the case for meeting the Soviets halfway
EATON, CYRUS
the case for meeting the Soviets halfway by CYRUS EATON Iam dedicated to the proposition that the world's one real hope for honorable peace lies in actively striving for better understanding...
...They did not believe that nuclear war, once begun, could be limited to any region...
...It does nothing but give that nation a solidarity it would not have if it did not feel the Western World was plotting to destroy it...
...problems of international control of nuclear weapons...
...it refers to an article in which I urged talking over our differences with the Russians: "Mr...
...The time was never more propitious to start along the path to meet the Soviets halfway...
...Who in his right mind can dispute this reasoning...
...He sagely observes: "The supreme concern of men of all ways of thought at the present time must be to ensure the continued existence of the human race...
...Eaton is a philosopher and student as well and last summer opened his summer home in Pugwash, Nova Scotia, to the world's leading nuclear scientists for a full scale discussion of the problems of atomic energy in peace and war and the social responsibility of scientists In the atomic age...
...The folly of the arsenal school of diplomacy draws this negative verdict from Britain's famed old internationally-minded journal: "Certainly there is growing disillusionment with the theory that the greatest safety for the West lies in building up the greatest pile of nuclear weapons...
...Time to Wage Peace...
...But I don't think our statesmen have tried hard enough to use them...
...The resolution emphasized the "responsibilities of scientists before society for the utilization of results of their scientific discoveries for constructive purposes only...
...is doubtless also devoting two-thirds of her substance to "protection" against us...
...What right do we have to reject out of hand any overture that could conceivably serve as a first groping step toward rapprochement with the other military and economic colossus of our planet...
...Full utilization of science for constructive instead of destructive ends will remain an idle dream unless and until man himself undergoes a change of heart, and rejects the perilously stupid statesmanship that prides itself on seeing how close it can come to the brink of war...
...I want to see constant exchanges between scientists, educators, artists, businessmen, farmers, people of the two countries...
...Let's stop baiting Russia...
...The U.S.S.R...
...The Einstein-Russell spirit pervaded all the sessions...
...I am spending most of my time in trying to convince the German people that a settlement of political disputes by force is not possible any more, and would be suicidal...
...There is no glory or reward in war...
...Individual death we must all face, he states, but collective death has never, hitherto, been a grim possibility...
...Their petition averred: "We Soviet scientists express our full readiness for common effort with scientists of any other country, to discuss any proposals directed towards the prevention of atomic war, the creation of secure peace, and tranquillity for all mankind...
...It is only common sense...
...They came from Australia, Austria, Canada, China, France, Great Britain, Japan, Poland, the United States, and the Soviet Union...
...Never before has there been reason to feel that the human race was traveling along a road ending only in a bottomless precipice...
...Let us speak up and insist that our statesmen make the appropriate overtures right now...
...After a day the tension eased with the realization that all concerned were conducting themselves in an open and above-board manner...
...I, for one, take this declaration with the utmost seriousness...
...Certainly they had no hand in arranging it...
...Neither nation can long sustain this crushing economic burden without courting impoverishment...
...Thousands of letters, including many from Nobel Prize winners, have been pouring in from people in all walks of life in every part of the world, in support of my pleas for a new approach to world peace...
...But may I 'speak up' now, and implore the few men at the top who hold the future of the world in their hands to listen to the voice of reason and the voice of the people...
...Building a ring of bases around Russia from which we can launch bombers and missiles is foolish...
...the case for meeting the Soviets halfway by CYRUS EATON Iam dedicated to the proposition that the world's one real hope for honorable peace lies in actively striving for better understanding between nations of opposing philosophies...
...The pattern is clear...
...Our Mr...
...The elusive metaphysical doctrine of our State Department that baits Russia, for instance, and forbids our American journalists to visit and write from first-hand knowledge about China, is too subtle and esoteric for me to grasp...
...Lord Russell has lately addressed an "Open Letter to Eisenhower and Khrushchev" through the columns of the influential British weekly, New Statesman...
...Dulles sometimes talks just as the Kaiser did in 1914...
...But the charges and countercharges continue...
...The desperate hope of the ubiquitous little "man in the street" is reflected in a letter to a Canadian paper, the Vancouver Sun...
...Nothing of the kind occurred...
...The development of some super-weapon by one side is soon matched by the other, which is already far advanced in the development of an effective counter-weapon...
...asked the title of a recent article in the Manchester Guardian Weekly...
...By contrast, the belief that international differences can be composed by the hurling of threats and invective strikes me as lacking in wisdom...
...I further think that anyone who shuns this approach betrays a sorry deficiency of wisdom and forfeits his claim to be called a true friend of the United States or the world...
