Fate Closing In

Last week's atomic conversation: P: Alamogordo, N. Mex. was abuzz with the news that red Hereford cows had turned white following the first atomic explosion nearby. At Carrizozo, a black cat had turned half white. At Bingham. a rancher blamed the atom for grey streaks in his beard.

P: Said the Rev. Francis J. Connell, a professor at the Catholic University of Washington, D.C.: "The use of the atomic bomb was simply murder." P: The Aga Khan, spiritual leader of tens of millions of Moslems, declared in Calcutta that he favored the creation of a "supernational state" to regulate bomb production. Barring that, he would feel safest if the U.S. kept the secret to itself.

P: Moscow's New Times read the U.S. a history lesson implying that any attempt on its part to gain world domination via the atom would fail. P: At Sacramento, Calif., the aviators who dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki were asked if they wanted it placed under international control. Shouted the fivers: "Hell, no!"

P: In Oak Ridge, Tenn., cradle of the bomb, the Man in the Street was quoted by a newspaper survey: "We spent two billion dollars and a lot of time on it, so why give the secret away?" P: Dorothy Thompson declared that the U.S. could not give the bomb away because it did not own it: the world's scientists had given it to the "western world" to keep in sacred trust. Most scientists disagreed with her. Later, in a bit of atomic whimsy, Columnist Thompson wrote: "Scene: A ward in Bellevue. A screaming bearded gentleman is being hustled into a straitjacket. Guard: 'Completely coo-coo. Found him trying to board a ship. Yelled he was going to the Big Three meeting to save the world. Screamed he represented all the people on earth. The nut said he had a teeny-weeny atomic bomb and knew exactly where to drop it. Said he was commissioned by God.' Patient falls heavily to floor. Headlines: .. . 'Mysterious Explosion Destroys Bellevue. All Maniacs Missing.'"

P: Prophet H. G. Wells, 79, who foresaw the atom bomb 31 years ago, predicted the imminent end of mankind. In his latest book, Mind at the End of its Tether, written last year and serialized in British and U.S. newspapers last week, he wrote: "Homo sapiens, as he has been pleased to call himself is, in his present form, played out. The stars in their courses have turned against man and he has to give place to some other animal, better adapted to the fate that closes in. This new animal may be of an entirely alien strain, or may arise as a new modification of the man species . . . but it will certainly not be human."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.