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Peace And Disarmament Literature — Part 5
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disbanding itself of nuclear weapons altogether. I share this
view and urge it on both practical and moral grounds.
I have been in America five weeks, travelling from the West
Coast to the East. I have gotten this impression of America.
There is a great well of opinion here which desires disarmament
and peace, just as deeply as any people on earth. I find it
everywhere — but you must find some means of giving it
practical political expression. Forgive me if I say this, but I
am puzzled when I look at your two political parties. We have
been taught to believe, and since I know some of its leaders I
do believe, that your Democratic Party is the more liberal
of the two. But I get deeply disturbed when I find some of
your Democratic leaders even “outrightening" your Republican
leaders in the advocacy of more armaments.
While I have found this great well of peace sentiment here
— found it in the universities, found it in the factories, found
it in the churches — I am disturbed by another element in
American society. Whilst I was in California I visited the Rand
Corporation. Now the Rand Corporation consists of scientists
and technicians who advise your Air Force and who advise your
government, I spent two hours in discussion with those scientists
and technicians, and frankly I came away frightened. They did
not seriously consider the possibility of disarmament. They
believed that the only way to maintain peace in the world is
for Russia and the United States to develop an equality of arms,
each producing correspondingly more efficient and destructive
weapons. I said to them that it is unlikely that we can build
up these mighty mountains of destruction without some accident
taking place, without some miscaleulation, without some local
conflict leading to a world conflict. While America and Russia
are building their skyscrapers of arms in this way, other nations
will no doubt take similar action. Britain already has its hydro-
gen bombs, France has now invaded the nuclear sphere. Who
next -—- China, Egypt, Yugoslavia, Eastern European countries,
Japan, Western Germany? At this moment there are twelve
governments which are capable of producing the hydrogen bomb.
I say to this audience, if the nuclear arms race continues
with other nations producing these bombs, manageable disarm-
ament will become impossible. We should then be face to face
with human suicide. No sane person can contemplate this. We
must have disarmament or perish.
I went to your factories in San Diego, miles of them. Ninety
percent of the labor there is making weapons of war —- bombing
planes, rockets, missiles. Here, when one thinks of disarma-
ment, he must think of unemployment too. Disarmament —
unemployment. What is the answer? The answer is new em-
ployment. The answer is a better life for all. Whenever in the
eee er
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