...Can any reasonable person deny the truth of this statement...
...I am firmly convinced that the Russians want peace...
...After a week of deliberation, the Pugwash scientists issued a statement that nuclear war would be a "disaster of unprecedented magnitude...
...The Russians have given obvious signs that they would like to turn aside from the armament race, in order to make more resources available to improve the lot of the common man...
...Eaton says: 'This is a great time for people to speak up.' I am no politician, just one of the humble people, the ordinary men and women, who will be the victims if common sense does not prevail...
...The idea seems simple and indisputable to roe...
...They represented the greatest scientific brains in the world today from countries of widely differing ideologies...
...After that war to make the world safe for democracy, we saw the rise of Mussolini, Hitler, and Stalin...
...When the Soviet scientists arrived, the same doubters predicted they would throw up roadblocks and use the occasion as a platform for propaganda...
...We will prove the superiority of our system...
...You deserve the thanks of everyone for bringing about a meeting which came to such sensible and important conclusions on vital issues...
...The armament race accelerates its pace to the perilous point where somebody on either side needs but to push a button, deliberately or accidentally, for full-scale war to break out...
...Albert Schweitzer, world-famed humanitarian and Nobel Prize Winner: "I attach great importance to the fact that the proposal of the Soviet scientists goes back to your meeting Better than Missile Rivalry of international scientists at Pugwash last summer...
...It is time for the world's leaders to show some common sense, to sit down and work out some compromises...
...I feel confident Russia is not now trying to sell the United States on Communism...
...We are relentless in this...
...I am convinced we of America have the skills, the resources, the inventive genius, the resourcefulness, and the heritage of freedom to prevail in such a peaceful contest...
...He subsequently wrote in the Bulletin: "The Pugwash conference was a great step forward . . . Other meetings of scientists interested in the impact of science on public affairs now seem likely . . ." Professor Rabinowitch recognizes that more international meetings on the Pugwash pattern are needed to influence the thinking of men and to give them the capacity to deal with the dangerous realities and exciting potentialities of the scientific age...
...The Russians obviously approached the meeting with some caution...
...I have read the account which appeared in Nature and I am sure that no responsible scientists in any country could disagree with the statement produced...
...I think most of my fellow capitalists share my basic view...
...A short time later, 195 of the U.S.S.R.'s leading scientists called in writing for an international conference...
...Woodrow Wilson took the United States into the First World War to make the world safe for democracy and to end all wars...
...In fact, Mr...
...This challenge is made to order for us...
...The only promising, untried road to peace is negotiation of our differences...
...and the social responsibility of scientists in the atomic age...
...Big business men realize that another world war would wipe out everything they have striven to build up...
...War is unthinkable, yet we are obsessed by it...
...The scientists agreed that if "dirty" bombs were used in warfare, large areas would be made uninhabitable for extended periods of time, and additional hundreds of millions would die from the delayed effects of radiation from local fallout, some in the exposed generation and some in succeeding generations as a result of genetic effects...
...budget calls for expenditures of $47,100,-000,000, or 64 per cent, for "protection" against the Russian challenge...
...Lord Russell believes that if Eisenhower and Khrushchev were to meet in a frank discussion of the conditions of co-existence, and to seek agreements and adjustments that would diminish future strife, the world would acclaim their action...
...Dr...
...Our new $74,000,000,000 U.S...
...Scientists, they concluded, must now consider "the implications of their own work...
...But I think the surest way to destroy both these institutions is for the United States to provoke war with the U.S.S.R...
...Doubt that the Russians would attend prevailed in many quarters before the meeting...
...The forces of sanity, released from their long bondage, would ensure for the years to come a life of vigor and achievement and joy surpassing anything known in even the happiest eras of the past...
...Even the mass destruction of two world wars in this century pales by comparison with the horrifying prospect of human annihilation and genocide that would inevitably characterize another all-out war...
...By the same token, we must recognize that we cannot recast Soviet Russia in our own mold...
...That is why men must sit down together and reconcile their differences...
...From the economic standpoint, it is terrifying...
...This same sentiment is expressed by the Manchester Guardian: "Western Governments do not seem to be giving to their political thinking a fraction of the imagination and effort that they are putting into the strengthening of their defenses...
...Lord Adrian, Master of Trinity College of Cambridge University, Nobel Prize Winner in Medicine, and the Recipient of the Royal Medal of the Royal Society: "I have been greatly encouraged to learn how well the conclusions of your Pugwash Conference have been received by the press...
...She recognizes there is no possibility of imposing the Soviet political and economic system on this country...
