The New Men (20 page)

‘Where have you been these days?’ she said to Martin. ‘You knew I wanted to see you.’

As she spoke, she realized that I was also there. She gave a smile, curiously tomboyish for anyone so careful of herself. I found Martin guiding the conversation, leading me so as not to mention her husband’s name. I could not tell whether he just guessed that she and Puchwein had finally parted.

Then I found him guiding the conversation in another sense.

‘What brings you down here, Lewis?’ she asked in a light tone.

Quickly, but as though indifferently, Martin replied for me:

‘Oh, just an ordinary visit from headquarters.’

‘I didn’t know we had much to visit, till you and Walter had got going again,’ she said. She said it with a toss of her head that made her seem both bad-tempered and young. In fact, she was standing the years better than any of us, with her small strong bones, her graceful Hamitic head.

‘I don’t think there is much to visit,’ said Martin, telling her it was no good going on.

‘Why are you wasting your time?’ she turned on me. But, as I was replying, she flashed out at Martin: ‘Do you really believe that no one has any idea what’s in the wind?’

‘No, I don’t believe that,’ he said, and in the same breath began to talk of what we should do the following day.

Hanna’s eyes filled with what seemed like tears of anger. Just for a second, as Mounteney and others entered the room and she left us, Martin glanced at me. He was frowning. Even when he had been snubbing her, he had sounded as though they had once been in each other’s confidence, to an extent which came as a surprise.

The room was noisy, as the scientists sat themselves at the desks, one or two banging the lids, like a rowdy class at school. Most of them wore open-necked shirts, one or two were in shorts.

It struck me that all the top scientists sat Barford were present, but none of the engineers. As an outsider, it had taken me years to understand this rift in technical society. To begin with, I had expected scientists and engineers to share the same response to life. In fact, the difference in the response between the physicists and engineers often seemed sharper than the difference between the engineers and such men as Hector Rose.

The engineers, the Rudds and Pearsons, the people who make the hardware, who used existing knowledge to make something go, were, in nine cases out of ten, conservatives in politics, acceptant of any régime in which they found themselves, interested in making their machine work, indifferent to long-term social guesses.

Whereas the physicists, whose whole intellectual life was spent in seeking new truths, found it uncongenial to stop seeking when they had a look at society. They were rebellious, questioning, protestant, curious for the future and unable to resist shaping it. The engineers buckled to their jobs and gave no trouble, in America, in Russia, in Germany; it was not from them, but from the scientists, that came heretics, forerunners, martyrs, traitors.

Luke was the last to arrive, a stick supporting him on one side and his wife on the other. If one had seen him near his worst, one no longer thought of him as ill, though the improvement made him look grotesque, for his hair had begun to grow again in tufts, shades fairer than the wings over his ears. With an attempt at jauntiness, he raised his stick before he sat down, while men asked him if he had heard details of the New Mexico explosion.

Luke shook his head.

‘All I know is that the bloody balloon went up all right.’

Someone said, with more personal sympathy than the rest: ‘It’s a pity it wasn’t yours.’

‘Ours ought to go a bit higher when it does go,’ replied Luke.

Francis Getliffe sat on a desk, looked down the small room, began to talk about reports from America – the argument was still going on, the scientists there were pressing the case against using the bomb, the military for; and all the statements for and against most of us knew by heart.

Then there was an interruption.

Mounteney leaned back, protruded his lean prow of a chin, and said, with unexpected formality: ‘Before we go on, I should like to know who invited L S Eliot to this meeting.’

‘I did,’ said Francis Getliffe. ‘I take it no one objects.’

‘I do,’ said Mounteney.

For a second, I thought it was a scientist’s joke, but Mounteney was continuing: ‘I understood that this was a meeting of scientists to find ways of stopping a misuse of science. We’ve got to stop the people who don’t understand science from making nonsense of everything we’ve said, and performing the greatest perversion of science that we’ve ever been threatened with. It’s the general class of people like Eliot who are trying to use the subject for a purpose none of us can tolerate, and I don’t see the point in having one of them join in this discussion. Not that I mean anything against L S Eliot, of course. I don’t suppose he personally would actually authorize using the fission bomb.’

