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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.
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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