Prospects of Mankind with Eleanor Roosevelt; 102; What Hopes for Disarmament

Oh. This is Eleanor Roosevelt one of the great world respected figures of our tide exploit is the question. What hopes for disarmament with France is leading to so I'm a bit expert and representative to the United Nations General Assembly. Savile Davis managing editor of The Christian Science Monitor traffic Gardiner former assistant secretary of the Air Force now president of the high Con manufacturing company producer of guided missile components. Recorded on the campus of Brandeis University of Massachusetts. National Educational Television presents the WGBH TV production. This is Eleanor Roosevelt. Man. September 1959 headlining the world's agenda as the

General Assembly convenes disarmament because the crux of his proposal. What does the Soviet government. What proposals is that period for you. Should expect complete disarmament. And should no longer have any means of waging war. This means that the Land Army Navy and Air Forces shall cease to exist. Back. General and my ministry and shall be abolished that military educational establishment shall be closed

dozens of millions of men shall return to peaceful creative labor after disposal of states. There should remain fairly limited contingent beliefs of a breed apart for each country with small arms and tended explicitly to maintain it totally and protect the personal security of the citizens not military bases or trees shall be abolished. And hydrogen bomb disposal of states shall be tried and their further production of fissionable material possibly for peaceful

economic and scientific purposes like a military rocket shall be liquidated and rockets until it is only a means of transportation for the harnessing of outer space for the benefit of all mankind. To ensure that no one violate their obligations we proposed the setting up of an international body comprising with the participation of all states. There should be. Initiated a system of control over all the functions by which the comprehensive shall come

in the weeks that followed reaction to this proposal ranged from bitter skepticism to guarded enthusiasm. Many Americans felt that support should go to the British present at the day before the speech by which provided for international controls at every step rather than the final stage. Recently for the first time in the UN's history all 82 countries jointly sponsored a resolution to put the plan and Beloit plan on the agenda of the 10 nation disarmament conference when it meets early next year in Geneva an agreement on procedure only to be sure but it may be a token a new change in the climate of negotiations. This raises the question which Mrs. Roosevelt and her guests are about to discuss here is Mrs. Roosevelt. I'm very glad to welcome you here in the north and the garden

today. And we are going to discuss a very controversial question. I hope that you will feel entirely free to differ with each other to death to really think what you think because a discussion does not bring out what you really think is a very little bad. Now I have a feeling that Mr Kershaw has made many of us think that this film can be brought about in the short period of four years and be complete and that it's not such a very difficult thing to do. As far as some of the technical steps I think we all fall. Beginning but it seems to me one has to consider the fact that there are problems in the world

which will have to be told. So it seems to me before we can really hope to have total disarmament and those other side like that I think we might explore a bit from tomorrow. But I think that it's very difficult to do you fail with you because I think also that Dr disarmament is possible or late political agreement between me and that things must go on the same level of beginning of disarmament must bring a beginning of understanding. She's beginning of understanding can help the second step of disarmament and we are right to the goal. But I shouldn't say I am sure that we cannot.

Really seriously proposing the part with the other part of the 4 0 5 0. 9. 5 0 at this point and technology.

I think we are optimistic as a country at the present time. As you know Governor Romney has come out negative on the question. DAVIS I don't agree or not. I think that we have every reason to be up. Our president has stated very clearly that that he endeavored to do everything possible to keep some kind of peace and our hopes for peace. Just moments after the breakthroughs that have occurred in technology are preventing us to believe that we can arrive at some substitute trucks or some technical mechanism by which science technology brings. I know people have probably little knowledge of what the Allied monitoring.

Well I believe that that the only real breakthrough and it's up in the last 14 years has been the agreement of the technical experts on the suspension of testing for us. Yes our experts and the U.S. tech experts and the U.K. It seems to me that that the possibility that science and technology can deliver us some additional methods of inspection some improvements of our present method of inspection. It's clear that we can't abandon any ideas of inspection because we just can't trust that. We don't doubt that. But the same science and technology that had delivered us these tremendously horrible weapons destruction. As assisted us in our present arms race there is beginning to lever us hopes for peace through inspection devices that are beginning to be agreed on by by both sides.

