Context and sources: Lennard-Jones heading to war

I do not know what your views are with regard to national service in time of war, but I have been asked to consult people who would be willing to work in a group with me in Cambridge. I am not able to give more detailed information at present, as the arrangement is confidential, but I can only say that the work would be largely of a computational nature. If you would like to offer your services for work of this kind, I should be glad to put your name on my list, so that you would be ear-marked for it on the National Register.

I should like helping in time of war, and I should wish to be as loyal a member of the community as possible. On the other hand, my conscientious scruples against fighting would equally not allow me to do work that actually helped in the prosecution of the war; if there is work of a redemptive and constructive nature that has to be done, … then I should like to join you in Cambridge. I imagine, however, that the work you have in mind would not fit into this category.

While I fully appreciate your point of view, I am afraid it would not be possible for me to have anyone in my group who was not willing to carry out any task asked of him without question or discussion. All the members of the group would be Government servants and would presumably be subject to the usual terms of appointment and service. We are not likely to be asked to do anything which could not be regarded as the discovery of scientific truth, but it would, of course, be directed towards a specific purpose.

Come the war. The situation was that I completed my thesis and was able to hand it in, but meanwhile the whole country was mobilizing and there was imminent fear of air raid attacks almost any night. Nobody was really in a position to bother about whether I got my orals taken or not. Furthermore, the British had been anticipating the possibility of the outbreak of war ever since the so-called Munich agreement, which had been the previous September. … I remember Professor Lennard-Jones asking me—I think it was in June of ‘39 or so—whether in the event of an emergency, would I be interested in staying on. What he meant by that was that, in the course of my graduate work, I had been using a rather interesting piece of equipment … called the differential analyzer. There was one other research student [Maurice Wilkes] who had been using the same equipment and who understood it. He, it was known, would, in the event of the outbreak of war, immediately be committed to the Air Force. So, L-J—as we called him—wanted to reserve me to operate that machine. …

However, we had a problem. You have to remember the United States quickly passed the Neutrality Act, … which was kind of a declaration that we’re not taking sides in this war. The British were meanwhile being overrun with … people from Poland who came in on Refugee status. Ostensibly, the Poles were allies because they were part of what Britain was out there rescuing. However, there was no real way for the British to tell which ones of these immigrants were Russian spies, and which ones were something else. They had no way [to tell] because Poland was overrun. They had absolutely no way of checking up on the credentials of any of these people who came in ostensibly as refugee allies. The result was that they had applications, of course, from these people who wanted to work in the war effort, and more particularly in secret work, which is what I would have gone into. About two months after the war started, the British government just decided that they would have a blanket rule that there would be no aliens in secret work, which I could understand, but it ruled me out almost of any job that I would have been in use to L-J. … It was at that point that I decided to come home.

I have just received your letter dated from the Mauretania on the 9th of December. I was writing you a letter just about that time, when I happened to be speaking to L-J on the telephone, and he told me that all efforts otherwise having failed you were leaving England and were in fact already on your way. This made all my remarks out of date, and I am afraid I did not get down to starting again.