Two v. the Atom

In the changing world of the atom, everything suddenly changed. Statesmen strove to raise the atomic debate from the depths of frightened nationalism to the heights of a new internationalism. Two British spokesmen, Winston Churchill and Ernest Bevin (see FOREIGN NEWS) strove to bend that internationalism to the uses of a strengthened Anglo-American power alignment, and Clement Attlee tried to sell both ideas to Harry Truman (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS).

Big One, Little Two? Between them, Churchill and Bevin sped Attlee to Washington with the clearest statement yet of British purposes. The British Government (but not the entire British public) was willing to pay high for a new Big Two--the U.S. and Britain. Furthermore, the British Government was willing, even anxious, to be the junior partner in the alliance.

Britain, as depicted by its collaborating Opposition and Government spokesmen last week, still put much of its trust in the United Nations Organization, still spoke of the Big Three in the present tense. Britain still wanted to get along with Russia. But Britain also wanted to be prepared not to get along with Russia. U.S.British understanding had long been Britain's second line of diplomatic defense; now, if the U.S. was willing, it would be the first line.

In the furtherance of this design, Churchill and Bevin begged the House of Commons to accept a temporary U.S. monopoly of atomic manufacture. They gave exaggerated, un-British praise to President Truman's "Twelve Points" of U.S. foreign policy. And Attlee, promoting an international pooling of atomic knowledge and research, clearly assumed that at the start the U.S.-British Big Two would manage the pool.

The Higher Plane. With more dexterity than he is usually given credit for, Attlee left the atomic and power-political grubbing to Churchill and Bevin. Two days later, just before his departure for Washington, the Prime Minister spoke of the atomic bomb on a plane reached in the U.S. only by Captain Harold E. Stassen and Senator Joseph H. Ball (see below). Said Attlee to an audience of London businessmen:

''The question that faces us today is not so much how can we control this new and devastating force let loose on the world by science as what kind of world society is necessary in a world where a few bombs might destroy utterly great cities and the work of centuries of human endeavor.

"We must, I believe, face up to this, that unless we can devise human relationships other than those which have obtained throughout the ages, destruction on an unbelievable scale may fall upon our civilization.

"... I want to ... see how best we can lift from the ordinary man and woman this specter of fear that haunts him today. I want to consider . . . how best our common ideals of peace, freedom, tolerance and economic prosperity for all people can be realized.

"I want a world which will be safe for the common man."

Common men could wish that more of such Attlee philosophy had leavened the talk of a new Big Two, or of any Big Two.

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