Atomic Developments
There is a curious contradiction between the resignation of Mr. David Lilienthal from the chairmanship of the United States Atomic Energy Commission and the publication this week by the Com- mission of some important information about the industrial uses of atomic energy, the main item in which concerns experiments with a " breeder reactor " which may make it possible to produce greatly increased quantities of fissionable material from natural uranium. Mr. Lilienthal is known to favour a freer exchange of information with Great Britain and Canada, but has finally resigned because he cannot continue to spend a large proportion of his time answering the criticisms of politicians who say he wants to disclose —indeed has disclosed—too much. Yet at the very moment when his latest attacker, Senator Johnson, is blunderingly contradicting himself in his charges that Mr. Lilienthal is in a " nefarious plot" to give away information about a new bomb, and when talks between the United States, Britain and Canada are going on with a view to extending the exchange of information after the end of this year, Mr. Lilienthal decides to go. He succumbs to a series of stupid attacks at the very moment when change in American policy is becoming possible. But the more American policy changes the more Russian policy remains the same. Mr. Vyshinsky at Flushing Meadow has been repeating yet again, to the accompani- ment of the usual charges of Western warmongering, his useless and disingenuous proposals for simultaneous conventions on pro- hibition and control. Even his agreement with General Romulo's appeal for a resumption of talks between the permanent members of the Atomic Energy Commission indicates no advance, for it is completely unlikely that he will agree that they should discuss anything new. The Russians have gained time for atomic develop- ment by this device before, and it seems that they are to be allowed to do it again.
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