A Human Story: War & Peace

A Human Story

War and peace are human stories. Wars are started by leaders who want something or believe their group of people has been wronged. They strike back as a form of protection and revenge. Leaders often convince people that their cause is just or simply force people to follow. A mindset develops of the “other”, the enemy. This mindset allows people to kill and protects them from the psychological effects of killing other human beings.

Whatever the causes of war, whoever is right or wrong, war is a human story. All those involve suffer as human beings. They grieve the loss of sons and daughters, the loss of homes and land, the loss of innocence and hope. Women are raped and killed. Men are killed both psychically and psychologically as they perform acts of aggression toward another human being. Survivors often live with the fear and trauma.

We can learn from the past to protect our future. We can learn how to live together in this global world. The days of isolation (colonization) of you do your thing and I do mine are over. The scientific world has researched the Butterfly Effect. We now know one person’s action creates a ripple effect across the world. What the world needs today are Peace Education and Conflict Resolution skills. The children will be the one to live in an ever expanding global world that computers, travel, communication systems and the media continue to shrink. Do we want our sons and daughters to die in war, even one deemed righteous by our leaders?

Do not misunderstand me; I am not saying we must never go to world. I am not that evolved or idealistic, depending on your viewpoint. I honor those brave men and women, families who have sacrificed for freedom and the causes they believed in. What I am saying is war is a human story and it kills our sons and daughters, brothers, mothers and fathers. I simply ask, is it not far better to learn how to resolve our conflicts without violence and live in peace because war destroys human beings on both sides? Peace can save lives on both sides.

Peace Education and Peace Culture are growing fields. But for them to be viable alternatives to wars, individuals must come to believe and act with the intention of seeking peaceful solutions instead of war. Many people are skeptical that peace will work, but the only way to find out is give it a full-hearted try. Some people are willing to join the growing peace movement to provide the human race with a better story than war for the future, will you?

The Internet is full of resources and this site is one of them to learn about peace. Peace news does not often make the media's headlines, but it will here. Please join us and other peace sites regularly. Begin to feel the power of belief that you can make a difference for peace.

A-bomb Survivor Defends Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution

A-bomb survivor defends Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution

Tokyo―On November 13, Kazuto Yoshida, who survived the 1945 atomic bombing in Nagasaki told Waseda University students how it is significant to maintain the pacifist article of the Japanese Constitution that renounces war as a means to resolve any international conflicts at this crucial moment and in the following ages. He spoke out against the tide of those right-wing Japanese who have been attempting to revise the Article 9 to become a “normal nation” with a strong military build-up in recent years.

Yoshida explained how wartime Japanese society without Article 9 was terrible. He asked, “Can you guess the average lifespan of Japanese citizens during the war?” Students whispered. He said the average lifespan of the wartime Japanese men and women was 23.9 and 37.5 respectively. Almost all educational facilities, including science rooms of his middle school, were used for military purposes. He said, even though he’s also a hibakusha, the hibakusha who know the most horrible aspects of war are those who died or were incinerated on August 6 and 9, 1945.

Against Yoshida and thousands of hibakusha’s will to see a day when all the rampant nuclear weapons are gone during their lifetime, nuclear powers still cling to nuclear defense, deterrence, and even preemptive system. According to Yoshida, 243,692 hibakusha were alive as of March 31, 2008, and 92 percent of hibakusha who live in Suginami district, Tokyo, are fearful that a nuclear weapon can be used again, looking at the status quo of the world.

“What I want from the US government is an apology for the conduct of a-bombings in 1945 and its initiative role in abolishing nuclear weapons. That’s all,” he said. With regard to the issue of nuclear proliferation, Yoshida emphasized that movements for reduction of the number of nuclear weapons is not enough, but a shift toward eradiation of nuclear arms and war is important. “There had been three nuclear weapons in 1945 before the bombing. One was used to test in New Mexico, the second was used against Hiroshima citizens, and the very last one was dropped on Nagasaki. This means only one nuclear weapon can kill tens of thousands of people,” he said.

