"A nexus of both pragmatism and natural law in diplomacy is the secret weapon against totalitarian regimes," the U.S. Ambassador to New Zealand told alumni of the Law School and Graduate Schools yesterday at Harkness Commons.

Francis H. Russell said at the 10th joint reunion luncheon that diplomats, like lawyers, must establish common objectives and definite principles to settle conflicts. "Diplomacy, if successful, uses techniques of law," Russell stated.

The ambassador, who graduated from the Law School 30 years ago, claimed that the traditional dispute among lawyers over natural law or pragmatism is only a "surface conflict" and that both must be employed in legal or diplomatic cases. In this connection Russell traced what he called "the necessary closeness of law and diplomacy."

This closeness results from the "conflict of issues--the medium of law and its source--" is also what comprises diplomacy, the ambassador said. He criticized the term "East-West conflict" and preferred to describe the world situation as one in which people are free to govern themselves against a world of a single political system of terror and frustration of democratic processes."

J.N. Douglas Bush, Gurney Professor of English Literature and second speaker of the day, decried the sudden rush for scientific knowledge and the neglect of the arts.

"Scientific knowledge and technology are necessary for a liberal education," Bush said, "but they may swallow every-thing also up. Men of the space age must remember the humanities ... the chief agent of the resistance to conformity.