After the 50 Metagon Bomb-Four Articles

...Let one or two H-bombs fall on French soil, and you will see what happens," he answered, contending that a "pro-peace" (read: pro-Communist) government would be installed in Paris within 24 hours...

...The hard core of the Party is still intact, however, and it will fight in the elections not on the question of the 50 megaton bomb but on what it considers the failures of the Congress party at home...

...But de Gaulle recognizes that he cannot hold up talks indefinitely...

...Many here believe that these considerations will have a sobering effect on both sides, temper their pugnacity and prompt them to negotiate a broad and bold settlement in Central Europe as soon as possible...

...India: A Second Look at Neutrality By Sharokh Sabavala New Delhi The people of India read and hear every day that monitoring stations throughout the country are being alerted for fall-out...

...There can be little doubt what the populace thinks about the Soviet resumption of nuclear tests: It is disturbed as it has not been since 1954, when some Japanese fishermen received an atomic dusting at the hands of the United States and people stopped eating tuna...

...Basically, he does not want serious negotiation between Russia and the West on any issue until France has solved the Algerian problem and has become an atomic power...

...Any statesman who demands that much of others can legitimately be asked what forces he commands to back up his policy in case things go haywire...

...But while the U.S...

...If my interpretation has any validity—and at least it avoids the internal contradictions which more fashionable theories incur—then the Soviet tests do nothing to make negotiation on Berlin less necessary or desirable...

...In sum, it was a spotty performance, and nowhere spottier than in the comic interlude provided early this month by a meeting of the Central Committee of the Japanese Socialist party...

...Indeed, the Soviet tests, coming on top of Communist China's cynical disregard of Nehru's Panch Shila (five principles of coexistence) doctrine, has many Indians wondering whether a policy of neutrality is worth-while at all...

...His approach can work only if the Allies are ready to stake everything, i.e., bomb Russia regardless of the risks to their own countries...

...Yet negotiations which are limited to the narrow issues of West Berlin and its routes of access cannot produce more than temporary stability...

...The largest Japanese demonstration, on October 30, brought only 4,0005,000 people to the Russian Embassy in Tokyo...

...Speaking in Toulon on November 8, the French President maintained his inflexible attitude toward the Soviet Union...

...In his political report, the party's Secretary General placed the blame for world tensions, and thus for the Soviet tests, squarely on the shoulders of American imperialism...

...A nuclear war in particular might be easily won by psychological blackmail...

...Its Air Force is excellent, but too small to make much of a difference...

...The country has no civil defense to speak of...

...According to current U.S...

...Due attention has been given to the view that a 50 megaton bomb is of no military use, and to the corollary that the Soviet Union is trying to frighten the West into withdrawing from Berlin...

...Yet Kennedy is obliged to base his decisions in the East-West crisis on true power relationships and, in France's present state of unpreparedness, its leader's views cannot carry much more weight than the private advice of any other distinguished figure...

...underground tests...

...Instead of a policy of security, we have adopted a policy of amour propre, particularly in refusing military integration in Europe and getting involved in a vain arms race which we had lost before we started...

...The French are totally absorbed by Algeria and expect a new outbreak of violence there soon...

...Yet there were no real mass demonstrations protesting the Soviet tests, as there certainly would have been had the Americans been the ones to break the moratorium...

...visit results in the ironing out of certain policy questions with Washington...

...A few days after the 50 megaton bomb explosion, he proposed the creation of a "European Political Community" that would work out common political and military policies on all major issues...

...Now a new German government has been formed on the basis of a written agreement between the Christian Democrats and the Free Democrats...

...After months examining every alternative, the Kennedy Administration seems to have come round to the British idea that the sooner negotiations start the better, and that the West would gain by broadening the area of negotiation...

...The official attitude toward the tests seemed to be that since the whole world knew who violated the moratorium, no purpose would be served by singling out Moscow for censure...

...4. The Russians are suspicious that Mao Tse-tung wants to push them into a war with the West, much as they believe Neville Chamberlain tried to lure them into a war against Hitler in 1939...

...Much of the English-language press has used strong language in attacking the Soviet move and the flouting of neutralist opinion...