Yoshida also criticized the Japanese government for still clinging to the wartime policy that justifies the past and does not facilitate war compensation to the victims both home and in neighboring countries. Although there are many hibakusha who have been afflicted with cancers and other diseases triggered by radiation, the Japanese government has refused to provide enough aid and held on to the allegedly scientific standard proposed by the Department of Health. The government has lost all the trials brought by Hibakusha nationwide in the past few years so far.

Yoshida concluded the speech as following:
“We’ve asked the world ‘No more Nagasaki, no more Hiroshima, and no more war’ since we came to stand up in the 50s. I as a hibakusha would like to ask you, who are to live in the 21st century to take over this task and keep demanding abolition of all existing nuclear weapons and wars.”

The event was held by members of Article 9 Committee of Waseda University and ‘No More Hibakusha’ Article 9 Association. The Article 9 Association was founded by famous Japanese intellectuals, including Kenzaburo Oe, the 1994 Nobel Prize in Literature winner; Shunsuke Tsurumi, a pragmatist philosopher who graduated from Harvard University in 1942; and many more individuals with prominent academic backgrounds who have advocated for peace, now standing up to contest reemergence of Japanese militarism. It was 2002 that this organization was born, and today there are about 7,000 grassroots committees of the Article 9 Association all over Japan. According to the latest poll of Yomiuri Shimbun, or one of the most conservative newspapers with the largest readership in Japan, more than half of the Japanese people are against revising Article 9. When more than two-thirds of politicians in the Diet agree on the revision, Japanese citizens exercise referendum to determine the future. The future is in hibakusha and students’ hands.

For more information about the Article 9, please visit http://www.article-9.org/en/index.html.
http://www.9-jo.jp/en/index_en.html

Fumi Inoue (I currently study at the School of International Liberal Studies of Waseda University located in Japan.)

Giving Thanks

As Americans we may feel the need to give thanks for the immense wealth that we possess (that won't last): the wealth of material possessions, the wealth of comfort and security, and the wealth of opportunity. Of course, our wealth, under the so-called bailout plan, is becoming more and more concentrated among the hands of a few especially thankful Americans. Because of the economic crisis our wealth is also being foreclosed and deflated. It is a time to hope for the best and grasp what we hold dear; I am talking about what transcends the material world.

I hope you will keep this in mind as you watch the Tennessee Titans devour the Detroit Lions as you devour your warm turkey and mashed potatoes. Keep this in mind as you make vacation plans. Keep this in mind as you begin your Christmas shopping. Remember the children of Iraq and Afghanistan. Remember the indigenous people who walked this land for thousands of years before the White Man came, bringing disease and slaughter (not turkey or stove-top stuffing), and such nationalistic holidays as Thanksgiving. Remember the stolen African people who built this country under the crack of a whip. Remember the fallen. Remember the forgotten.

Let us be thankful for our heartbeat and our strength to build a better country and a better world based on truth, peace, justice, love, and harmony. Let us be thankful for the sacrifices that were made by our mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, cousins, friends, teachers, and noble ancestors to make our lives as good as they are today - so long as they did so not at the expense of another. Let us be thankful for each other and that, regardless of the circumstances that brought us here, we are all here: black, white, brown, red, and yellow. Let us be thankful that there is still time and opportunity for us all to shape our future together across generations, borders, races, and religions. These are the thanks I give today.

Remember Palestine

Out of everything I read about Israel and Palestine, the most powerful and inspiring prose always seems to come from foreign delegates who travel to the Middle East each year to educate themselves about the conflict and stand in solidarity with the peacemakers on both sides. This is a five-part report from a recent Interfaith Peace-Builders/American Friends Service Committee trip called "Trees of Peace: 2008 Olive Harvest Delegation." I hope you'll enjoy it as much as I did.

http://www.interfaithpeacebuilders.org/del29/default.html

Nonviolence Works, Study Shows

http://www.progressive.org/mag/wxap103008.html

Nonviolence Is The Right Choice—It Works

By Amitabh Pal, October 30, 2008

Nonviolent resistance is not only the morally superior choice. It is also twice as effective as the violent variety.

