\ Introduction THE COMMON PROBLEM By Frederick S. Dunn "The common problem, yours, mine, everyonets, Ise—not to fancy what were fair in life Provided it could be-—but, finding first What may be, then find how to make it fair Up to our means: a very different thing!" Robert Browning, "Bishop Blougram's Apology" Whatever else the successful explosion of the first atomic bomb at Alamagordo signified, it was a victory of the most startling and conclusive sort for scientific research. By a huge effort: of combined action, the physical scientists and engineers had succeeded in compressing into a mere sliver of time perhaps several decades of work in applying the cnergy of the atom to military purposes. | But having achieved this miracle, the scientists themselves were not at all sure that mankind was the gainer by their desperate labors. At least some of them had ardently hoped that their research would prove nothing more than the impossibility of reaching the goal. On the surface of things, the capacity of atomic energy for mass destruction far exceeded any immediately realizable value in enhancing human comfort and welfare. Moreover, like all physical forces, it was morally indifferent and could just as easily serve evil purposes as good, Unless some means could be found for separating out and controlling its powers of annihilation, the scientists! most striking victory of all time threatened on balance to become the heaviest blow ever struck against humanity. About one thing the physical scientists had no doubt whatever, and that was the surpassing urgency of the problem. They went to extraordinary lengths to stir up the public to a realization of the magnitude of the danger confronting the/theyresorted to extramundane terms to make the non-scientist see that the new physical force was really something different, that it was even a different kind of difference. If they showed perhaps too great a tendency to expect