...Stalin used to ask cynically: 'How many divisions has the Pope?' Aren't we entitled to inquire: 'How many divisions has General de Gaulle?' " A rather disappointing answer to the last question was given by former Premier Paul Reynaud in a speech to the National Assembly on November 9: "We are offering only four divisions for the common defense of Europe...

...If strictly observed, this accord could make negotiations on Berlin impossible and thus lead to the slow strangulation of the city by Communist salami tactics...

...These and similar organization's will make a spirited effort to win back lost ground when the U.S...

...But a large number of educated Indians—including many in high Government positions—do not understand where the United States is headed and what it really means to do to safeguard the free world's security...

...Japan: Umbrellas and Admonitions By Edward Seidensticker Tokyo The Japanese money market is tight, but manufacturers of umbrellas probably have no trouble getting bank loans these days...

...And whatever juridical agreements may be made, as long as this is so Khrushchev will be able to exert physical pressure on the city, and through the city on the West as a whole...

...Once Khrushchev is persuaded to base Soviet security in this area on some form of agreement with the West over arms limitation and control—as he himself has proposed—his interest in maintaining cooperation will be a powerful factor in restraining any attack on the Western position in Berlin...

...That Premier Khrushchev, unlike President Kennedy, should have yielded to this military pressure may be due in part to his need for the support of the generals in his new attack on the Anti-Party Group and on some aspects of Chinese policy...

...None condemned the USSR outright...

...Every August it holds an antibomb festival during which all the sins of the American imperialists, from Berlin to New Guinea, are laid bare...

...For disengagement means the physical separation of Soviet and Western forces after the reunification of a neutralized Germany...

...At the news that a bomb is of Soviet provenance, therefore, the stamping and screaming become somewhat muffled and equivocal...

...The newspapers had great fun with the Gensuikô's secretary general, Kaoni Yasui, a Lenin Prize winner, after Russia resumed nuclear testing...

...In fact, France's nuclear striking power remains insignificant...

...So he argues that a satisfactory compromise on Berlin cannot be reached until both sides have come much closer to the brink of war than they are at present...

...But one has the right and the duty to offer at least a warning: If Washington now fails to lead the West toward negotiation on Berlin, the resulting aggravation of existing disintegrative tendencies will make it much more difficult for the U.S...

...Equally worth watching will be the effects of another unpleasant event that is coming near: the first Chinese test...

...It remains to be seen whether they will succeed or whether they have been permanently discredited...

...nuclear installations are still prohibited on French air bases, and a large part of the French fleet has been withdrawn from NATO control to be reserved' "for national purposes only...

...One-sided" criticism, it was reasoned, could only aggravate the culprit and perhaps cause him to commit fresh atrocities...

...In 1940 he was a lone outsider trying to build something out of nothing...

...They strongly support President de Gaulle's Algerian policy, but there is no visible popular backing for his German policy...

...The public at large is either indifferent to or favorably disposed toward the Security Treaty...

...Khrushchev may have thus wanted to demonstrate that, as he has often said, Russia is now so strong that no combination of capitalist countries could dare to attack it...

...He did not attempt to describe the basis for this continuing faith...

...The General is more impressed by the fact that Premier Khrushchev did not tell his people about the explosions than he is by the tests themselves...

...Neutralism here is of the Afro-Asian variety, more neutral toward some people than toward others...

...Andbelieving privately that any Berlin settlement is likely to involve bitter concessions by West Germany, he wants Britain and America to do the dirty work and take the blame in Bonn...

...What if General de Gaulle stretches his thesis too far...

...Until now, President de Gaulle has been the main opponent of this view...

...He learned then "how to play poker with other people's chips," as one American official put it...

...We shall not bow to threats, diktats and demands," he told the crowd, and raising his voice: "We cannot, we do not want to do so...

...Some unofficial spokesmen, such as former Governor General Chakravarty Rajagopalachari, have condemned Russia outright...

...To begin with, their political feelings are by no means as simple as those of the general public...

...One of the participants, a very important man on the Tokyo Asahi Shimbun, the most powerful newspaper in Japan, said that he still had confidence in Moscow's willingness to submit to inspection upon the conclusion of an agreement for total disarmament...

...A joint Anglo-American initiative would only heighten the existing tensions between the Anglo-Saxon nuclear powers and their Continental allies...

