“Negotiations, Not A-Bombs Wanted”

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31097, 28 June 1966, Page 3

“Negotiations, Not A-Bombs Wanted”

(N’ctc Zealand Press Association* WELLINGTON, June 27. “Mad" was the only possible description of anyone who advocated dropping atomic bombs on Vietnam, the New Zealand Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament said in a statement today.

Lieutenant General H. M. Smith, a retired United States Marine general, at the weekend suggested using atomic bombs in Vietnam.

“This “top’ retired general is not an official sokesman. no doubt, but such lunatic voices must confirm fears in China and Vietnam, in particular, that the United States will eventually use nuclear weapons in this already horrific war." the campaign's statement said. “Any prospects of negotiating peace must be set right back by such irresponsible utterances. “The New Zealand Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament earnestly desires to see negotiations begun, both to bring the present horrors to an end and to preclude the temptation, which may well become severe, to attempt to finish off the war by the use of nuclear weapons. “This would ‘finish off’ Vietnam, north and south alike, and quite possibly, in the end. the human race itself.” General Smith, a fleet

marine force commander in the Second World War, told the Marine Division reunion at Los Angeles that it would take 600.000 men to even achieve a “stalemate” in Vietnam. “Why don't we consider atomic weapons?” he asked. “We dropped two apples on Japan and ended in 10 days the war we had been fighting for four years.”