nt ht in if a : than ye — i By BERT WHYTE i nat Taids by United States : mee on North Vietnam a mine that Washington is t |"Ssiy, to pursue its ag- 0 Ve A a Policy in Southeast We WS creating the d c Xpand: Teating the anger oy Tt tyne Ing its present spe- a TS co War" into a conflict 1¢ Pers “involve other great | eo conceivably lead to T war, a Ea is being written, the df’ tized world is hoping Cc Ptr, th an escalation will not ye fla, “t sane leadership will e Tt, cad to resolve the crisis Mie back from the brink. 0m Cun. What happened during ts Confrontation in 1962, a° Sie Sensible attitude taken § T'the ;,. Premier Khrushchov ie inter tte President Kennedy ey Ophe .22 international ca-— “© at the 11th hour, ae i pceful solution must be ta tither Situation in Viet- ¢ “jm, “' through the United 77 then 2 veconvening of e *va Conference. \ ‘ * A i, Ments of supreme crisis er be os Ome intensely aware , [r,,clitative difference be- f peer war and conven- h | .» Of the past. a? ny Wars wreaked great fan terms of human lives y ft tegen: an atomic war Ti, ult in the destruction hi, ation itself, a me recent conference in ee Re, On the “Cybercul- Pig, Yolution” a Soviet T an 2.5: Emelyanov, vice- °f the Soviet ‘State live.” Commission for the Develop- ment of Atomic Energy, con- demned the dangerous position of the Chinese leaders that thermonuclear war is “not so dreadful” and that afterwards those people still alive would “create a thousand-fold' more wonderful civilization on the ruins of the old.” Do those irrational people know what nuclear weapons are? asked Emelyanov, and con- tinued: “Almost one third of my life I have been working in the area of uses of atomic energy, and I am familiar with the mighty power of the atom. “During atomic explosions a whole series of processes take place. “Enormous heat energy is re- leased, as a result of which the earth boils up and turns into slag, into a molten, glass-like mass. ~ “Thousands of tons of earth, buildings and everything that is in and under them rise into the air in the form of vapor. “Concrete, ‘brick and turn into vapor. “On such a molten soil, thing can grow. “Even worms perish. “The released radioactive emanation changes the atmos- phere, “The air would be saturated with radio-active carbon di- oxide and poison every living thing, everything that cannot live wouthout breathing. “The products of radioactive iron no- : “The post-war conditions 3 would be so terrible a} that people, even if »| some of them remain alive, f would prefer to die disintegration will poison all water — rivers, lakes, seas and cceans — they will be poisoned by the radio-active products of uranium and plutonium fission, and instead of being a life sus- taining liquid, they will be deadly poison. “No, the atomic bomb is not a paper tiger—this is a terrible weapon of mass destruction of the peoples of the entire world. “Those people are right who maintain that post-war condi- tions would be so terrible that people, even if some of them remain alive, would prefer to die than to live.” . Nobel Laureate Dr. Linus Pauling has pointed out that both the United States and the Soviet Union have enough nu- clear weapons to destroy each other’s total populations several times over. He put it this way: “Using 20,000 megatons as the amount necessary to de- stroy the Soviet Union com- pletely and my estimated 240,- 000 megatons for the present U.S. stockpile, I may say that we have a 12-fold degree of overkill capability; similarly, with 10,000 megatons needed to destroy the United States completely and a stockpile of 80,000 megatons, the Soviet Union has an eightfold overkill capability.” Dr. Pauling reaches the con- clusion that it is time to reach an international agreement to stop the testing of all nuclear Weapons, to be followed by other agreements leading to general and complete disarm- ament. One would think that only an imbecile would disagree with this. But in an interview with the Austrian paper Kurier not long ago, given by Foreign Minister Chen Yi and an un- named “high-placed member of of Chinese government,” the latter is quoted as saying that “a war in Southeast Asia would not be a bad thing.” He added: “If I were in the United States, I would vote for Goldwater. Goldwater would be good for the USA and the entire world because he would aggravate the internal situation in the USA and would greatly accelerate the process of development.” Less than a year ago in Pe- king I was told by a middle school student that the teacher had informed pupils that the U.S. nuclear bomb was only a paper tiger, fit to scare timid mice. Unless the bomb. scored a direct hit, you would be safe if you simply wrapped yourself in a sheet of white paper, said the teacher. The blame for such abysmal ignorance rests not with the teacher, but on China’s leaders, who have always feared to let the people know the truth about nuclear warfare. The leaders themselves are not duped, as is shown by the fact that they are spending millions in a rush program to try and develop an atomic bomb themselves. In this nuclear age, there is no future for mankind unless peaceful coexistence is achiev- ed. And it is surely coming. In all countries, more and more people are realizing that the struggle for peace is their most important task. Despite Gold- water and Mao Tse-tung, the vast majority of statesmen in the world today understand that if civilization is to survive, peaceful coexistence between countries with different social systems must replace war. Soviet Premier Khrushchov put it this way: “Modern society has reached the stage when each social system can prove its advantages only in the field of peaceful endeavor. Any at- tempt to destroy this basic con- dition of modern progress would be fraught with a nuclear catas- trophe. All people understand this. And therefore victory will be on the side of that society which as it advances will help to strengthen peace, and more and more fully satisfy every- one’s needs and interests. That is our credo. We suggest to all political parties: let us compete in this field.” The crisis in Vietnam today must not be allowed to escal- ate into a major war, which in turn could explode into a world nuclear war. The Security Coun- cil should act to stay the hands off the U.S. aggressors. The 14- nation Geneva Conference should recovene and negotiate an honorable peace in Vietnam, guaranteeing the Vietnamese and Laotian people the right to determine their own future. All peace-loving peoples of the world should tell the United States: Hands off North Viet- nam; end your aggression in Southeast Asia. August 21, 1964—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 7