(3 of 5)
As the year started, Harry Truman had no idea that his Government was engaged in atomic research. At year's end President Truman was custodian of the bomb and its precarious secret, buffer against its terror, repository of whatever promise it might contain for a world which could use its secret in peace.
Harry Truman, a very plain man indeed, who had never sought or dreamed of being Man of the Atomic Year, had been cast up to his position by an accident of the tides, by the shifting forces of politics. In the same startled and unpremeditated fashion, mankind itself, shrinking from the shadow of Hiroshima, dwarfed by the Event of 1945, had got where it was.
Awkward Mantle. The Man of the Year personified the problem of the year. His very name had almost the force of a pun. Like most of mankind, he was ill prepared for the destiny and responsibility which had been thrust upon him. He did not want the responsibility; the destiny rested awkwardly on his shoulders.
Like many an average citizen, Harry Truman greeted the bomb with few immediate overtones of philosophic doubt. When it was dropped on Hiroshima, by his order, he was aboard the cruiser Augusta, returning from his first international conference at Potsdam. He rushed to the officers' wardroom, announced breathlessly: "Keep your seats, gentlemen. . . . We have just dropped a bomb on Japan which has more power than 20,000 tons of TNT. It was an overwhelming success." Applause and cheering broke out; the President hastened along to spread the word in the other messes.
His formal announcement, released at the White House, showed considerably more awareness of what the bomb meant to humanity, in good and evil. But a few weeks later he was again treating it with an oddly offhand air. He chose a fishing lodge at Tennessee's Reelfoot Lake, an informal "bull session" with newsmen against a background of bourbon and poker, to announce that the U.S. intended to keep the secret of the bomb to itself.
Infinite Puzzle. This seemed no paradox to Harry Truman. But the problem went deeper. The world, obviously, would not accept a U.S. trusteeship. The Germans had started the race for the bomb; the Japanese had been experimenting, too. Now the Russians started working furiously. Any other nation with the inclination and the money could get into the race, and some of them doubtless would.
The scientists, in coldly factual terms, spelled out the possibilities:
In three to five years, any nation could learn the bomb's secret.
The U.S. could have a stockpile of 10,000 bombs in ten to 15 years, any other nation presumably in 13 to 20 years.
For a nation which wanted to use it, the bomb was a cheap way to wage war—perhaps ten, perhaps 100 times cheaper than fighting with TNT.
There was as yet no sign of confidence from the Man of the Year, nor from most of humanity, that anything could be done about the problem. The feeling was abroad that the complexity of modern life had made all men, even Presidents, even Men of the Year, mere foam flecks on the tide.
Shallow Peace. In such a world, who dared be optimistic?