d be gi PEKING « CHINESE REPUBLIC SRINAGAR =e aa { ps BELA eee Kot ® Catcurta RONCKONG 9 BURWA & MARIANAS 18: % . GUAM KWASALEIN \? MARSHALL ISLANDS . MARA ’ * a) ; 2 ie ‘. h \e NEw & 1 PHOENIX GLANDS wcstoe: * FIJL ISLANDS CHRISTMAS ISLAND TUAMOTU » ARCHIPELAGO © & aM * Fears among. the crew of radioactive fallout from forthcoming British M-bomb tests on “Christmas Island delayed the sailing from Melbourne of the British ship Triaster last - Week. It was due to sail to Nauru, some 2,000 miles west of Christmas Island. This map Shows the distances ‘from Christmas Island to the Pacific coasts of three continents, Ameri- Ca, Asia and Australia. Ambassador rocks Britain with Statement on H-homb defense Be Only American and British bases in Britain will be defended against atomic attack in * future war, Sir Christopher Steel, British ambassador to West Germany asserted last week. S ; The inference to be drawn from his statement was that the cities of Britain, the great —htres of population, will not be defended but U.S. and British°rocket and air bases will. Tn the middle of the British °Use of Commons debate on i € s0vernment’s nuclear pol- ;°Y, Sir Christopher Steel let ‘eg verbal H-bomb drop: “We Te putting the lives of our own People at risk,” he said, oe ensure that the NATO de- €nses should be effective.” Only certain areas of Brit- {tn would be defended against atomic attack, with. defense Oncentrated on the areas of © British and American bases, € told a Bonn press confer- €nee, This was what the gov- ftnment’s defense policy in- Volveq, § Without intentional irony he nied: “We think that that is the best way. of defending our- “elves and everybody else, and We think it worth the risk.” is statement came just after the publication of more warn- gs by British and German Nuclear scientists — the men iy qualified to know—against © nuclear danger. vee British ambassador’s 4, €ment was made as five of 5 18 leading West German “lentists, who recently refused *y Make or handle or_ test ©mic weapons, were put on “ee Mat in Bonn by Chancellor denauer, Before they went to the talks, Tofessor Werner Heisenberg, Ne of Germany’s top atomic Scientists and a Nobel Prize | ‘ap net, repeated their warning ‘;Salnst atomic war in a press terview, saying: . course, individuals can oven protection. If some- n° has an underground atom = a ‘ 6 bomb-proof shelter, equipped with oxygen apparatus and containing reserves of food and water, he can perhaps survive for days or weeks until the worst radioactive contamina- tion has passed. “It is, however, unthinkable that the majority of the popu- lation could be given adequate protection. We cannot build our towns underground and we cannot evacuate millions of people to the country within a quarter of an hour.” To cow the scientists into dropping their refusal to make H and A weapons, Adenauer had summoned 4ll the. West German top brass. The five scientists in the talks were Professors Max von Laue, Wolfgang Riezler, Otta Hahn, Carl Friedrich von Wei- _saecker and Walter Gerlach. Facing them were Adenauer, his Defense Minister Strauss, LONDON ex-Hitler general Heusinger, chief of the West German arm- ed forces, and ‘ex-Hitler gen-- eral Hans Speidel, now NATO commander, Central European Land Forces. After six hours of talks, a communique was issued show- ing that nothing had been set- tled. Nothing was said about the scientists having changed their minds. The meeting, in fact, ended with a general state- ment that is was necessary for West Germany to seek an agreement with all govern- ments, both West and, East, for controlled disarmament that would remove the fear of atomic war. So it looks as if the scientists influenced Adenauer, rather than the other way round. ‘Stop H-tests clamor grows LONDON At least 50,000 people may suffer from bone cahcer as a direct result of the hydrogen bombs already exploded, says a report published last week by a committee of the British Atomic Scientists’ Association. The scientists are careful to say “may” — and that this figure is reached by accepting the mos pessimistic of two pos- sible hypotheses. But their report also makes it perfectly clear that the pos- sibility of such.a result is very real, The question simply is: does bone cancer arise in propor- tion to. the amount of radiation from the one substance stron- tium-90; or is there a thresh- old dose below which cancer cannot be induced? Nobody knows, and it is very hard to find out by experiment. But if, as the Medical Re- search Council appears to think likely, there is no threshold, © then the figure of 50,000 “may be an underestimation of the damage since it does not allow for the radiation dose in chil- dren” — who are much more susceptible. : The ten scientists who have made the report include Prof. Joseph Rotblat, professor of physics at London University, Prof, Alexander Hadow, direc- tor of the Intitute of Cancer Research, and Prof. Lionel S. Penrose, Galton professor of eugenics, London University. They point out that stron- tium-90 enters into our food and accumulates in bones, where it remains for a very long time. < If there is no threshold dose, then an H-bomb of the 1954 Bikini type may eventually produce cancers in 1,000 people for every megaton exploded— and. it has been stated that H-bombs set off so far aggre- gate 50 megatons. There would be no way of distinguishing H-bomb caneer victims from those who suc- cumbed to the disease through natural radioactivity, the scien- tists added. Five countries ratify atomic energy agency NEW YORE The Soviet Union, Byelorus- sia and Rumania are among the five countries which have so far ratified the statute of the International Atomic Energy. Agency, it is annouced here. The other two are Switzer- land and Guatemala. Eighteen ‘ratifications are needed for the statute to enter into force. The agency is to foster cooperation on the peaceful uses of atomic energy. The United States strongly pressed for the agreement to be made, but has not yet rati- fied it. ; Indonesia protests H-tests The Indonesian government has appealed to the British government to cancel the nu- clear tests at Christmas Islands in the Pacific. A broadcast by the Indones- ian Ministry of Information, making the appeal, said the tests might endanger Indones- ian territory, and especially sea-fishing, through radioactive fallout. Indonesia, a country of ovér 80 million people spread across an island chain running from Malaya to Australia, is as near to Christmas Island on the west as Japan is to the north- west. For the safety of its people it has joined Japan, which was the first country to protest officially to- Britain against the tests. The Indonesian Ministry of Information also pointed out that at a time when the world was making peace efforts, every use of nuclear weapons by a world power was to be strongly disapproved., In India, a 60-year-old Con- gress party veteran, Raja Ram, announced that he had “of- fered to join-the protest fleet to sail to the Christmas Islands to try to stop the British atomic tests.” He said he had written to the anti-nuclear test commit- tee in Japan which is organis- ing the protest fleet and had also applied for a passport to Japan. The protest fleet is organ- ised by the Japan Council for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. ° It will not sail into the dan- ger zone, but as close to it as possible, and broadcast ap- peals to the world for ‘prohibi- tion of nuclear tests. In Tokyo a spokesman for the Japanese Atomic Energy Bureau said that an official nationwide survey of the ef- fects of radioactive fallout would be. carried out in the near future. So far, Japanese universities have been able to finance only limited: surveys, and the com- mission now intends to make a definitive and inclusive sur- vey. APRIL 26, 1957 — PACIFIC TRIBUNE—PAGE 3 Dla Min, (i 7 Tir