...Denis Healey is Labor Member of Parliament for South East Leeds...

...There were many protests, to be sure, and even the farthest Left of the high-brow monthlies, Sekai, carried a panel discussion whose tone was generally admonitory of the Soviet Union...

...They still detest the Germans, including the East Germans...

...It is nice to have a faltering anti-riot bill around to rant at instead...

...One asked: "Would you have come and questioned us if the Americans had exploded the bomb...

...The Gensuikyô (Japan Council against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs) has been particularly flustered...

...Much that has appeared has been less carefully reasoned, however, and amounts to blind opposition to any test at any time for any reason...

...Security Treaty, which is automatically blamed for any attempt to insure that the political violence of 1960 is not repeated...

...What do you think we would do at that moment of truth...

...Nevertheless, the Communists will probably lose ground in the elections...

...At a recent armchair session in a Paris salon where these matters were discussed, a well-informed French journalist said apologetically: "To be frank, I don't think France would fight a nuclear war...

...The Mainichi Shimbun, also published in Tokyo and probably the second most powerful paper, carried a similar discussion in which one of the participants, an expert on military affairs, claimed that the biggest Soviet bomb, since it was a new sort of bomb, must be a "clean" bomb...

...Certainly it will arouse the Japanese as no other people—but will it set them to running toward or away from the U.S...

...has no option now but to resume open-air testing...

...Thus the fact that the Soviet tests were resumed on the eve of the Belgrade conference of neutral nations was as big a shock to Indian public opinion as the tests themselves...

...After the 50 Megaton Bomb-Four Articles Why It Was Exploded By Denis Healey London As far as the outside world is concerned, everything that happened at the Soviet Party Congress is overshadowed by the monstrous horror of Russia's bomb tests...

...And in this case the second role is not wholly consistent with the first...

...The implications of the tests contrast sharply with Nikita Khrushchev's vision of the New Soviet Man as a being distinguished by "spiritual wealth, moral purity and perfect physique...

...Increasing hostility toward Krishna Menon is also evident...

...Today, while jealously watching over his own prerogatives in matters of defense, he is once again pursuing a policy that can draw its strength only from the military might of his allies...

...Instead, we had a futile exercise in brinkmanship at Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin...

...First, they seem to have pushed a number of important people in the direction of true neutrality and, from the American point of view, any move from Asianstyle neutralism toward true neutrality must be regarded as a move forward...

...Indians are confused by Communist-inspired stories of how the Soviet Union was forced to break the moratorium because Moscow had information that the United States was secretly preparing to resume testing...

...Two of them are under strength, just back from Algeria and not fully equipped...

...The image of the Soviet mentality implied by a readiness to mutilate half a million unborn babies for the sake of making a political point is appalling, but it is surely significant that Khrushchev chose the Congress to announce postponement of his ultimatum on Berlin...

...All of that was changed at the November meeting...

...Berlin will remain a bone in Khrushchev's throat as long as it is an island of freedom inside a totalitarian sea...

...De Gaulle himself is of course aware of his country's essential weakness...

...Although this has less immediate bearing on Soviet diplomacy, it is worth noting in passing that the main ground for attack on Stalin's memory was not his political mistakes or doctrinal errors, but his constant violation of human rights and juridical processes...

...A poll run by the French Gallup Institute asked people whether they felt that Berlin was worth a war...

...Moreover, a Western diplomatic defeat over Berlin is certain unless negotiation can produce a more stable basis for the city's survival than the present war of nerves...

...To a large segment of Indian public opinion this attitude was no less perplexing than it was to many Americans...

...General de Gaulle's serene brinkmanship of unlimited duration is not considered very realistic by American observers in Paris...

...Hence there is uninhibited stamping and screaming when a bomb goes off— provided it is an American, English or French bomb...

...Those close to de Gaulle say his intransigence is based on a firm conviction that the Russians have been bluffing...

...The danger of war over Berlin does not arise from thermonuclear explosions in the Arctic, but from competitive brinkmanship with tanks and machineguns in Berlin itself...

...The emphasis on the sanctity of the individual personality suggested by the stories of torture and terror produced against Stalin at the Congress is entirely new in Soviet history, and constitutes a political fact all Soviet leaders must now take into account...