...CYRUS S. EATON presides over a multi-million dollar empire of steel, coal, transportation, and other basic industries...
...Here a few of the more significant excerpts from a single day's voluminous mail: Professor Max Born, West German scientist a»d Nobel Prize Winner: "The reaction of the American people to Sputnik, as reported in our newspapers, was rather a shock to me, and if it leads to an acceleration of the arms race, the prospects of the survival of the human race are slight...
...But they noted the need to take into account the "political problems which are the background to international negotiations...
...If you, through the medium of your paper, could organize a gigantic petition, and it could be copied in every city in the United States, asking just a plain answer from the man and woman in the street—Yes or No to the question 'Do you think we should talk with the Russians?'—I am sure the response would be an overwhelming 'Yes!'" Scientific societies of Japan and Germany have met to endorse the recommendations of the Pugwash conference and urge early additional meetings of world thinkers...
...Khrushchev put it to us with characteristic dramatic force last fall when he said: "We declare war on you in the peaceful field of trade . . . and . . . production...
...The original suggestion for this conference came from the late Albert Einstein and my good friend Ber-trand Russell, distinguished British philosopher and Nobel prize winner...
...I cannot tell you how glad I am that you are trying to establish contact between all nations, in particular between the scientists...
...Sooner or later we must achieve better understanding among nations or perish...
...Thoughtful people recognize, of course, that the rapid advance of scientific knowledge needs to be enlisted in the cause of peace, not war...
...There is nothing in it for us from the standpoint of liberty or freedom...
...Only by this understanding can we end distrust and abolish the dreadful specter of nuclear war that could exterminate the human family...
...When the Soviets make a peaceful overture, we brush it aside immediately, before its proposals can be properly considered, and brand it propaganda...
...The day of "gentlemanly" combat is long past...
...Never before, says this philosopher, has such a sense of futility blighted the visions of youth...
...Comon sense, reason, persuasion, and patience are slow and unspectacular compared with war...
...Last summer 22 of the world's leading nuclear experts gathered at my summer home in Pugwash, Nova Scotia...
...This remarkable community of scientific peers met with the common aim of discussing three main areas of crucial concern to the future of mankind: the hazards arising from the use of atomic energy in peace and war...
...In combatant countries hundreds of millions of people would be killed outright by the blast of heat and by the ionizing radiation at the instant of explosion, whether 'clean' or 'dirty' bombs were used...
...Professor Eugene Rabinowitch, research professor at the University of Illinois and editor of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, was one of the Americans at Pugwash...
...Let her deal with her own economic theories and practices—time will have a great effect on them...
...I have long held that the more contact we have between the people of the two nations, the sooner we will realize that we are all human, with weaknesses and limitations, and that it is time we agreed not to annihilate each other...
...It would be difficult to find anyone in the world more dedicated to capitalism and democracy than I am...
...And so the hopeless race for supremacy goes on—absorbing an increasingly high percentage of the resources and skill of all concerned—although we already have a weapon so powerful as to make war unthinkable...
...The longer we put off finding a common ground with Russia the harder it is going to be...
...When this theory forms the underlying basis of national policy, I confess I become alarmed...
...That final clause, "though we already have a weapon so powerful as to make war unthinkable", holds particular significance...
...And when one becomes swollen with pride, one becomes arrogant and truculent and someone will take up the challenge...
...I am convinced that there will be no solution, no road to peace, as long as nobody will trust anyone else...
...Either we will live together or we will perish together...
...In event of an outbreak of general war, they warned, "the radiological hazards would be thousands of times greater than those resulting from fallout effects of test explosions...
...It is not profound...
...So did their often-expressed conviction that either war must be abolished or civilization will perish...
...After that war to end all wars, we had a Second World war to end Germany's military might...
...While they know they could inflict severe punishment on us, they also know they would pull themselves down with us into the bottomless abyss...
...Why do we hold back...
...No doubt the clear evidence we have recently had of the Soviet lead in missile research has been mainly responsible for helping the people to see clearly that neither side can ever win the race for effective nuclear supremacy...
...Now we are arming Germany again, at our own expense...
...They were competent, they stated, to speak with authority only on the scientific and technical implications of atomic energy...
...They are fully conscious of the deadly character of modern nuclear weapons...
...This is already in jeopardy from the hostility between East and West and will, if many minor nations acquire nuclear weapons, be in very much greater jeopardy within a few years from the possibility of irresponsible action by thoughtless fanatics...
...Talk with the Russians...
...Shortly after the Russian delegation returned home, the Presidium of the Soviet Academy of Sciences ratified the findings of the Pugwash conference...
Vol. 22 • March 1958 • No. 3
