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KVOS Special: If The Bomb Survives, Can We?
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- Find namely peace in the atomic thermonuclear age.
- It is a poignant irony that peace,
- which was consecrated by the song of the heavenly
- hosts at the beginning of the Christian era, peace,
- whose author is celebrated as God himself
- in the Anglican service of morning prayer,
- peace has in our time become for many Americans
- a dirty word, something made in Moscow
- to dupe the simple minded, a synonym for appeasement,
- a shibboleth for the disloyal, the subversive,
- the unpatriotic, and the un-American.
- For all that, you know and I know that the world has never
- been in greater need of peace.
- War since Nagasaki and Hiroshima has become a luxury
- that the human race can no longer afford.
- War is public enemy number one for all the peoples
- of this earth.
- And that includes Russians as well as Americans.
- Only less dangerous than full-blown war
- is the kind of preparation for war
- that is now being made in those two great centers of power,
- the cities of Washington and Moscow.
- From the Kremlin came the announcement
- last September of the resumption of nuclear testing
- in the Arctic with the consequent pollution
- of the Earth's atmosphere by fallout.
- From the Pentagon and the White House
- came the order last month, April,
- for Americans to resume nuclear testing in the Pacific,
- which we may be sure will add to the already dangerous potency
- of Strontium-90 in the very air we breathe here and now.
- You and I see that there is no security for anyone
- on this planet in the insane armaments race
- in which the governments of the USSR and the USA are engaged.
- You are protest--
- Are you for unilateral cessation of nuclear testing?
- Joe?
- Well, I'm not sure that as far as practical power politics
- goes, I think what you're trying to be realistic towards is
- that unilateral isn't necessarily the best
- way to go about this.
- But that doesn't mean I'm not willing to give
- some consideration to the political prestige which Russia
- might suffer if America should disarm herself and thus create
- a Russian loss of face.
- I see.
- One last question.
- What do you think this particular protest
- march is going to accomplish?
- I think that it will get people to think.
- It's already done that.
- If you attended the rally up there, and you could see that
- some people there were definitely thinking about this
- and were concerned.
- And I think that's probably our main purpose
- in the whole thing.
- A lot of interest from people who, even though they did not
- march and do not believe in this type of a procession,
- they have shown concern and support for a emphasis
- on the dangers of nuclear warfare.