Published below is the August 1, Statement of the Committees of Correspondence, a peace group last spring and centered in Cambridge. Among its original sponsors were professors David Riesman H. Stuart Hughes, as well as Erich , Harold Taylor (former President of Sarah Lawrence), and a member of pacifists.

In their initial working paper last spring the Committees suggested "destruction of thermonuclear weapons" as an "independent American initiative." In the final Statement, however, the passages on unilateral disarmament were omitted; the new emphasis is on "unilateral steps toward disarmament." For purposes of comparison, the working paper position of unilateral disarmament is included the following text, set off in and small type.

Unlike most peace groups, the Committees decline to get involved in public demonstrations, though its members are free to do so. Instead, the task is to "enlist intellectuals in a for the new ideas which must the formulated in order to end the arms and in order to plan for a world without war." For this purpose, the committees call on intellectuals "to make their concern for survival an integral part of their concern as professional thinkers, bringing the tools their academic disciplines to bear the problems of peace, and making the substance of their writings and research."

The Statement is offered here in the hope of inspiring discussion of the it raises. The Harvard Crimson Weekly Review will print selected letters. Those desiring further information on the Committees can write to Brattle Street, Cambridge 38.

The Statement

We, the undersigned, have joined together because we fear that, unless we and others can offer an alternative to search for security through nuclear civilization will be destroyed by war. We hope, too, that as we for an alternative, we will also developing new modes of social growth. The present dependence on violence as the final arbiter of conflict, and the investment in armaments, plunge us into a current so awesome, fascinating and demanding that the complex and outrageous steps that must be taken to end the arms race us. We have not given up hope, although we recognize the obstacles to peace, and the radical changes which eventually would require in our society and in the world. We must have the courage of our imagination, questioning the values that the Cold War has entrenched; we must put our faith in man's potentialities for growth rather than in machines for destruction.

With this fear and this hope in mind, a group of us met at Bear Mountain, New York, March, 1960, and began work on the Statement that follows and made plans to create the Committees of Correspondence to carry forward the debate and discussion begun at Bear Mountain. This Statement is not a finished declaration or blueprint, but a step toward further analysis and research, specific proposals, and political action to come. We ask others to help us to enlarge our understanding, to bring us new tools of thought and action, to imagine and then chart a future. We hope to contribute ideas and moral and organizational support for a debate across the country. Small as is the chance for a rebirth, great as looms the spector of destruction, we want your help in seizing the chance.

Crowing Crisis

Weapon developments of the past decade have swiftly and decisively altered the nature of war. Only within the past five years have thermonuclear weapons been tested from airplanes. Intercontinental missiles have been tested only during the past three years. We are now constructing long-range submarines, each autonomous, each able to obliterate more than a dozen cities. In a score of countries, reactors are now producing plutonium, a nuclear explosive. We cannot long entrust our lives to small numbers of men with the means of mass death at their fingertips, men filled with fear and conditioned to accept without question orders to kill tens of millions of individuals.

Willingness and ability to destroy other populations do not provide security. Limited conflicts may grow uncontrollably. Temporary shifts in military power may motivate a country to initiate a preventive war. In situations of tension, failures of men and equipment can lead to disaster. Other countries, in their local feuds, may ultimately involve the major powers. The spread of nuclear weapons to many countries, some with shakier traditions than those of the present nuclear powers, creates still greater instability. Dangers from repeated risks mount toward certainty. Against these dangers nuclear deterrence provides no security at all.

Even if the spread of nuclear weapons does not bring about a blundering or accidental catastrophe, reliance upon nuclear deterrence creates a moral climate that is plainly corrupting, for it inevitably tends to commit us and our opponents to policies which may condemn the unborn and the non-belligerents to extermination. By mutual provocation and propaganda, military personnel on both sides acquire the power to effect the moral climate of our time, to project their ethic on the whole of life as it has developed on earth.

We reject reliance upon weapons of mass destruction, and the logic of deterrence, as the final arbiter of international conflict.

