THE CONGRESS: Barlow's Bomb

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THE CONGRESS Barlow's Bomb

Jaunty Lester Pence Barlow has pondered on how to make a living, how to redistribute wealth, how to make liquor bottles unrefillable. But what has mainly wrinkled his brow has been how to end war. Like a good inventor, he tried to solve his problem the easy way: a death-dealing explosive which would annihilate whole regiments, spoil everyone's stomach for further fighting. Last week little, stocky, 53-year-old Mr. Barlow traveled from his office in Baltimore, Md. to Washington, and bounded into a meeting of the Senate Military Affairs Committee. In a scarily matter-of-fact voice he revealed a formula for an explosive so horrific that the alarmed Senators, before they adjourned, burned the minutes of the meeting in a metal wastebasket.

Senator Nye, who is pretty good himself at making flesh creep, handsomely announced: "Never in 15 years have I seen a Senate committee so thoroughly impressed." He was convinced that Mr. Barlow's bomb would give any nation an "incomparable advantage."

When he was a soldier of fortune in Pancho Villa's revolutionary army, Mr. Barlow began inventing bombs. Thirteen years later he brought suit against the Government for infringement of six bomb patents. In 1932, while his suit was dragging on, he appeared in Washington and began to scare people. He confided in President Hoover and members of Congress that he had a machine which Senator Lynn Frazier later described as "powerful enough to destroy all property and life in a section a quarter of a mile wide and a mile long." So impressed was Senator Frazier that he opposed the Hale Bill to enlarge the Navy, on the ground that Mr. Barlow's invention would make obsolete all existing military and naval armaments.

Not enough people agreed with Senator Frazier, and Mr. Barlow took his plans to Soviet Russia. (He believed that Russia was the only nation which would make use of his invention to force universal disarmament.) In Moscow, too, the idea was considered a dud. Returning, Mr. Barlow turned aside into politics and social planning. He announced he would run for Congress as a Townsendite and an "associate of Huey Long," made high-explosive speeches to Stamford, Conn, friends. He kept his hand in by turning out a liquor bottle which could not be refilled, continued to think up new engines of destruction, press his patent suit.

Four years ago the U. S. Court of Claims decided five of his six patent claims were valid, later decided the Government owed him approximately half a million dollars. Forthwith he wrote Congress that he had now planned an 85,000-ton, shockproof warship which would be immune to serious damage by shell, torpedo, or air bomb.