...This year, perhaps acting on a faulty tip from Peking or Moscow, the Gensuikyô proclaimed that the first country to violate a nuclear truce would be an "enemy of peace...

...Because the Japanese Left can turn out 20,00030,000 people any time it chooses...

...The Soviet explosions have not moved the Government to allot any money for shelters in its next budget...

...The Soviet tests have had another effect, too...

...Given Japan's checkered record over the last three decades, almost the only role in which the Left can assume a posture of moral superiority before the world is as the victim of the atomic bomb...

...underground testing has not received the same publicity as the Soviet blasts, in this country it sometimes appears even more ominous...

...Most Western commentators have assumed that the explosion of the 50 megaton bomb had no military purpose, and that its only political purpose was to terrorize non-Communist opinion throughout the world...

...The General claims his attitude has already paid dividends, since the Soviet leader has extended the December 31 deadline for signing a German peace treaty and seems to be willing to make other concessions...

...At present, neither East nor West is prepared to take the risk of so radical a solution...

...They no longer pay much attention to political events in the outside world...

...Edward Seidensticker, a veteran correspondent based in Japan, is a contributor to many periodicals...

...one Western diplomat in Paris wondered out loud...

...Although the party would be neutral in a military sense, he proclaimed, as a Socialist party it could not be politically neutral in the struggle between capitalism and Socialism...

...Châô Karon, a monthly closer to Center than Sekai, gave space to a gentleman who blamed the Soviet tests on the "renazification" of West Germany, and the letters-to-theeditor pages of the November Sekai were wholly taken up by a tearful plea from a lady reader that fellow readers try to understand Nikita Khrushchev's cruel predicament...

...No doubt Soviet military men have been as persistent as the Pentagon in urging their political leader to resume testing, particularly if, as many believe, information revealed at the Geneva test ban talks convinced the Russians that America is far ahead in certain fields of atomic weapons technology...

...Peking, they believe, hopes that the Communist and capitalist whites will destroy each other arid make room for the colored two-thirds of mankind...

...Despite the oversimplification, the Soviet Union is clearly the principle object of aversion now, just as the United States was in 1954...

...Britain is unwilling to take the initiative for fear of jeopardizing its prospects of entry to the Common Market...

...Paris television interviewers went into the street and asked passers-by what they thought of the Russian nuclear tests...

...That is why he will be very careful, even after the signing of a peace treaty, not to provoke the Allies...

...Thus lacking any substantial military strength, France's policy on the German crisis seems to exist in a vacuum...

...Second, the Soviet tests have thrown the front organizations into disorder, at least for the time being...

...An agreement between Russia and the West on arms control in Central Europe should not be confused with "disengagement...

...It is significant, too, that he chose the Congress to attack Vyacheslav M. Molotov— especially for treating peaceful coexistence as a form of cold war rather than, as Khrushchev himself defines it, a state of "armed peace...

...France was one of the few Western countries where not a single protest meeting against the Soviet bomb was organized...

...Labor leaders tell their people to demonstrate, and they go and have a pleasant holiday with pay...

...But de Gaulle thinks Khrushchev will have to climb down even more before there can be any constructive bargaining...

...In Indian eyes, he seems to be spreading confusion wherever he goes these days...

...If we were invaded while dreaming of our nuclear striking force," Reynaud concluded, "we would be like the astrologer in the fable who, while staring at the stars, fell into an open well at his feet...

...On the same day, in another part of the city, several times that number gathered to flay a very sick horse, Prime Minister Hayato Ikeda's plans for a riot-control law...

...In addition, the Russian nuclear explosions have damaged the cause of Communism in India...

...And with general elections only three months away, there is widespread criticism, even within the ruling Congress party, of Nehru's "lotus-eating" ways...

...Writing in the November Sekai, the novelist Hotta Yoshie, who has been the most energetic Japanese agent for the Communistdominated Afro-Asian Writers' Bureau, cast a fairly loathsome plague upon both the American and the Russian houses...

...The Kennedy Administration, it is acknowledged here, has shown more official sympathy with neutrality and non-alignment in recent months than either Moscow or Peking...

...A more complex question is why the leaders who can turn demonstrations on and off chose to rouse their followers against the anti-riot bill rather than the Soviet tests...

