NUCLEAR RISKS

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28573, 30 April 1958, Page 13

NUCLEAR RISKS

Renunciation Urged (Rec. 11 p.m.) OSLO, April 29. The fate of mankind depended on an electronic brain and the mistakes it might make. Dr. Albert Schweitzer said today In a new plea to the Great Powers to renounce nuclear arms. He was giving his warning in the second of two addresses on the prospects of peace in the atomic age being read over Oslo Radio and sent to about 90 radio stations throughout the world. [The first address is reported on Page 9.1 Dr. Schweitzer, 83-year-old philosopher, medical misaionary. . theologian and Nobel Prize winner, said the risk that the cold war would become a nuclear war was greater today than ever before, because of the possibilities created by guided missiles. A nuclear war in defence of threatened liberty would not achieve its purpose, and the theory that world peace could be maintained through nuclear deterrents could no longer be accepted at a time when the risk of war was so great. He described as fatal, but understandable, the decision by the United States to supply her Allies with nuclear weapons end said the Soviet Union interpreted this step as a new threat to its security. Dr. Schweitzer said the increased war risk after rocket weapons became even greater because a nuclear war would hardly be started by a formal declaration of war from one of the nuclear Powers, but as a result of some incident or other. When a radar system registered that rockets were on their way, the electronic brain in fractions of seconds computed their position, and the defence mechanism was automatically realised. Dr. Schweitzer said that “in every respect, the risk of a future nuclear war is so great that renunciation of nucTear arms is an urgent necessity”; in a future nuclear war, there would be no victory—only defeat.