Firmnosa towards Russia will cause the U.S.S.R. to curb its expansionist program and would prevent war, President Conant told the seventeenth annual New York Herald Tribune forum Tuesday night.

Russia is dead set on expansion, the President said, but when she sees that no additional countries are willing to adopt Communism, she will begin negotiating with the western nations in a more reasonable fashion.

At the same time, he warned against halting America's rearmament program. "One can hardly expect at the outset to do more than persuade the Soviet philosophers that the advent of world Communism has been postponed.

Postponement

"But once they are convinced that not within their lifetime, not indeed for generations, is the prophecy of Marx and Lenin to come true, the Russian rulers may negotiate in a very different spirit."

President Conant also declared that a "dynamic . . . free competitive society which holds promise for the future to large numbers of people" is a strong factor in persuading the U.S.S.R. that it cannot win over the rest of the world to its way of life.

Public Schools

He listed the "successful leadership of the United States among the non-Communist nations" as another bulwark against Russian expansion, and mapped out a program by which the American public school system could aid in maintaining that leadership.

This program would have the public schools not only dispense information, but also inspire America's "future citizens" with the country's cultural heritage and national faith.

As for combatting Communism in the United States, Conant said that the best way to refute Communist propaganda in the United States is to understand it and tear it to pieces.