January 19, 1950: U.S.S.R. walks out of sponsoring powers consultations over China recognition issue. January 31, 1950: President Truman announces that United States will proceed with development of hydrogen bomb. B THE INTERNATIONAL CONTROL OF ATOMIC WEAPONS: A BRIEF HISTORY OF PROPOSALS AND NEGOTIATIONS _Early steps looking toward international control_ Even before the test explosion at Alamogordo, N. Mex., had ushered in the atomic age, the United States Government was studying methods of making atomic energy a socially constructive force. In May 1945 an Interim Committee appointed by Secretary of War Stimson commenced investigating the problem. The Committee recognized “that the means of producing the atomic bomb would not forever remain the exclusive property of the United States....” Therefore, “Secretary of War Stimson was one of the first to recommend a policy of international supervision and control of the entire field of atomic energy....” When on August 6, 1945, President Truman made the first public statement on the atomic bomb, he made clear that “under present circumstances it is not intended to divulge the technical process of production or all the military application, pending further examination of possible methods of protecting us and the rest of the world from the danger of sudden destruction.” He assured the American people that he would “make further recommendations to the Congress as to how atomic power can become a powerful and forceful influence toward the maintenance of world peace.” The President’s recommendations were transmitted to the Congress on October 3, 1945. He spoke of the necessity for “international arrangements looking, if possible, to the renunciation of the use and development of the atomic bomb, and directing ... atomic energy ... toward peaceful and humanitarian ends.” So great a challenge could not await the full development of the United Nations. The President, therefore, proposed initiating discussions “first with our associates in this discovery, Great Britain and Canada, and then with other nations....” _The Truman-Attlee-King declaration_ In the three nations agreed declaration of November 15, 1945—frequently called the Truman-Attlee-King declaration—was recorded the concerted objectives of the three nations that had developed the atomic bomb.