Need for Alternatives

We have become so accustomed to reliance upon nuclear deterrence, disguised as "security," that its rejection creates a vacuum that appears equally frightening at first glance. Conflicts among nations exist and will continue to exist, and we must consider how to keep alive our basic values and defend our tradition of liberty in the absence of the self-defeating policy of deterrence. Today the choice before thinking Americans who are concerned about the future of the nation and of mankind is not total surrender versus total annihilation. This idea is either a deliberate invention to support the massive retaliation doctrine and the Cold War, or the stark formulation of helpless fear. The question before the United States today is whether to abandon all initiative in the international situation and continue to be guided by the logic of deterrence and the arms race; or to take up the initiative once again and experiment imaginatively and courageously with ways to slow down and end the arms race. We call for unilateral steps toward disarmament both on principal and as a practical strategy which represent neither surrender to Communism nor wishful fantasy, since no country courageous and rational enough to thus disarm would be an easy victory for any form of dictatorship. We risk a great deal in reliance on nuclear arms: we must be willing to take risks in pursuit of peace.

Thus, if we had acted on this perspective at Geneva, we would have accepted the risk that there might be some undetected small-yield nuclear explosions in exchange for the establishment of a supranational authority in the area of arms control. Now in the aftermath of the Summit collapse, we should at least resist the urge to resume our own testing. The same determination to risk for peace would prevent us from undertaking a program of civil defense, as this would provoke moves from the other side, and increase the psychological danger of war by making war seem more tolerable. The conversion on constructive work of laboratories new engaged in developing chemical and biological poisons might be another form of unilateral initiative we could take. In an age when the security of all nations is threatened by the nuclear arms race of the major powers, these would be actions in the interest of all nations, which would enhance rather than reduce our security.

As noted in the editor's introduction, this bracketed section does not appear in the revised statement of August 1, 1960, but is taken from an analogous section of the original working paper:

"Since our desire is not briefly to defer our own destruction, but to work for an enobled human life, we call for a deep-rooted, immediate and total break with the policy of military deterrence. We must rennounce uncomprimisingly the organization for mass violence as a final arbiter of international conflict. The continued existence of these devices for killing populations leaves us exposed to the danger that they will be used in time of crisis regardless of previous resolve; therefore we must prevent their continued manufacture and posession. We know full well that the possible consequences of such radical action include invasion, conquest and tyranny; yet they are within the limits of human experience. Societies throughout history have been able to recover from situations comparable to the most extreme of these possibilities. We accept responsibility for developing effective ways of keeping alive our basic values and stand ready to dedicate our lives toward this end. But we deny the alternative of nuclear deterrents, for they threaten not only our existence, but man's future as well."

Political Change

As we move in this direction, we must begin begin to think about the new role of force in the world, and about the deployment of the enormous energy and skill that have gone into the building of the war machine; we must think of meaningful employment for those Americans who have been heavily dependent for incentive upon military competition with the Communists. The reliance upon military deterrence, far from effectively countering Communism, has turned our attention from these problems, and the vaster problems of adequate policies to deal with world conflict. Plainly, our attitude immobilizes those elements within the Iron Curtain countries which seek increased international contact and exchange and who (notably in Poland) hope for relaxation of the Cold War as the necessary condition for slow accretions to their freedom. In the same way, our preoccupation with nuclear competition with the Soviets tends to obscure our even more intractable conflicts with China. These first generation revolutionaries, engaged in the early stages of forced industrialization, seem less humane, and may have less reason to be frightened of nuclear war than the Russians: our present policy gives them incentives towards acquiring, through a reluctant ally or under their own steam, a nuclear "capability." Slim though the chances may be to influence China's internal political life, we must nevertheless seek to end Chin's international quarantine, initiate an exchange of people, ideas and goods, and bring the mainland Chinese into major international negotiations. We must try to change the international atmosphere, to break through the vicious circle of distrust which transforms negotiations into propaganda battles, and deepens the world's despair.

The myopic focus on military strength blinds us to our overriding common interests with all countries. We have a deep responsibility to contribute effectively and promptly to the economic and social development of other countries, instead of drawing them into the nuclear conflict. The great populations of Asia, Africa, and South America seek a more representative influence on world affairs. Only the creation of political and economic structures capable of realizing the technical possibilities and human potentialities can meet the needs of these dynamic societies. We must not impose the Cold War upon them, but encourage new solutions which do not necessarily either the Soviet or the American systems. Sacrifices for the benefit of world growth and development, for abolishing hunger, disease, and degradation, must replace the sacrifices of mass death in war.

We believe that in this interdependent world, threats to the security, or obstacles to the future of any group, endanger the future of us all. Purely national loyalties have become an anachronism. We must create a deep loyalty to all men, a loyalty capable of supporting international institutions, and the reign of law in international life.