You would agree with that with. Well certainly some of the major political settlements have to have to come into account here. For example we have a very real questions with respect to China with respect to communist China at the present time whether that country will be willing to come into an agreement to start down the line step by step towards the various forms of control this is the question raised of course by the test of France which is forthcoming in the south. I think all of us can understand that a country such as Mr. country in a world which has been dominated by power up until now we are the ones who started the nuclear power would certainly want to join the club. But we do have this very real question at the present time where we draw the line where we start to restrict nuclear weapons from spreading all over the globe where they can do an indefinite amount of damage.

He explains why we can't accept what some nations said Peter. I say United Nations Day atomic at the beginning of nuclear armament. That means purpose it beginning talks to the same day we stop all tests. Now that must be understood. And that's what is preparing now

five years of the atomic power that is tied to the south. I think we have the test from the point of view humanity of the people that show up like a real human being it may bring about a great problem on the question of health risks. I think that in all fairness it's realized that French test. It's an upper.

Yes. Well not seriously in practice today. It will marginally but I think the French test. It's not clear to me why the French test can't be useful peaceful. We know that we do not have enough information about the underground effects of nuclear weapons and we don't have enough information and presumably the Russians know and it is not fair to me why the French test cannot be made underground and managed monitored by the US and the USSR and the UK when their side side when used as a method of beginning to verify test monitoring system based on underground. Yes so it's not possible not pass my test. And a lot I hope we can just

test to get the Americans have made tests on rotten eggs when we beat the Russians have made 55 have made 21 I'm always good. All I want to test and about you want to get even but it felt good. Well I'm aware of it but it seems to me that Iraq will be turned around so that it serves peaceful purposes. The French then it seems to me that we should be willing. I realize it's quite a late date to do this but we should be willing on our side to give the technical assistance so that this might occur and what is

let me say that we had had. Technical assistance that we gave to the wall side where we saw all the problems. You've got the people who had given up the technical assistance. And that we can find that there are elements in this debate which are perhaps up above the level of the national elements involved and that perhaps we ought to make sure that we don't when we talk about the genetic problem involved in underground test of the thing that we're really which is I think best defined perhaps not by the word much as by the word arms but what we're trying to do is to face the fact that today's world

instead of getting more security for any country. But let's start out with the United States from the present arms. Right. We are actually running into diminishing returns in security. That's one reason why this is a golden moment it seems to me why it's extremely important to plunge ahead for me. We made all the nations you thought when one side one side of the battle died. Again we went over the plight of that Concorde off the production of the PA

security some time trying to get me fired me I have to fight so hard to keep the possibility of arms out in front because of the course that you just outlined. Missiles rockets satellite or atomic bomb. Yes yes yes and yes further arms race. And will have more rights. Time goes on and we move towards greater expenditures all around in the direction of greater risk and cure by the course of action. If I understand what you said correctly it ourselves into the position of having to have.

That. Knowledge in the box anyway. And I bet you taught. Me. I thought that I was different. It is time to beat me up. That is the most popular. Now

I see smoke pot smoking. I will agree that. Your bombs are Russian bought and I bought not do any damage as long as they stay where they are after me. I think the technical problem inspect inspection of delivery systems are are quite involved and it's my belief that we can invent our way out of this problem. I think we can invent some inspection system and perhaps already have some in which it can inspect delivery possibility. It's also time to enter into a limitation of delivery systems without inspection control as I think impossible it seems quite impossible that this can can occur. That's what Roosevelt said earlier they just by saying