It was only later that I remembered that he liked me, and that this was a triumph of impersonality.

Getliffe raised his voice. ‘We all know that Eliot thinks as we do. He also knows a great deal more than any of us about the government machines. That’s why he can be useful this afternoon.’

‘I don’t want anyone who knows anything about government machines,’ said Mounteney. ‘People who know about government machines all end up by doing what the machine wants, and that is the trouble we have got ourselves in today.’

Luke and Martin were exchanging glances, and Luke spoke.

‘We want Lewis Eliot in on this,’ he said.

‘Why?’ asked Mounteney.

‘Because you’re a wild man, Arthur, and he’s a cunning old dog.’

‘If you really do want him,’ said Mounteney, ‘I suppose I’m prepared to stay.’

‘I should think you are.’

‘But I still object in principle.’

Later, a good many scientists, not so wild as Mounteney, would have considered that in principle he was right.

Getliffe returned to the arguments in America. For weeks everyone in that room had thrashed them out.

Some of them gave an absolute no to the use of the bomb for reasons which were too instinctive to express. For any cause on earth, they could not bear to destroy hundreds of thousands of people at a go.

Many of them gave something near to an absolute no for reasons which, at root, were much the same; the fission bomb was the final product of scientific civilization; if it were used at once to destroy, neither science nor the civilization of which science was bone and fibre, would be free from guilt again.

Many, probably the majority, gave a conditional no with much the same feeling behind it: but if there were
no other way
of saving the war against Hitler, they would be prepared to drop the bomb. I believed that that was the position of Francis Getliffe; it was certainly Luke’s.

None of those attitudes were stated at this meeting. They had been agreed on long before, and they gave us much common ground. But those who answered with a conditional no could not dismiss the military counter argument out of hand. In America, so Getliffe said, those in favour of the bomb were saying: Our troops have got to invade Japan. This bomb will save our men’s lives; a soldier must do anything, however atrocious, if by doing so he could save one single life under his command.

As Getliffe said, that was a case which one had to respect. And it was the only case one could respect. Using the bomb to forestall the Russians or for any kind of diplomatic motive – that was beneath the human level.

Yet, if the dropping of a bomb could make the Japanese surrender, the knowledge that we possessed it might do the same?

‘Several of us,’ said Francis Getliffe, ‘had made a scheme, in case we had it before the end of the German war. Step one. Inform the enemy that the bomb was made, and give them enough proof. Step two. Drop one bomb where it will not kill people. Step three. If the enemy government will not budge, then’ – Getliffe had faced his own thoughts – ‘drop the next on a town.’

By this time, the meeting was in a state of deep emotion. If there is any sense or feeling left,’ said Francis Getliffe (it was only afterwards that I recalled that ‘sense and feeling’ was the one emotional phrase in his speech), ‘don’t begin by using this bomb on human beings.’

That was the case which scientists were putting up in Washington.

‘How are they taking it?’ asked a refugee.

‘Some are listening,’ said Francis.

‘Is that going to be good enough?’ said someone.

‘No one knows yet,’ said Francis, He added: ‘We’ve had one optimistic message.’

‘Who from?’

Getliffe gave the name.

Luke shook his head.

‘He’d believe anything that a blooming general told him. I must say, it doesn’t sound safe enough to leave.’

‘I agree,’ said Francis Getliffe.

‘What more can we do?’ came a voice.

‘There’s plenty we can do,’ said Luke,

‘There’s plenty we can do,’ said Mounteney, speaking into space, but there’s only one way we can make it impossible for them.’

‘What’s that?’ said Francis.

‘Issue a statement saying what has happened about the bomb and what is proposed. That will settle it in one.’

‘Who is to issue the statement?’ said Nora Luke.

‘We are.’

‘Breaking the law?’ said Francis.