That's the startling and reassuring discovery by Maria Stephan and Erica Chenoweth, who analyzed an astonishing 323 resistance campaigns from 1900 to 2006.

"Our findings show that major nonviolent campaigns have achieved success 53 percent of the time, compared with 26 percent for violent resistance campaigns," the authors note in the journal International Security. (The study is available as a PDF file at http://www.nonviolent-conflict.org)

The result is not that surprising, once you listen to the researchers' reasoning.

"First, a campaign's commitment to nonviolent methods enhances its domestic and international legitimacy and encourages more broad-based participation in the resistance, which translates into increased pressure being brought to bear on the target," they state. "Second, whereas governments easily justify violent counterattacks against armed insurgents, regime violence against nonviolent movements is more likely to backfire against the regime."

In an interesting aside that has relevance for our times, the authors also write that, "Our study does not explicitly compare terrorism to nonviolent resistance, but our argument sheds light on why terrorism has been so unsuccessful."

To their credit, the authors don't gloss over nonviolent campaigns that haven't been successes. They give a clear-eyed assessment of the failure so far of the nonviolent movement in Burma, one of the three detailed case studies in the piece, along with East Timor and the Philippines.

In some sense, the authors have subjected to statistical analysis the notions of Gene Sharp, an influential Boston-based proponent of nonviolent change, someone they cite frequently in the footnotes. In his work, Sharp stresses the practical utility of nonviolence, de-emphasizing the moral aspects of it. He even asserts that for Gandhi, nonviolence was more of a pragmatic tool than a matter of principle, painting a picture that's at variance with much of Gandhian scholarship. In an interview with me in 2006, Sharp declared that he derives his precepts from Gandhi himself.

Gandhi's use of nonviolence "was pure pragmatism," Sharp told me. "At the end of his life, he defends himself. He was accused of holding on to nonviolent means because of his religious belief. He says no. He says, I presented this as a political means of action, and that's what I'm saying today. And it's a misrepresentation to say that I presented this as a purely religious approach. He was very upset about that."

One of the authors of the study, Maria Stephan, is at the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict. The group's founders wrote a related book a few years ago, "A Force More Powerful: A Century of Nonviolent Conflict." Erica Chenoweth is at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.

This study is manna for those of us who believe in nonviolent resistance as a method of social change. We don't have to justify it on moral grounds any more. The reason is even simpler now: Nonviolence is much more successful.

JFK and the Unspeakable

Unmasking the Truth
By George M. Anderson, S.J.
America Magazine
NOVEMBER 17, 2008


JFK and the Unspeakable
By James W. Douglass
Orbis Books. 544p $30

With the 45th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in November of this year, James W. Douglass's book serves as a timely and disturbing reminder of the dark forces that lay behind the president's death in Dallas in 1963. As JFK and the Unspeakable reveals, not only the author but many others believe these dark forces emanated from the C.I.A. and the military-industrial complex—powers that could not bear to see the president turning more and more toward a vision of total nuclear disarmament, as well as possible rapprochement with Fidel Castro and a desire to withdraw from Vietnam because of what Kennedy believed was an unwinnable war. But Douglass's book, as the subtitle reveals, is not so much about how Kennedy died as it is about why he died; and in entering this "pilgrimage of truth"—the why of the Kennedy assassination—Douglass invokes Thomas Merton as his guide and "Virgil."

This is indeed a strange and interesting way to begin yet another history on the Kennedy assassination. "While Kennedy is the subject of this story," Douglass explains, "Merton is its first witness and chorus." Douglass provides detailed history and biography, but Merton fulfills the book's ultimate purpose: "to see more deeply into history than we are accustomed." In 1962, Merton wrote to a friend expressing "little confidence" in Kennedy's ability to escape the nuclear crisis in an ethically acceptable way:

What is needed is really not shrewdness or craft, but what the politicians don't have: depth, humanity and a certain totality of self-forgetfulness and compassion, not just for individuals but for man as a whole: a deeper kind of dedication. Maybe Kennedy will break through into that some day by miracle. But such people are before long marked out for assassination.