let us by making a statement we're going to stop. Just to come back to the point I was making a moment ago about the time in which I think is very important here and the fact that this is a kind of golden moment. Isn't there an argument for coping with the production problem rather than as an earlier step rather than jumping over to the delivery problem. One of those factors which which is part of this moment in history now we have to do something because you have a situation in which we are all agreed that we can't build on just trust we must have more than trust. We also have to build on national interest. And it seems to me that there is a very real possibility that there is a Soviet national interest in having the nuclear club kept very small. You can understand this best it seems to me by analyzing what would happen if. Let's say production became reasonably general and small vest pocket

shooter versions of nuclear weapons became available to people inside the closed society became available to for example or even to Ukrainians or if one were set off in the Red Square on a day let alone of course the question of being made available to the communist Chinese and has to defend itself in many respects more carefully than an open society I wonder if there isn't a very strong national interest which we should explore in checking production. At this point I see that. All sides change that example and they want. To go away.

And I think that it will be up to all the people all the way to this point. Think about this. Thank you. The possibility of the younger generation story the other day and it's important to think about that is

what you do and you get your coat to the salad and you wait. Now that is one of the effects of this concentrate. I can't believe that this if the Russians have to have it so what. Story on the cracked several volumes of serious discussion of the subject and I would like to add my arms. It's one of the great stories that comes from the country which is just up here he

was having a great getting out and someone said get them up here in the wild in the country of the good because the married and the children. That was. I think an example of arms control that is validating I know that was not right. I'm tremendously worried about the power problem or the fifth power problem or the fourth power problem of additional countries having these tests. And so Mark tells us there is nothing we can do the French are going to have to test. In any case it seems to me we need to look here in America at our organization

and ask ourselves are we organized to get enough technical development accomplished so that we won't have the answer plus one power of 50 of the six. If the French test is inevitable we can't legislate our way out of it. I'd like to raise the question whether or not we are properly on. AS. The president has as a staff working at the White House working diligently on his side. There are staff and State Department work on this and. In the Pentagon there also. It's very difficult however to find very many experts who will spend their full time on it. As a matter of fact most of our notions on the subject of disarmament have been developed by essentially part time people. Who are so busy with Defense or State or some other analysts they really don't have time to

think full time. Now what I was hoping might eventually instead since this is a basic national search that's we have a forty forty five billion dollar defense program since we can afford a billion two for the exploration of space in our national program. I was hoping that we might be able to define in our American bureaucratic way the need for a new agency which would be the Peace Agency. And which would have a large budget between 500 million and a billion dollars a year and which would be able to explore the technical part of the table that in fact all the pieces that it still hurts. I thought well we I'm sure I don't have such but here it's it's much smaller than that and it's hidden amongst the bits and pieces of our other flight. I believe that if we had such an agency we might begin over the next few years to be organized to properly

explore all of it Arms Limitation ideas to Peace Game them as we now wargame other ideals in our various study agencies such as the Rand Corporation. I think that's a very important idea because it would include it seems to me finding the answer which you meet everywhere in the will. I have always felt in other countries you really in America don't want to stop preparations for war because you cannot and you cannot afford to have peace. Now that's a horrible thing to me and I've always said of course we can afford it. The needs of the world are so great that we could manage to employ everybody. But of course it means on the face of it mean. Helping the government helping and and having a plan and having it.

Tough. With all the different involved and industrial areas. This is where the help we needed it that we really know what we do you know. If peace comes and the people know what I'm not afraid I find for instance in this country that I will be often oppressed comes from what it means greater unemployment and people want peace. They're also worried about their daily bread. I think this is a thought about a need to take you to put it and put it have all the people I think it could be of great that it's clear that we can't we can't believe that we can invent our way out of trouble by simply inventing new weapons. I don't believe that we can see ahead of us a new weapons system that

can deliver a decisive advantage. Weapons advantage to either stop the proposals that we're discussing here have and which are allied but not quite the same proposition which deals with technical competence which is poured into the problem developing ways and means for carry ons. And this is just on the civilian side. Of course we have to find ways of making peace profitable. We have to capitalise on this but I think it's vital in combination with the United States to promote one of the other things

