Europe’s Views On Test Divided

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29871, 11 July 1962, Page 13

Europe’s Views On Test Divided

(A/.Z. Press Association—Copyright)

LONDON, July 10.

Yesterday’s American high-altitude hytjrogen bomb explosion divided the people of Western Europe, who were waiting anxiously to see what the full effects of the blast would be, the Associated Press reported.

By many the test was defended as a necessary evil to strengthen the Western world’s defences. Others held misgivings at any tinkering in outer space. Some doubted that the test was really a military necessity.

Communists denounced it as a crime that had finally taken the nuclear race from earth to the realms of space. In this morning's British press the explosion evoked concern and divided views, Reuter reported. Reports of the mighty explosion were given huge front-page headlines. Some newspapers published photographs of the night sky in Hawaii, seconds after the bomb had exploded 750 miles away above Johnston Island, in the Pacific. The “Guardian" believed that the misgivings which ordinary people everywhere had felt about the American decision to embark on tests in space would remain, whether or not information of military value came from such tests.

The “Daily Mail” believed that the space bomb clearly demonstrated its military value, but. in a mood of sadness, added: “Now that the arms race has become so unbridled that it invades space one cannot forbear asking once again: where will it end?"

But the "Daily Express” saw the explosion as a benefit to the prospect of peace. “The strength of the Western deterrent is reinforced. So is the prospect of peace. This is cause for satisfaction, not for complaint,” it said. “The Times" said that the latest American nuclear explosion would almost certainly be used by the Soviet Union to prepare the world for the next series of Russian tests. The need to put an end to this race became daily more urgent, the newspaper said.

The “Daily Telegraph” said: “It is impossible to applaud any of these appalling demonstraitions except in the hope that it may be the last, or at least may bring the end into sight. That depends on international agreement and. as the West is bound to see it, upon the Russians.” French newspapers also gave great prominence to reports and pictures of the bomb test, the Associated Press reported, but only the Communist “L’Humanite” had anything to say about the blast. It said the Soviet Union possessed overwhelming superiority in missile power and added: “But instead of employing this superiority to attempt to impose a diktat, the country of socialism . . . declares once again its policy of peace to the world.”

In Rome, the Communist "L'Unita” said the space blast "opened a new and alarming chapter in the atomic race.” The explosion, it said, had poisoned space and was the first step in “space militarisation and its use as a war ground for future satellites armed with nuclear weapons. This is a new race for suicide."

In Frankfurt, the independent newspaper “Frankfurter Rundschau” said in a leading article: "One thing is sure. The United States has no more grounds to become upset over the megaton experiments of the Soviet Union last winter. Here the results, even if horrible, were at least reckonable and predictable.”

The newspaper said antiAmerican feeling was spreading—"in this case, not without justice.” Lord Russell, the 90-year-old philosopher, told anti-

bomb demonstrators in London the explosion was "an act of wanton recklessness and a deliberate insult to all men and nations who retain the vestige of sanity. All tests by whatever government are to be condemned but this one is the worst yet,” he said. Moscow radio announced the test on its home service with the terse opening words: “The crime has been committed."

It said the blast in space came “in spite of the protests of all mankind, precisely on the day when the World Congress for General Disarmament and Peace began its work in Moscow.

“The American warmongers have committed a crime in the Pacific Ocean against which all mankind has wrathfully protested.”

Cosmonauts Protest

The cosmonauts. Yuri Gagarin and Gherman Titov, said in a statement: “. . . . As a result of such nuclear explosions, space flights and the further study of space are rendered difficult.

“Nuclear weapon tests in outer space must be stopped immediately. On behalf of life on earth, on behalf of science and progress we are voicing our protest against the criminal acts of atom maniacs.”

A strong protest was made in Moscow by Academician Yevgeni Fedorov, scientific secretary of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. He stressed that the explosion of such a powerful charge would unquestionably upset the delicately-balanced physical and chemical processes in the upper levels of the atmosphere. “The danger to manned space flights will increase,” he said.