The miracle happened, as did the assassination. The latter, according to Douglass, was a consequence of Kennedy's turn toward peace. This is the story that emerges in Douglass's re-telling of Kennedy's conversion and assassination.

The very group charged with investigating the assassination, the Warren Commission, Douglass contends, quietly went along with the now largely discredited theory that Lee Harvey Oswald was the sole assassin, rather than a scapegoat to provide cover for the real killers, whose real identity remains unknown. What is known, however, is that President Kennedy and the Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, had—through secret correspondence—begun to work together to stave off nuclear disaster. The Soviet leader agreed to withdraw his missiles from Cuba, even at a time when the U.S. military was pressing Kennedy to take military action there. As the author—a theologian and peace activist who has written four books on nonviolence—puts it, "half a world apart, in radical ideological conflict, both...recognized their interdependence with each other and the world. They suddenly joined hands...chose, in Khrushchev's words, 'a common cause to save the world from those pushing us toward war.'" Kennedy in turn, as the author goes on to say, implicitly helped the Soviet leader in a June 1963 peace-based commencement address at American University, which "led in turn to their signing the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty." But in the eyes of the U.S. powerbrokers, the president had shown himself to be a traitor. His assassination thereby became all but foreordained in his "turning"—Kennedy's "short-lived, contradictory journey toward peace," Douglass calls it.

Even afterward, the reader learns, the C.I.A pursued those familiar with circumstances that could have exposed the truth. Douglass makes much of the fact that the fatal bullet that killed the president entered not from the rear—as it would have if Oswald were the killer firing from a building by the parade route—but from the front, piercing the forehead and emerging at the rear of the skull. The sharpshooter killers were not even in the building where Oswald was arrested after the assassination, but at a spot farther along the parade route. A forensic physician who much later examined slide photos of the body, Lt. Cmdr. Bruce Pitzer, realized that the official Warren Report was erroneous in this regard. It was perilous knowledge: Dr. Pitzer was found shot to death in his working area in the National Naval Center near Washington, D.C., in 1966. The Navy ruled his death a suicide, but Douglass presents credible reasons to doubt that conclusion.

Dr. Pitzer's death was just one of several post-assassination deaths and suspicious events that suggest the dark forces at work would stop at nothing to disguise the carefully planned work of "the unspeakable"—a phrase coined by Thomas Merton in reference not only to the president's death, but to other tragic events of the 1960s as well.

Another person who died years after the assassination under mysterious circumstances was Richard Case Nagell. A U.S. counterintelligence agent, he was in possession of a secretly recorded audiotape of a conversation among several men involved in the conspiracy. Once aware of the plot and unwilling to enter into it, he walked into an El Paso bank one day and fired two shots into the wall in order to ensure his speedy arrest. Questioned by the authorities, he said: "I would rather be arrested than commit murder and treason."

Released from prison after five years, Nagell survived three attempts on his life. Finally, in 1995, he felt he could finally tell his story under oath to the Assassinations Record Review Board. But in November of that year, he was found dead in the bathroom of his Los Angeles home. An autopsy cited the cause of death as a heart attack, despite the fact that he had recently told his niece that he had been in good health. When Nagell's son searched for the trunk with the secretly recorded audiotape, he found it missing from the storage facility where his father had placed it. The theft of the trunk suggests to Douglass that even three decades after the assassination, Nagell's "turn to the truth seems to threaten the security of the covert action agencies he had once served." Sensing their importance, he devotes several pages to the deaths of both men and to similarly strange circumstances surrounding the post-assassination lives of others.

The very concept of a government-directed conspiracy may come as a shock to those who have trouble believing their country could ever be involved in "the unspeakable." Yet JFK and the Unspeakable is a compelling book, a thoroughly researched account of Kennedy's turn toward peace, the consequent assassination and its aftermath. By capturing the essence of John F. Kennedy's vision, it is also a reminder of the urgency of the struggle for peace in our world.


George M. Anderson, S.J., is an associate editor of America.

JFK's Legacy

Commencement Address at American University

President John F. Kennedy

Washington, D.C.

