broke out, ‘that the Barford people should know what we’ve just heard.’

‘Why is it important, Eliot?’ asked Rose in his coolest voice.

Watching me as I remained silent, he went on, sounding as competent as ever:

‘I think I can go some of the way with you. If there is any temptation to make a practical demonstration of this weapon — on the whole I shall believe that when I see it — then the scientists are likely to have their own views. In fact, they might have more influence with the soldiers and politicians than any of us would have. In that case, I suggest to you that two points arise: first, the scientists concerned won’t be listened to if they get the information through a security leakage; second, that there is every conceivable advantage in the scientists acting entirely by themselves. I put it to you that, even if you and I were free agents, which we’re very far from being, the balance of sense would be in favour of leaving it strictly to the scientists.’

I was looking at him, without being ready to say yes or no.

‘Mind you,’ said Rose, ‘I can appreciate the argument that it’s totally unreasonable for scientists to make a fuss at this stage. A good many people hold the perfectly tenable view that all weapons are scientific nowadays and you can’t draw a division between those we’ve already used and this new one. It’s arguable that any scientific hullabaloo on this affair would be a classical case of straining at the gnat and swallowing the camel.’

‘I can’t see it as quite so simple,’ I said.

I was thinking, this was what official people might come to. Rose was always one jump ahead of official opinion; that was why they called him a man of judgement. His judgement was never too far-sighted for solid men, it led them by a little but not too much, it never differed in kind from theirs.

Yet, as we sat together beside his desk, he gave me a heavy glance.

‘There are times, it seems to me,’ he said, ‘when events get too big for men.’

He said it awkwardly, almost stuttering, in nothing like his usual brisk tone; if I had taken the cue, we might have spoken off guard for once. Almost immediately he went on: ‘That may conceivably be the trouble with us all, if so, the only course that I can see is to play one’s particular game according to the rules.’

It was one of his rare moments of self-doubt, the sharpest I had seen in him. Neither then nor later did I know whether that morning he had any sense of the future.

He got up from his chair and looked out at the sky, so dark and even that one could not see the rim of any cloud.

‘At any rate,’ he said, ‘our first job is to call the committee at once. Perhaps you will be good enough to look after that?’

I said that I would do it first thing in the afternoon.

‘Many, many thanks.’ He put on his neat raincoat, his black trilby hat.

‘I suppose I can’t have the pleasure of giving you luncheon at the Athenaeum?’

It was not just his formal cordiality; the news had been a shock, and he wanted a companion — while I, after the same shock, wanted first of all to be alone.

The news rippled out. More scientists followed Pearson across. By the end of June, not only the Whitehall Committee, but the top men at Barford all knew that completed bombs were in existence: that the trial was fixed for the end of July: that there was a proposal, if the trial went according to plan, to use a bomb on a Japanese town. Of my acquaintances, perhaps thirty were in possession of those facts.

Among those I was closest to, the first responses were variegated. Several men of good will felt above all excitement and wonder. In the committees there was a whiff almost of intoxication; the other conquests of nature were small beside this one; we were within listening distance of the biggest material thing that human beings had done. Among people who had been flying throughout the war between America and England, who had been giving a hand on both sides and who had, like so many scientists, little national feeling, there was a flash of — later I did not wish to over-state it, but I thought the emotion was — awe; a not unpleasurable, a self-congratulatory awe.

In the first days of the news reaching London, I did not catch much political prevision. But I did hear someone say: ‘This will crack Russia wide open.’

At Barford, the response was, from the moment the news arrived, more complex. For Luke and Martin, it was a time of desolating disappointment, so that they had hours of that dull weight of rancour, of mindless, frustrating loss, that Scott and his party felt as, only a few miles away, they saw the ski marks of Amundsen’s party and then the black dot of the tent at the South Pole.

To Luke it seemed that he had wasted years of his life, and perhaps his health for good, just to have all snatched away within sight of the end. On the other hand, Martin found considerable comfort for himself. There were great consolations, he remarked, in reverting to being as timid as he chose. Beside that relief, the disappointment had an agreeable look, and he began to count his blessings.

But Martin, like others at Barford, showed one radical difference from those I met round committee tables, waiting for the news from America. They all heard the bomb might ‘conceivably’ or ‘according to military requirements’ be used on Japan. It was mentioned only as a possibility, and most people reacted much like Hector Rose; they did not believe it, or alternatively felt there was nothing they could do. ‘ War is war ’, someone said.

The Barford scientists were nothing like so resigned. Rumour of the bomb coming into action reached them late in June, and there was some sort of confirmation on July 3rd. From that day they took it seriously; like their elders on the committees, some believed that it could not happen, that the report was misjudged: but none of them was for sitting still. Some of the engineers, such as Pearson and Rudd, held off, but the leading scientists were unanimous. Drawbell tried to cajole them — it was not their business, he cried, it would do Barford harm — but they threw him over.