A Case for Peace
WHAT a pity that the whole debate about nuclear weapons has not been conducted on as sane and sensible a level as that of this book. Starting from the premise that every living human being has a common interest in preventing thermo-nuclear arrnageddon, Earl • Russcll develops his argument without any of the false assumptions or wild optimism about human nature that usually bedevil this topic. Refreshingly, he recognises that no nuclear war means 'no war period' and that dis- armament itself can only be the result, rather than the cause, of improved relations between the opposing world blocks. This being so, what has to be done is to reach a toodus vivendi between East and West based on a recognition of the useless- ness of war as a future instrument of policy. In other words, some political compromise is an essential preliminary to the shelving of nuclear weapons, unless a purely British renunciation of them could be arranged as part of a general scheme to restrict membership of the nuclear club to the US and USSR.
.Here at .last is an almost unanswerable case—a case for peace rather than for disarmament. And when one considers how the anti-nuclear cam-- paign has been mucked up, it seems something of a tragedy that they failed to rely far more heavily on Earl Russell's statement of the case. But that would have meant abandoning all those delightful assumptions about turpitude in high places and facing a . few real. difficultic deriving from the nature of politics and the nature of man. It is very much easier to sit down in the mud at Swalfham than to think, but in almost any controversy brains have it over buttocks as a form of protest.
Without in the least Lying to make its readers.' flesh creep this book manages to be pretty chilling in its unemotional way. After reading it, one realises just how small a chance we have of comz ing through this crisis in human ethics . without catastrophe. On Earl Russell's reasoning I should have thought that the odds were about three to one on the outbreak of .a nuclear war, and this should perhaps be increased to four to one, as I think he underestimates the autonomy and power of the modern State apparat. From one point of view one might regard this as a fighting return of Malthus's law with man's immorality playing its old part in checking population increase as well as assuming the function of natural disasters like famine and plague. Instead of small local catas- trephes every year we are now saving up for a
really big thermo-nuclear one, and this can hardly be considered as one of the improvements of the twentieth century over its predecessors. The alternative would be to recognise that Earl Russell is right and that it is peace in our time or a swirl
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