...and its bombs...

...Both these views, in my opinion, may be mistaken: The bomb may be directly related to events at the 22nd Party Congress, where—unlike all previous Soviet tests—news of its explosion was announced to the Russian people...

...A similar reluctance on the part of the Soviet-Japanese Friendship Society to censure the Soviet Union cost it the services of its most valuable figurehead, Tanzan Ishibashi, a former prime minister who had allowed himself to be called the Society's chairman...

...Yet his whole theory rests on the postulate that the USSR itself will be H-bombed as soon as it interferes with vital Western rights in Germany...

...That is why it is so important for the West to broaden the area of negotiation to include the overall problem of security in Central Europe...

...and Britain to override these objections and get negotiations started at the Foreign Minister level if they had made good use of the long interregnum which followed the West German elections...

...3. Ulbricht, for his part, is not ready to die for the Soviets either...

...The second crowd also took a few swings at the Japanese-U.S...

...and Britain to prevent France from carrying through its Sahara exploits, which, it is felt here, give the Russians an excuse for displaying their own dread power...

...And although U.S...

...Many Allied observers in Paris believe de Gaulle's evaluation is correct...

...Most said they were against all tests, from whichever direction...

...Any provocation would have to come from the Soviet Union...

...As for the General himself, he reacted to the Arctic tests by urging his Common Market partners (Italy, West Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg) to establish a united front against the Soviet menace...

...Their appearance on the streets of Tokyo should not be taken as a great swell of public opinion...

...Few Frenchmen seem to care at all about what happens to the Germans...

...nor Russia...

...Under de Gaulle's plan, the six heads of state would meet every four months to bring these policies up to date and, if necessary, take joint measures "to cope with any threat of attack...

...It would never have occurred to them to protest against the bomb...

...Suppose Khrushchev starts bombing Germany and tells us at the same time that he had to chastise those dreadful Nazis but would be only too glad to live in peace with France...

...The new organism is intended to be more all-embracing than NATO and the Western European Union, which were conceived as purely defensive bodies...

...According to an American in Paris who should know, the President has the deepest respect for de Gaulle's courage and vision...

...Since the election campaign of late 1960 the Socialists have been having a bout of moderation, insisting that they dislike no one, neither the U.S...

...Prime Minister Nehru did take pains, however, to deny that his emissary at the United Nations and chief foreign policy spokesman, V. K. Krishna Menon, had equated Russian atmospheric explosions with U.S...

...The leaders in question are part of the articulate Left, which includes those active in Sôhyô, the country's largest labor federation, in the Socialist and Communist parties, in the student movement, and in the high-brow monthly magazines...

...But the fact that the 50 megaton bomb test was made to play a big role in the Party Congress itself suggests it was also intended to persuade doubters in the Soviet and foreign Communist parties that the fundamental shift in Russia's attitude toward war is justified...

...There is also a measure of public criticism being directed at the inability of the U.S...

...cannot help taking into account the real combat value of France and its other NATO Allies, Russia must do the same with regard to East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary...

...This seems to be one of the major reasons why de Gaulle's contacts with President Kennedy have not become as close and trustful as both men had hoped after their June meeting...

...Yet it would be a mistake to conclude that even on the articulate Left the Soviet tests have changed nothing...

...Modern war, they point out, has become so complex a technical operation that it can be fought without popular approval...

...Why should hostility toward the United States bring out so many more people than hostility toward the Soviet Union...

...But when it is a Russian bomb the situation is not so simple, for there is another role in which the Japanese Left is equally happy, that of "neutralist...

...Sharokh Sabavala, New Leader correspondent in India, also writes for the Christian Science Monitor...

...leadership...

...The U.S., loaded down with global responsibilities and with several European colonial powers dragging at its coattails, seems to be plotting a rather erratic course— now back-pedalling, now threatening to spurt strongly forward...

...But the United States is accepted as the vital guarantor of the security of Western Europe, and is in a position to state its terms for holding this responsibility and get its allies to accept them...

...The mood of the country has been accurately reflected in newspaper editorials, which have almost unanimously condemned Russia's tests as cynical and brutal...

