Common sense must gain the upper hand

(The following appeared in the August 20, 1963, edition of Pravda, two weeks after the Soviet Union, United States and Britain signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty in Moscow. It has been translated and condensed from the Russian.)

The U.S. public is intently following the development of the discussion in Congress on ratification of the Moscow treaty. The American people have already expressed their warm approval of this important agreement, and they cannot be indifferent to the intrigues of the "madmen" who are trying at least to delay ratification.

Who is behind these "madmen" who stubbornly resist the victory of common sense? A Washington acquaintance of mine remarked to me:

"Scratch an opponent of the Moscow Treaty and you will often find close ties to the arms manufacturers and militarists." Obviously, it is not without purpose that the daily newspapers have recently been playing up the bellicose Senator Goldwater as no less than a reserve major-general. Senator Jackson, who is trying to sow doubt with respect to the treaty, is connected both with arms-industry businessmen and with the Pentagon people. It is not for nothing that he is trying to "supplement" the Moscow treaty of peace with his own kind of "pact" between Congress and the White House on intensifying the arms race.

"In the last few days," Chairman Fulbright of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee told us, "the flow of letters demanding that we refuse to ratify the treaty has noticeably increased. Most of these letters 'argue' to the effect that since Khrushchev has approved the treaty, this means it is advantageous to him, and if it is advantageous to Khrushchev, how can the treaty be advantageous to the Americans? But is this an argument? It would appear that someone is suggesting this thought to the letters' authors."

"Where are the letters of those who are 'against' coming from?" we asked Fulbright.

"Basically from the same areas -- California and Texas. Certain organizations there are extremely active ..."

The Senator did not specify the organizations, but even so it was clear that the reference was to the stir in the nests of the Texas "oil sharks" (as the oil industry bigwigs and California weapons manufacturers are called here).

For anyone who entertains even the slightest doubts about the importance of the Moscow treaty for peace-loving peoples, it is useful to know who is opposing it in the U.S.A. These are the blackest, the most "rabid" forces of imperialism, driven by the knights of war profits. Open any new issue of the Magazine of Wall Street or some other publication connected with military-industry circles and you are likely to discover violent attacks on the treaty.

After one day spent in Congress it seemed to me I was attending a war council. Even in the open discussions the topic was how to push the arms race successfully. It was precisely towards this that the speeches of the Secretary of Defense and the Chiefs of Staff of the armed services tended, even though they spoke for ratifying the treaty. The Chiefs of Staff also produced their own original memorandum demanding that the security of the U.S.A. be guaranteed by a whole series of military measures.

And yet the opponents of the treaty do not feel quite on top of things. Confused, they perceive that not only across the ocean but in the United States itself a tendency is forming that opposes the powerful military industry business and the Pentagon. At the bidding of their hearts and common sense, thousands of ordinary Americans are writing to Washington. The vast majority of them favor the Moscow treaty, the strengthening of peace. In these letters, as never before, the voice of peace-loving Americans is distinctly heard, and Congress will have to listen to this voice.

There have long been active in Congress numerous "lobbyists" -- expediters of a sort for various firms and groups, who seek to get laws adopted in their own narrow interests. Now an unprecedented new "lobby" has arisen, one that is fighting for the interests of the people as a whole. Beneath the Capitol's dome it is called the "mother's and children's lobby." And this noble "lobby" has already forced not a few Senators to arrive at sensible conclusions. Thus Senator Pastore, who heads the Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy, has declared:

"I would not like to be in the place of a Senator who votes against this treaty. His chances for re-election to Congress would not be enviable."

Recently a big appeal was published in The New York Times under the heading "The undersigned business leaders want a ban on nuclear testing." The authors of the appeal protest the increased tempo of the arms race and the spread of nuclear weapons which, they write, "significantly increases the probability of war." The appeal is signed by major American businessmen. Although the majority of them are not directly connected with military business, they occupy important positions in the American economy. What drove them to go so far as to publish such a letter? The magazine Nation writes eloquently on this: "Although big business loses much as progress advances, the trouble is that it would lose even more in a nuclear war; in fact, it would lose everything, including itself."

In the hard, bitter struggle against foolhardiness, common sense is making its way. The struggle of reason against foolhardiness is flaring up now not only throughout the country, not only at the very walls of the Capitol, but is even breaking into it and seething among the Washington legislators.