‘I know that,’ said Mounteney.

‘Breaking our oaths?’ said Francis.

Mounteney hesitated for some moments, ‘I don’t like that. But there’s no other way.’

‘We’re still at war,’ said Luke. ‘We shall never get the statement out.’

‘I think we should,’ said Mounreney.

‘It’d all be hushed up. A few of us would be in jug, and the whole bloody game would be discredited,’

‘We might be unlucky,’ said Mounteney. ‘In that case a few scientists would be discredited. If we do nothing, then all scientists will be discredited. I can understand some of you fighting shy of signing the statement. I shan’t mind putting it out by myself.’

That was a false note. He was a daring man, but so were others there. He was a man of absolute integrity, but most of them did not trust his judgement. Just at that turning point, they were undecided.

Francis Getliffe had expected some such suggestion all along; for himself, he was too disciplined to act on it. So was Luke. But it was Martin who spoke.

‘No, Arthur,’ he said, smiling to Mounteney. ‘That’s not fair. What’s more important, it isn’t realistic, you know. We couldn’t let you do it unless (
a
) it was certain to work, (
b
) there was no alternative. It just wouldn’t work. The only result would be that a Nobel prizewinner would be locked up for trying to break the Official Secrets Act, and the rest of us wouldn’t be able to open our mouths. Don’t you see that, if you try something illegal and it doesn’t come off – then
we’ve completely shot our bolt
? Whatever governments decided to do with the bombs, we should have lost any influence we might have had.’

There was a murmur in the room. If you were used to meetings, then you knew that they were on Martin’s side. I was astonished at the authority he carried with them.

It happened to be one of those occasions when it was easier to make a prudent case than a wild one. Nearly everyone there was uneasy about breaking an oath – uneasy both out of fear and out of conscience.

They were not men to whom gesture-making came lightly: they could not believe, that sunny afternoon, that it was demanded of them. So they took Martin as their spokesman.

But also, I thought, he was speaking with an inner authority of his own; his bit of success had been good for him; he carried the weight of one who is, for the first time, all of a piece.

‘I don’t see any other way,’ said Mounteney.

‘We do,’ said Martin.

Mounteney, as well as being cantankerous, was the most obstinate of men. We were ready for him to argue for hours. Yet without explanation he gave way. I did not even wonder how mysterious his surrender was; we were too much in the middle of events to care.

Immediately, Martin brought out his proposal: that two or three English scientists should be flown over to America to say again what they had said that afternoon. It was known that a number of the scientists working on the American project had signed a protest: the English emissaries would take over a corresponding list of names. Those names were already known – of the scientists at Barford, everyone was willing to sign except Drawbell himself and two obscure chemists. There would also be some signatures, but a much smaller proportion, from the engineers and technicians.

Everyone in the room agreed; they were active men, and they were soothed by action for its own sake. Getliffe could arrange for an official aircraft within twenty-four hours. Who should go? There was a proposal, backed by Mounteney, that it should be Luke and Martin, the people who had done the work.

Luke was willing to agree, but Martin would not have it. Neither of them was known in America, said Martin: it was no use sending local reputations. Whereas Mounteney had his Nobel prize and Francis Getliffe a great name in Washington for his war work: they were the two who might count.

It was agreed. They would be in America by July 29th. Francis Getliffe said that they would hope to send us news before the middle of August.

On those first days of August, I had little to do in the office except wait for news. The ‘leave season’ had set in, as it had not done for six years; rooms round me were empty; the files ended ‘cd we discuss on my return?’

When I arrived in the morning, I looked for a despatch from America: but none came. I got through my work in an hour. Then I rang up Martin at Barford, hoping that Getliffe might have signalled to them and not to London: no news. There was nothing to do. Often, in the afternoons, I went off by myself to Lord’s.

It was the week before Bank Holiday. The days were like the other days: a sharp cool wind was blowing, more like April than full summer, the clouds streamed across the sky, at the cricket ground one watched for the blue fringe behind them.