A New Language

In the Western alliance, progress had been slowly freezing to a halt. The Bermuda sun did not bring a thaw (see INTERNATIONAL). Rather, the fact that the Big Three met and failed to make progress on specific issues emphasized the lack of forward motion. President Eisenhower, foreseeing this, had not wanted the Bermuda meeting. When it bogged down, he saved the situation--and went on to achieve far more than had been expected from the Bermuda Conference. Before and during the Bermuda talks, debate on the business of international security had been conducted in confused terms and at a languid tempo which showed Eisenhower that the implications of The Atom were not clearly understood.

"Swift & Resolute." This week, to get world politics in a clearer perspective, to define the American position, to show a way of hope for the world, Eisenhower made a historic speech to the U.N. Said the President:

"In a sense, I am speaking to this body in a language that is new, a language which I, who have spent so much of my life in the military profession, would have preferred not to use. The new language is the language of atomic warfare."

Eisenhower then disclosed some comparative figures intended to make unmistakably clear the full meaning of atomic weapons.

"Atomic bombs today are more than 25 times as powerful as the weapon with which the atomic age dawned, while the hydrogen weapons are in the range of millions of tons of TNT equivalent.

"Today our mass of atomic weapons, with its ever-increasing annual growth, exceeds by many times the explosive equivalents of the total of all the bombs and all the shells that came from every plane and every gun in every theater of war throughout all the years of World War II.

"Even with the most powerful defenses, an agressor in possession of the effective number could place his bombs on the chosen target to cause hideous damage. Should such an atomic attack be launched against the United States, its reaction would be swift and resolute."

Beyound a Threat--Hope. President Eisenhower did not want to make a threat--even in retaliation--the major theme of his speech. He said that to dwell upon the possibility of atomic war would "be to confirm the hopeless finality of the belief that two atomic colossi are doomed malevolently to eye each other indefinitely across a trembling world.

"To stop there would be to accept hopelessly the probability of civilization destroyed, the disappearance of the great artistic, scientific and cultural achievements, and probably condemning mankind to begin all over again the age-old struggle upward from savagery toward decency, justice and right."

Eisenhower recalled that in the pages of history are recorded the deeds of "great destroyers," but that the book of history shows man in a steady "quest for peace and God-given capacity to build. It is with the book of history and not with isolated pages that the United States will ever wish to be identified."

President Eisenhower noted that the record of the United Nations contains the proof that the U.S. has sought again and again to sit down with the Soviet Union and negotiate the great issues of the time, including the German and Austrian treaties and peace in Korea. At Bermuda, he added, the heads of government of the three great Western democracies agreed to sit down with Russia on Jan. 4 at Berlin to negotiate any disputes between the Kremlin and the West.

He noted that on Nov. 18, the U.N. General Assembly by resolution approved the recommendation of its Disarmament Commission that the "powers principally involved meet in private" to discuss general disarmament of the nations, including atomic disarmament. He said that the United States stands ready to sit down with the Soviet Union and the Western, allies in private at any time to carry out this hope of the U.N. Assembly.

"The Fearful Riddle." Then President Eisenhower proposed that out of such a discussion should come not only disarmament but immediate steps to advance the welfare of humanity by the constructive use of atomic power. He suggested the creation within the U.N. of an "International Atomic Energy Administration" to which nations possessing atomic material would consign increasing amounts of such material for the establishment as soon as possible of world power stations to make electricity, to fertilize the desert, and be put to all the other uses which we now know are possible with atomic energy.

"The coming months," the President concluded, "will be fraught with fateful decisions in the capitals and military headquarters of the world, in the Assembly, in the hearts of men everywhere, be they governors or governed. May they be decisions which will lead this world out of fear and into peace. To the making of these decisions, the United States pledges before you--and therefore before the World--its determination to solve the fearful atomic riddle, to find the way by which the miraculous inventiveness of man shall not be dedicated to his death but consecrated to his life."

In Eisenhower's speech, it would be hard for an enemy to find a sign of weakness, just as hard for the timid and the neutralists to find bluster or swagger. By stating the American position more vigorously than ever before he had summoned the nations to face with resolution the appalling fact that Communism and The Atom exist in the same world.

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