...But recent experiences in Suez, Algeria and Cuba show that wars can no longer be won by purely military means...

...Also, one of the articulate Left's happiest roles is that of victim...

...There was sadness in the admonitions— like seeing an old friend go astray and hoping that the damage can somehow be repaired—and there was wishful thinking...

...Well, France is a member of NATO," he was told...

...Has there ever been a statesman bent on aggression, de Gaulle asks, who, instead of whipping up a war psychosis among his countrymen, tries to hide his preparations from them...

...2. The Russians are not ready to die for Walter Ulbricht...

...It might have been possible for the U.S...

...Previously torn by Chinese aggression in the Himalayas, the Communist "peace" front in India is now in shreds...

...The central problem remains President Kennedy's ability to lead his own people, rather than the Western alliance as a whole...

...In conversations with visitors, France's Chief of State cites four specific factors which he thinks will keep the USSR from going to war over Berlin: 1. The Russians are not likely to risk everything they have built up in the past 44 years, and jeopardize the great plans just announced at the 22nd Party Congress, in order to triumph in Germany...

...What if he underestimates the Russians' determination to get their way in Germany...

...resumes atmospheric testing...

...George W. Herald is a veteran foreign correspondent based in Paris...

...It possesses blueprints for the world's most modern airraid shelter, but only the prototype has been built...

...They may even suffer a reverse of landslide proportions if Nehru's U.S...

...At his last press conference, he expressed deep regret that he did not really possess the military means for his "policy of grandeur...

...But the General has been in this position before...

...On this fundamental issue an outsider can offer no advice...

...The Premier may also have wanted to justify serious discussions with the West about Berlin...

...In this part of the world, too, Washington's stand on Berlin has little impact, its Laos policy looks like rank defeatism, and its continued support of many dictatorial regimes seems to be the hangover of an outdated attempt at containment...

...All this tends to cancel out the far more obvious sins of the Communist empires, which, until very recently, were able to pose as the true champions of the oppressed—and particularly colored —peoples...

...But the majority of them still have not fully grasped the implications of the Russian nuclear test resumption...

...They have brought home to many people the limited nature of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru's role as mediator between East and West, and the patent hypocrisy displayed by Moscow in its earlier attitude of sweet reasonableness toward the non-aligned nations...

...Seventy per cent of those questioned answered, "No...

...Public apathy over Berlin is also an important factor, although some NATO officers tend to feel it does not really matter...

...An American may be irritated at having small U.S...

...For these reasons, de Gaulle feels that the West can sit tight and wait until Khrushchev stops his bluster and asks for negotiations...

...He reiterated that he was not ready at this time to take part in any negotiations with Moscow...

...If these estimates are accurate, then a big increase in the explosive power of individual warheads may be of immense military importance, since it reduces the number required to destroy a given target, as well as the number needed to inflict intolerable damage on the United States as a whole...

...This unusual piece of logic also went unchallenged...

...The authorities prefer to rely on evacuation and dispersal plans that would require several hours of warning time...

...to lead the alliance in another year or two...

...The Japanese believe that umbrellas offer protection against atomic fallout, and the moment a cloud the size of your hand crosses the sun the nation becomes one vast sea of umbrellas...

...Eventually he came forth with an expression of disapproval, but it was unenthusiastic...

...The great, popular anti-Treaty movement about which there is so much talk is in fact no more than harassment by an organized minority...

...estimates of Russia's stockpile of intercontinental ballistic missiles, the Kremlin possesses only 50-75 of them and not the 500-1,000 expected a year ago...

...Others have declared that the U.S...

...The General implicitly rejects the military strategy of "escalation...

...underground tests coupled with giant Russian atmospheric tests, but it is understandable that the one nation which has been a victim of atomic warfare should thus oversimplify matters...

...Everything now depends on U.S...

...He is first of all a German who does not want to commit suicide and let his homeland be devastated again...

...France: Apathy and Intransigence By George W Herald Paris The day the 50 megaton bomb went off, Jean-Paul Sartre and his followers were holding a protest meeting in a Paris Square—against the persecution of Moslem workers...

...Unfortunately, the West is still in total disarray both about the tactics and the substance of negotiations on Berlin, although all governments concerned now admit that a settlement must ultimately be found by negotiation...