practically. Justified it on the fact that you keep your protection when people go to bed hungry every night. Now that's I think that's one of the elements of how you said you think you have to the maximum technical assistance in that place. But all that action that the question of the last almost five. Think I think it is fine

to think that people in different areas of that sort. Sure they could help and now I think of a few very important industrial side to this isn't there Mrs. Roosevelt in other words a great many people are concerned about the lobby in Washington the pressure to bring to bear on politics in Washington. Has a similar law years ago. It's not impossible and I confess that most involved publications. So I think we also have a reasonable amount of evidence that there is a similar group a war party so to speak and lobbying pressures of this sort in the Soviet Union as well. In any event in this country I was talking to a

group of newspaper men just Newspaper Editors a short while ago and they were discussing the question of whether adequate plans of the sort that you're speaking about Mrs. Roosevelt had been made and they came to the conclusion that they hadn't and each one was going to go. You could develop a series of articles on finding out what this would mean to Detroit and Pittsburgh and Liverpool and places all over the world with the objective of seeing whether we could get some kind of plans on the books today which is understand if I understand your position is what you're writing so that it would be tangible plans where the business and how it should be and what would need to do it from the get figured out. What idea is that to rush us. Can you imagine the post you won today.

How to begin. I think we can begin right away. I think that we need to know more of the technical answers to go very far. Even so I think that's right. But I illustrate why it's possible. Could I illustrate your point Mr. Gardiner with a small incident. I was talking with a group of people who are weapons experts and physicists who understand the arms control problem very well a short while ago we were discussing the large expenditures that you referred to that are being made by the government in order to show why it is difficult to carry out an arms control agreement. And one of the group came over to another who was a man of international reputation one of the top teams so to speak in the field and wagged his finger under his nose and made a statement which is burned in my mind since that time. He said in spite of all the money which is being spent in this country today

we'll call this man Johnson. For example in spite of all the money that is being spent in this country today to show why arms control cannot be carried out we have not yet expended one Johnson in the effort to show how it can be done. Now he meant of course that the first team of American Scientists had to be brought into the effort and I gather that's what your question was today. But the difficulties of a difficulty and idea that Russians. And we we have on the continent and she's not the same as you will like you to. Meet we must agree on the type of pro. Russian. Yes because. The way the American Way hospital control. Soon no one is up to speed.

Before Could we Frenchmen he said. Come on we've got time which can now be good. That seems to me I think that without much difficulty I wonder if this doesn't illustrate a point that Mr. Gardner is making however because as I understand it one of the great obstacles that has existed on the technical level is the fact that when the Russians have been unable to agree on how many inspection stations we need in the Soviet Union that being a king to the first step this was an extent when Macmillan came out with a proposal that the inspections be random which means that nobody ever knows when the inspector is going to knock on the door and that multiplies the effect of each inspection.

But even in spite of that the both sides because that's what you speak but you have to follow my own orders. I meant a convention and you have a plan. Well that's a little many types of donations. Oh yes of course. Russians on the plane sleep on what do you do in a second step. That's what I was just trying to take the first of those steps which is the one we're all working on now and to show how there is a great need at the moment for more scientific information on how inspection at this level of the first step can be can be carried out. I have a great sense of urgency about this business of getting more technical information. That can be described as a

substitute for trucks technical information that permits us to do very sophisticated inspections out of the progress that the various countries are making you would make available to the United Nations. Yes I don't know how would be any of that. I don't think that we in this country need to wait for a United Nations Greenland talk or a treaty to begin doing some of the necessary things for example. We could through this peace agency immediately build a monitoring system similar to the one we're advocating for the suspension of the detection of tests and this monitoring system needs to be tested. We can test a great deal of it with just blowing a high explosive up. We don't have. Devices and we can invite other nations to witness this. The way this monitoring system works it doesn't have to be a just

theory. We can reduce it to practice. We can prove that weaknesses among us. Now we've reached a point I think what we have to consider that along with everything we do we will have to be as we would talk to still developing a system of law under which nations must live and at the same time a system of enforcement of law. Now this must be under the aegis of the United Nations. And I should think that it would have to go great with everything that you develop for this because human beings are going to have differences they're going to have difficulty in they disagree and there must be a place where they go to to arrange those difficulties all of the stuff that the United Nations but eventually there must be.

