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<text> <title> (56 Elect) The H-Bomb Argument </title> <history> TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1956 Election </history> <link 11483> <link 11890> <link 15378><article> <source>Time Magazine</source> <hdr> October 29, 1956 THE CAMPAIGN The H-Bomb Argument </hdr> <body> 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 Stevenson again struck for an end to U.S. H-bomb tests. Somewhat 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 follow 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 fall-out from the H-bomb tests; the four-month-old, nonpolitical National Academy of Sciences report found that the radioactive fall-out 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 64/1,000ths of the "maximum permissible concentration." -- Erred grievously in his claim that if the Russians violate the cease-fire, 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. Warsaw v. Moscow On the way home from the campaign swing along the West Coast, President Eisenhower was handed a Teletype report from Secretary of State John Foster Dulles about the latest development in Poland, where nationalist-minded Communist leaders were defying the edicts of Moscow. In Denver, the President studied fresh messages, made a brief airport speech, talked long-distance to Dulles, and instructed Press Secretary James Hagerty to issue a statement warmly sympathizing with traditional Polish yearning for liberty and independence. All weekend, lights burned late at the State Department as Washington weighed the implications of the Polish move. It was the biggest moment of decision in the cold war since Khrushchev last spring tore down the Stalin image and conceded to Tito that alternate roads to "socialism" are possible. (It was the State Department that first published the Khrushchev text.) The pattern had already been set. The U.S., by backing up Tito when he first broke with the Kremlin, had launched its first major step in breaking up the Soviet empire eight years ago. President Eisenhower, by deciding to continue that aid last week, took another step in encouraging the Soviet satellites to demonstrate their independence. To the State Department, the Polish attempt--which had been gathering momentum for weeks--seemed to be a vindication of Western policy. Whether the U.S. will now proffer aid to the Poles is still under consideration. As Secretary of State Dulles put it: "Anything which weakens this great structure of Soviet Communist power and leads to its breaking up" is in the interest of the United States. Landing in Washington, President Eisenhower turned his attention to another facet of Moscow relations--a personal note to Ike from Premier Bulganin calling on the U.S. to join with Russia in bringing H-bomb tests to a halt (but making no mention of the U.S. insistence on safeguards). Ike was nettled because Moscow had published the text before he had seen it. He was angry because Bulganin noted that "certain prominent public figures in the United States"--i.e., Adlai Stevenson--had proposed a plan to stop H-bomb tests. And the President characterized as "personally offensive to me" a charge that Secretary of State Dulles had distorted recent Soviet atomic proposals. In the stiffest message of his Administration, the President charged Bulganin with a serious violation of international practices in which "you seem to impugn my own sincerity." By sending the note in the middle of an election campaign, he said, and especially by referring, by implication, to Stevenson's views on atomic testing, Bulganin had interfered in U.S. internal affairs in a way that "if indulged in by an ambassador, would lead to his being declared persona non grata." <list> <l>November 5, 1956</l> <l>"Critical Issue"</l> </list> "The White House seems to have dismissed the Russian offer out of hand, but he world and the American people expect sober consideration from our leaders." So spoke Candidate Adlai Stevenson one day last week after he had learned that the President had rejected a letter from Russia's Premier Bulganin backing Adlai's campaign proposals to stop H-bomb tests. Next day Stevenson read the text of Bulganin's letter and the President's sizzling reply, and he decided that Bulganin was too close to his coattails for comfort. "I share fully President Eisenhower's resentment at the manner and timing of Premier Bulganin's interference in the political affairs of the U.S.," he said, in a second statement. "This is not the first time the Russian leaders have said things related to our presidential election. Mr. Bulganin himself expressed the hope some time ago that Mr. Eisenhower would run for re-election and then, more recently, other Russian leaders have said they favored Eisenhower for President." Course of Wisdom. With such bewildering international counterpoint, the argument over the testing of thermonuclear weapons soared to a crescendo with the 1956 campaign. The headlines had barely caught up with Adlai before the White House was back with the promised Government report, in which the President reiterated that the course of wisdom was to negotiate a foolproof disarmament agreement with the Russians before throwing away the U.S. nuclear lead. "One truth must never be lost from sight," Ike wrote. "It is this: the critical issue is not a matter of testing nuclear weapons--but of preventing their use in nuclear war." Moving on point by point to the specifics of Adlai Stevenson's campaign argument, the President: -- Assured the U.S. that the current rate of fallout of radioactive strontium 90, "by the most sober and responsible scientific judgment," does not imperil the health of humanity. -- Pointed out that strontium 90 derives not from the testing of H-bombs alone--which Stevenson would stop--but from any process of nuclear fission. "Thus the idea that we can `stop sending this dangerous material into the air,' by concentrating upon small fission weapons, is based upon apparent unawareness of facts." -- Explained that is was not always possible, Stevenson to the contrary, to detect thermonuclear tests in Russia. "We believe that we have detected practically all such tests to date. It is however impossible...to have positive assurance...except in the case of the largest weapons." -- Contradicted Stevenson's statement that the U.S. could always start up H-bomb tests again, if necessary, "within not more than eight weeks"; it takes the U.S. "a year or more to organize and effect such tests as those conducted at our proving ground in the Pacific Ocean"; under Stevenson's cease-test provision "we could find our present commanding lead...erased or even reversed." In the past two years of his Administration, said the President, the U.S. has proposed and the Russians have rejected no fewer than 14 new plans to break the disarmament deadlock and to work out a foolproof agreement. Under such circumstances the U.S. has no alternative but to keep up its guard. "The power of these weapons to deter aggression and to guard world peace could be lost if we failed to hold our superiority." "This Is Madness!" Adlai Stevenson was not impressed. In his speech in Manhattan's Madison Square Garden he called again for an agreement with Russia to end H-bomb tests, added afterward that 270 scientists support his position. He quoted Pope Pius XII on the fearful prospects of nuclear war ("a pall of death over pulverized ruins covering countless victims with limbs burned, twisted and scattered while others groan in their death agony"). (But left unmentioned the Pope's insistence that an enforceable international agreement on disarmament must be part of a "sum total" agreement to stop "experimentation.") Said Adlai: "Our arsenal of hydrogen bombs and other weapons is enough to deface the earth. Our stockpile continues to grow..." The way to peace, he added in Rock Island, Ill., "is not to stubbornly insist as Eisenhower does that our security lies in the deterrent effect of our lead in nuclear weapons." After all, the Russians had caught up with the U.S. on A-bombs, and "they'll do it again" on H-bombs. "What does Mr. Eisenhower propose then? That we go ahead with the development of the cobalt bomb to try to gain another advantage--or a force that can shake the earth off its axis? "But this is madness--this policy of trying to preserve peace by a preponderance of terror. And what is it going to do to mankind in the process--bone cancer, deformed children, sterility?" Instead, Stevenson said, the way to peace lies amid the faith, confidence and rising standards of living of the have-not peoples, "the millions of people who tremble on the sidelines of this mad arms race in helpless terror and expanding hunger." Yet the best reply to Stevenson's rootless eloquence was not the presidential report or the imprecations of Republican orators. It was an equally eloquent passage from a speech made four years ago: "Until it [the atomic bomb] is subjected to a safe international control, we have no choice but to insure our atomic superiority...We can never yield on the objective of securing a foolproof system of international inspection and control. And we can never confuse negotiation with appeasement." The place: Hartford, Connecticut; the date: Sept. 18, 1952; the speaker, Adlai Stevenson. </body> </article> </text>