(See Cover)
The radioactive air mass from Siberia, floating westward over the Pacific Ocean one day last month, carried an international thunderclap. To the high-patrolling U.S. bombers, which scooped up samples of its fine dust, the radioactivity was obvious evidence of some kind of Russian atomic blast. To the scientists who analyzed the samplings, it was clear proof that the Russians had exploded a thermonuclear superbomb, a remarkably exact duplicate of the U.S.'s own. To the political leaders of the U.S., the air mass was one more ominous sign that the time was close when the Russians might have enough atomic strength to destroy the U.S. power of resistance or retaliation.
To a quiet, courtly Virginian of deep religious faith and independent character, the cloud was a vindication of a rather lonely fight—a vindication he was the last to want. When he heard the news about the Russian explosion of a "thermonuclear device," Lewis Lichtenstein Strauss, 57, new chairman of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, informed the other four AECommissioners, and then started working day & night to speed the U.S.'s own thermonuclear bomb production program. Not much was said, but AEC was keenly aware of two fateful facts of U.S. history: 1) had it not been for Lewis Strauss's persistence in 1947, the U.S. might now have no means of detecting the Russian atomic explosion; and 2) had it not been for Strauss's personal conviction about Russian intentions, back in late 1949, the U.S. might have had no thermonuclear superbomb of its own. Conceivably, the new Russian bomb could have been hurled on the world as an unchallengeable ultimatum, could by this week have changed the political balance of power around the world.
Sensitive Dissenter. The age of sophistication raises an eyebrow at any such Hairbreadth Harry interpretation of history. But the U.S.'s awakening to the twin perils of Communist intentions and Communist scientific capabilities has been a hairbreadth affair. Like his late great friend, James Forrestal, Lewis Strauss (rhymes with saws) was one of a little band of men in Government who caught the threat of Communism when others heard only what they wanted to hear, who was motivated by a single-minded patriotism when patriotism was a drug on the one-world market. For years, Strauss was virtually unknown, a sensitive dissenter, pained by each dissent and drowned out by a noisy majority.