Nicholas Mosley - Hopeful Monsters

There was a banging on the front door. Franz went to open it. A man in army uniform came in. He was followed by two men in SS uniform. When the man in army uniform saw me he stopped. The two SS men remained by the door.

Franz held out his arms to the man in army uniform. He said 'Hans!'

The man called Hans took hold of Franz by the arms. He said 'My old friend!' Then looking at me but speaking to Franz — 'We have come to make sure you get to Berlin!'

Franz laughed and said 'Am I under arrest?'

The man called Hans laughed and said 'We have come to ensure your safety!'

I thought — But I can tell the style: they know they are actors.

Franz turned to me and said 'You remember Hans.' Then to Hans 'Eleanor. Frau Ackerman.'

Hans put his hand on his heart and said 'Frau Ackerman! For how many years was I in love with Frau Ackerman!'

Franz said 'Hans met us in the forest. You remember? He was with Max. All those years ago!'

I said 'Oh yes, of course I remember!'

Hans said 'How is Max?'

I said 'He's very well, thank you.'

Franz said 'Hans is one of my colleagues at the Institute.'

I thought — Yes, I see! Then — But there are the two SS men standing by the door.

Then — Oh dear God, now let us give beautiful performances!

Hans walked round the room. He had been holding a hat under his arm; he took it in one hand and he flapped it against the palm of the other. He said 'Max was an extraordinary little boy! He was more interested in biology than physics at that time. He did an experiment with salamanders.'

I said 'Oh yes, he told me about the experiment with salamanders.'

Franz said 'What was that?'

Franz had been tidying the room as if in preparation for leaving. I thought — Oh please God, let me go home!

Hans said 'As I remember it, he tried to encourage some mutation, or the emergence of what had been a potentiality, by a rearrangement of the environment.'

I said 'Of the aesthetic environment.'

Hans said 'Ah, the aesthetic environment!' He stopped by me. He said 'Is that correct?'

I said 'Or the moral environment.'

Hans said 'The moral environment. The mental environment.' He watched me. Then he turned to the two SS men by the door and said 'We will go in two or three minutes.'

Franz said 'I am ready. I have my luggage in the hall.'

Franz had tidied the room and put his gun away. He had the dog on a lead. Hans and I were by the window.

Hans said to me 'And where will you be going?'

I said 'To Switzerland.'

He said 'Max used to call them "hopeful monsters".'

I said 'I know.'

Hans turned to Franz. He said 'But in fact, if such things were to live, how would you know them? They would have to have very few distinguishing marks, or others would know to destroy them.'

Franz said 'One of their distinguishing marks might be that they would not want to destroy.'

Hans said 'Oh they would not want to destroy themselves.'

I said 'I'll go now.'

Hans said 'Give my love to Max.'

I said'I will.'

Hans said 'What was that phrase Max used to say "Meet you behind the gasworks, twenty minutes" — '

I said 'He said that then? I mean, to you?'

Hans laughed. He said 'Yes.' He went to the door. Then he said 'And what was that other thing he used to say: "Flowers are the flowers that grow at this time of year."'

I said 'I've never heard him say that.'

Hans said 'I suppose he meant — everything happens in the right order, if you let it.'

I said 'You have to have luck.'

Hans said 'Oh don't you think we're lucky?'

Franz said 'I don't know when we'll see each other again.'

I said 'We'll see what flowers grow.'

which he had been evacuated: then when America entered the war he crossed the Atlantic with other British physicists and joined in what became known as the Manhattan Project. He stayed in America till the first practice Bomb was exploded in the Nevada desert in July 1945; then he resigned from the project, saying that it seemed to him that the necessary work had been done. He stayed long enough to argue that a demonstration Bomb should be exploded in an uninhabited area and observers from as many countries as possible should be invited to attend; only after this should consideration be given to a Bomb being dropped on a still persistent enemy. By the time the two Bombs were dropped on Japan in August 1945 Max was in New York trying to get a boat back to England. For a time he came under the suspicion of the American security services and was taken in for questioning. Under interrogation (Max himself used to tell this story) he said that personally and from a military point of view he felt relieved that the Bombs had been dropped on Japan since it was likely that this had shortened the war by months if not years, also it would serve as a ghastly warning for the future: it was as a scientist that he felt that it was his responsibility to make a protest. When his interrogators argued that there was no sense in his suggesting that there should be different moralities for different individuals or groups or indeed within the same person, Max replied that, on the contrary, he was convinced that for a proper working of society such an attitude of mind was essential; courses of action could only be said to be right if there had been a genuine interplay of what indeed might be conflicting moral inclinations. Moreover, it was some such complexity of mind within an individual that was necessary if there was to be the existence of the Bomb without the use of the Bomb — a situation which he, Max, saw as being likely to be necessary for the human race if it was to survive or evolve; human nature having evidently such a propensity for evil that with all the technological advances it was only the existence of something so shocking as the Bomb that would prevent the evil from going into runaway, out of control. While he was explaining these ideas to his interrogators, Max used to say, they seemed to understand him and even have some sympathy with him: but after he had gone they must have felt that he had tricked them, for they had him back for further questioning. This sort of thing became typical of what was apt to happen to Max: as he developed and formulated his ideas he intrigued but also alienated people by the unexpectedness of his

thinking; he seemed to be saying that experience could be best dealt with not so much by reason as by a style — a style of mind involving trust in a connection between it and an organising spirit in the outside world.

Regarding the Germans and their building or rather not building of the Bomb — much of the story is well known. The Germans had been months ahead in theoretical work in 1939; then after the outbreak of war not much in practice was done. The British and American authorities did not know this at the time, so that the driving force behind the enormous resources eventually provided in America for the production of the Bomb continued to be the fear, as it had been from the beginning, that the Nazis would get the Bomb first and would use it if not to conquer the world then to blow up everyone including themselves. Without the impetus of this fear, Allied scientists and governments might never have embarked on the doubtful and expensive enterprise of building the Bomb. And when they did, the skills they used were those of refugees from Nazi Germany who in other circumstances might have been working in their homeland — so this indeed was an example, Max used to say, of the Nazis scattering the seeds of their own destruction. When British and American observers entered Germany at the end of the war they were amazed to find that although much work had been done on the production of nuclear energy for peacetime purposes, almost nothing had been done about a Bomb. There were, of course, some straightforward explanations for this. At the beginning of the war it had indeed been thought that the military conquest of Europe could be achieved so quickly that there would be no sense in Germany diverting resources from the production of tanks and aeroplanes to such a long-term risky project — especially one about which, to Nazi fanatics, there had always been a whiff of 'Jewish physics'. Then towards the end of the war the Nazi hierarchy seemed anyway to have become less interested in winning the war than in the killing, before defeat, of the maximum number of Jews. This had begun to seem to some top Nazis even a justification for the war — and by this time it was too late to embark upon a project that might otherwise have seemed attractive to them: that of killing, before defeat, the maximum number of everyone. But with regard to the middle years of the war there were strange stories that began to come to light — of chances missed, of experiments wrongly reported, of false trails laid and followed. So it did seem sometimes, yes, that there might have