The New Men by C.P. Snow

The news rippled out. More scientists followed Pearson across. By the end of June, not only the Whitehall Committee, but the top men at Barford all knew that completed bombs were in existence: that the trial was fixed for the end of July: that there was a proposal, if the trial went according to plan, to use a bomb on a Japanese town. Of my acquaintances, perhaps thirty were in possession of those facts.

Among those I was closest to, the first responses were variegated. Several men of good will felt above all excitement and wonder. In the committees there was a whiff almost of intoxication; the other conquests of nature were small beside this one; we were within listening distance of the biggest material thing that human beings had done. Among people who had been flying throughout the war between America and England, who had been giving a hand on both sides and who had, like so many scientists, little national feeling, there was a flash of – later I did not wish to over-state it, but I thought the emotion was – awe; a not unpleasurable, a self-congratulatory awe.