STALEMATE THE WAY TO PEACE

Press, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 26511, 28 August 1951, Page 10

STALEMATE THE WAY TO PEACE

VIEWS OF DR. J. B. CONANT

(New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, August 26. A “global stalemate” with the Russians’ ground forces in Europe, balanced initially by the Western Powers strategic air force and the atom bomb will, in the opinion of the Harvard president and atom physicist. Dr. J. B. Conant, be the surest way of finding eventual peace. If this balance is maintained in the first place and ground forces built up in Western Europe within a short time —the time it takes Russia to accumulate an atom bomb stockpile—Dr. Conant believes that the threat of war will be removed. It is a balance of two threats —no true balance of equal forces, said Dr. Conant in Wellington to-day. Russia could threaten to march to the English Channel and at the moment the only counter the free world could offer was the horrible prospect of an annihilation of Russian cities by atomic bombs. Condemning the idea of preventive war, Dr. Conant rejected any idea that another global war could spell anything but disaster. It would probably be a matter of years before a stalemate would work out to eventual peace, but a way must be found out of the atomic age. "Paradoxical as it may appear, I believe the steps now being taken to build up the ground forces for the defence of Europe are steps away from a global war and towards the goal of peace,” he said.