Now this brings us to a possible police force which is a very difficult thing but I think we need to be thinking about the thought that you say that to me the party is false. I've got to meet the prime minister who was the guy I was not told but if I understand what you're proposing. Roosevelt. You're suggesting that we should have a phased step by step program. To develop the the bases and the and the means of international law and international police going we almost had a blackboard for this Don't wait. Having these steps going along toward the ultimate objective exactly at the

same time as we carry on these steps that we've been waiting on test and production and delivery of missiles and so forth and the psychological acceptance by people the fact that this is what we and it have to be thinking we're beginning to get some of the ingredients of that even now. I've been very much impressed with the tangibility of that thing which people normally call world opinion and dismissed as if it were a very casual kind of thing. But it seems to me you can almost feel it in these days when force of both large and moderate sorts is pricing itself out of the market. The logical us is priced out of the market the moderate forces too dangerous that we've begun to see approaches to war almost stopped by the recognition of common humanity and world opinion that this thing shouldn't be allowed to go too far. We advanced and pulled back in the Middle East. We advanced and pulled back in the form of sprites. There was difficulty in Laos and

we pulled back as soon as the spotlight of world opinion was turned on. Well I think this I mean the great thing for the United Nations and. Let me point out as well I think that you're trying to pull back from me. I think you have to get everybody to see that you and I and the thought of people think. I'm making a difference between the United Nations and I am ready to accept any nation because I am up to date to accept people. I was a difference in the United States.

But you know it's what you have to have a choice and compulsory. Yes I mean let me come back again to my my sense of urgency. Mark mentioned earlier that after the French test that there may be no other nation can test for perhaps five. If that is so and and I suspect it may be a shorter time. Then a series of other nations consume nuclear weapons and it seems to me the time for agreement has to be fairly soon. The beginnings of agreement we've gotta get at it and we've got to get to work on the research end of it also technically but wait this has to be done immediately and we must make some progress this coming year. The years are running away from us. We don't need 100 percent foolproof system.

We never shall because what we have today is infinitely less than 100 percent and we're spending 40 billion dollars a year to get what we have today and it's certainly less than the flu no you know that and I don't know whether it happens but here I'm confident that our young people want nothing except security. Sometimes I can get them a couple of cars we never gets to carry We don't have security about like we have security about anything we do as human beings. Certainly the last place in the world I'm going to find security is in the arms race the way it's now going because the deterrent has vanished out of it. It is. All lined up in a reason oh security and what we are now trying to do is to make partial security more secure. It seems to me that we had much better say to our people generally. You never had security. Never

never knew that you would something would happen to you every time you get in an automobile. Something may have to add up. It seems to me it's so ridiculous that you know what you were trying to do is to make it possible to try to help you manage to have a better life. What was the last time you saw that security comes always smaller when the time comes. 20 years ago 1 to 20 feet from me will be out. Now it's a question of meaning and you must see every way said danger. A few wall beginning with out anyone we should it take because it has found itself. I'll

get anywhere. One of the side saw a rocket. Then he said. And so it can begin and the world can be destroyed by a fancy fancy. I see you missed it. That is one of the biggest danger of now and therefore we must underlined as security. He's becoming. Always leave your feeling out the other side of this picture of risk really I'm sure because it would become foolhardy in the extreme. If we were unwilling to take a small risk which would make an inspection system have a chance of because good chance of becoming workable. If on the other hand we are we would be living with an enormous risk of nuclear war. If we turn our backs on arms control. In other words the risk is much greater from doing nothing yet then from adventuring as intelligently as we can.

