Big Ones & Little Ones

White House correspondents, watching a pressroom TV set while the New York Giants battled the Brooklyn Dodgers, got a special summons to the office of Presidential Press Secretary Joe Short. Short looked gravely through his spectacles, and began reading from a paper before him. "Another atomic bomb has recently been exploded within the Soviet Union," he read. "This event confirms again that the Soviet Union is continuing to make atomic weapons . . . Further details cannot be given without adversely affecting our national security interests."

The Hint. Three days later, a Pravda reporter got further details from Joe Stalin himself. Asked the reporter: "What is your opinion of the hubbub raised recently in the foreign press in connection with the test of an atom bomb in the Soviet Union?" Replied Stalin: "Indeed, one of the types of atom bombs was recently tested in our country. Tests of atom bombs of different calibers will be conducted in the future as well." He repeated the Communist propaganda line that the Soviet Union stands for outlawing atomic bombs. Most Russians do not know that the U.S.S.R. has wrecked all plans for international atomic disarmament and control by refusing to agree to international inspection of atomic plants; since 1947, the U.S. has offered to share its atomic science with the United Nations on the basis of strict inspection and control.

The U.S., which had gone into a flap when the first Russian bomb was exploded two years ago, accepted the news of Bomb No. 2 for what it was worth. The atomic pundits speculated that the blast had gone off some time within the last month, were surprised that it hadn't come sooner. By now, they estimated, Russia may have stockpiled between 20 and 100 bombs. Stalin's reference to "different calibers" was taken as a hint that Russia, too, was on the trail of tactical atomic weapons.

Stalin had hardly spoken, before a House Appropriations subcommittee released testimony by Chairman Gordon Dean of the Atomic Energy Commission that U.S. tactical atomic weapons are "already here." AEC is working on "atomic artillery shells, guided missiles, torpedoes, rockets and bombs for ground-support aircraft, among others . . . big ones for big situations and little ones for little situations," said Dean. "Given the right situation, and a target of opportunity, we could use an atomic bomb today in a tactical way against enemy troops in the field, without risk to our own troops."

Third Force. In a speech at Los Angeles, Dean eloquently broadened the concept. "Millions of people throughout the world . . . have feared that the only two alternatives left to mankind are gradual submission to persistent Communist encroachment ... or atomic obliteration . . . We now have the third possibility of being able to bring to bear on the aggressor himself--at the place of his aggression ... a firepower that should cancel out any numerical advantage he might enjoy ... If we can prevent all-out war by means of our strategic capability, and stop these endless nibbling aggressions with our tactical capability, we will have done much to bring stability and a sense of security back to an uneasy world."

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