It would be dead right now and that is I think the Soviet media and the press because they know the complete break. Actually when they meet to come to some kind of agreement. It's because both of them know what is it. Most people don't want to think they don't want to hate but this might possibly mean. And I think it did it. It's time we told our children that this is no time for the people who want to develop them. They have it off along with that point. There's something which I think that to me is one of the most significant aspects of this whole role. And it touches first of what you were just saying. We

have some people at the heads of governments who are ready to go ahead with this problem. It's also true that we have a great many people and especially here in the United States as well. We are not without our respect at least from my point of view. We have a great many people who do not wish to go ahead with arms control and the resistance to it is formidable. And I think one of the aspects of the whole control problem which is the American public almost more than anything else is the fact that this was bottled up behind the scenes two years ago when Harold Stassen went over to London for the negotiations there. If you didn't realize it was that other were in any event when you went to the slaughter it was not the intention of our government at that time to go ahead with this.

We went through the motions because it seemed from the standpoint of opinion that we that we should actually as Mr. Dulles later admitting the policy which was the policy of the head of the Atomic Energy Commission worked with people in the Pentagon and some people in the State Department and this was a policy that accepted me. And I think at the same time probably one of the most important ones because the people know very little about it so that all through that period actually we did not want to throw it at the people. On the contrary we made proposals which were exaggerated but we knew they would be turned down by the Russians because we wanted to have turned it down. And this was all changed in a very dramatic way. When Sputnik went up and then the scientists were called

into the White House by President Eisenhower and then in a very remarkable change of direction which took place in a comparatively short time it was one of the most important untold ages in American history. The policy was literally turned over 180 degrees in the opposite direction. And the scientists vary from a number of points of view but from the standpoint of the national interest that we have been discussing they didn't say that the Russians were necessarily going to be able to sign it but that we that they might and that we couldn't face history if we didn't do the very best that we could. So at that point things switched over from the political level to the scientific level and we had this series of conferences with the scientists of both sides which began to be very promising. And the point that I want to make in all of this is that in a way we've slipped back since then because we're back on the political level again. Now the arms control negotiations have gotten all caught up in the summit negotiations and have been put on one side until the summit negotiations work themselves

out and it becomes very important now because many people are working behind the scenes arguing against getting arms control back on the track that we just keep up the pressure we can in all the directions we can't just wait for the change in defense of my friends in the military. It's very difficult to ask a group of people to manage the spending of a billion dollars billions of dollars in national wealth to develop ICBMs and at the same time ask them to agree to a suspension of the nuclear test which they believe are necessary to progress in their field. It's just impossible for them to do. Do one thing wholeheartedly and agree at the same time to need to have a group of people in a separate agency to think clearly and do the research on the subject. But then I can get mad if he

fails to sign what they are. You must have a political scientist myself and someone whose work is on the political side of things. But it was however it took the scientists to change the direction of American policy from not wanting control to thinking that it might be possible. We have an obligation to explore it and I would be willing I think to trust the kind. I think one of the reasons that we got into this problem is because in politics people are accustomed to thinking that this is everything and doesn't have to work at it. Whereas the scientists are very hard problems to think you have to commit a labor of thinking to work out a problem. What we need now in this country have people commit the same labor of thinking as the scientists do on our political problem of the day to make it even.

I hope this is as useful as just being me and I want to thank all of you. God Dave is coming. We have been getting in to this discussion. I hope very much that it has. Done. Something toward the people I work so I spread the gratitude of all of you. But you have to give your time today. Now I want to do a few seconds that really was the thing to me. You have been meaning to get to us today. Something which might be. And actually to

be either a single citizen of the United States who does not want peace that could be sure. But there are many who differ as to the method. Now we have had suggested that we put the effort and money. To wake up a man of a very very I think that is one of the things that has come out of this conversation today and I think that we've heard that quite naturally want to be. On an equality with the other great power. This is natural. But that also will do anything to move

toward peace. And. Which is the real promise of peace that we have in the long run and I think that it's more complicated and I think our discussion to show that and I'm glad that we brought many different things. That have to happen. And I hope you will think about it. Prospect of mankind is foreign aid and economic policy.

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