June 10, 1963

President Anderson, members of the faculty, board of trustees, distinguished guests, my old colleague, Senator Bob Byrd, who has earned his degree through many years of attending night law school, while I am earning mine in the next 30 minutes, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen:

It is with great pride that I participate in this ceremony of the American University, sponsored by the Methodist Church, founded by Bishop John Fletcher Hurst, and first opened by President Woodrow Wilson in 1914. This is a young and growing university, but it has already fulfilled Bishop Hurst's enlightened hope for the study of history and public affairs in a city devoted to the making of history and the conduct of the public's business. By sponsoring this institution of higher learning for all who wish to learn, whatever their color or their creed, the Methodists of this area and the Nation deserve the Nation's thanks, and I commend all those who are today graduating.

Professor Woodrow Wilson once said that every man sent out from a university should be a man of his nation as well as a man of his time, and I am confident that the men and women who carry the honor of graduating from this institution will continue to give from their lives, from their talents, a high measure of public service and public support.

"There are few earthly things more beautiful than a university," wrote John Masefield in his tribute to English universities--and his words are equally true today. He did not refer to spires and towers, to campus greens and ivied walls. He admired the splendid beauty of the university, he said, because it was "a place where those who hate ignorance may strive to know, where those who perceive truth may strive to make others see."

I have, therefore, chosen this time and this place to discuss a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and the truth is too rarely perceived--yet it is the most important topic on earth: world peace.

What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children--not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women--not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.

I speak of peace because of the new face of war. Total war makes no sense in an age when great powers can maintain large and relatively invulnerable nuclear forces and refuse to surrender without resort to those forces. It makes no sense in an age when a single nuclear weapon contains almost ten times the explosive force delivered by all the allied air forces in the Second World War. It makes no sense in an age when the deadly poisons produced by a nuclear exchange would be carried by wind and water and soil and seed to the far corners of the globe and to generations yet unborn.

Today the expenditure of billions of dollars every year on weapons acquired for the purpose of making sure we never need to use them is essential to keeping the peace. But surely the acquisition of such idle stockpiles--which can only destroy and never create--is not the only, much less the most efficient, means of assuring peace.

I speak of peace, therefore, as the necessary rational end of rational men. I realize that the pursuit of peace is not as dramatic as the pursuit of war--and frequently the words of the pursuer fall on deaf ears. But we have no more urgent task.

Some say that it is useless to speak of world peace or world law or world disarmament--and that it will be useless until the leaders of the Soviet Union adopt a more enlightened attitude. I hope they do. I believe we can help them do it. But I also believe that we must reexamine our own attitude--as individuals and as a Nation--for our attitude is as essential as theirs. And every graduate of this school, every thoughtful citizen who despairs of war and wishes to bring peace, should begin by looking inward--by examining his own attitude toward the possibilities of peace, toward the Soviet Union, toward the course of the cold war and toward freedom and peace here at home.

First: Let us examine our attitude toward peace itself. Too many of us think it is impossible. Too many think it unreal. But that is a dangerous, defeatist belief. It leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable--that mankind is doomed--that we are gripped by forces we cannot control.

We need not accept that view. Our problems are manmade--therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. Man's reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable--and we believe they can do it again.

I am not referring to the absolute, infinite concept of peace and good will of which some fantasies and fanatics dream. I do not deny the value of hopes and dreams but we merely invite discouragement and incredulity by making that our only and immediate goal.

Let us focus instead on a more practical, more attainable peace-- based not on a sudden revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution in human institutions--on a series of concrete actions and effective agreements which are in the interest of all concerned. There is no single, simple key to this peace--no grand or magic formula to be adopted by one or two powers. Genuine peace must be the product of many nations, the sum of many acts. It must be dynamic, not static, changing to meet the challenge of each new generation. For peace is a process--a way of solving problems.

With such a peace, there will still be quarrels and conflicting interests, as there are within families and nations. World peace, like community peace, does not require that each man love his neighbor--it requires only that they live together in mutual tolerance, submitting their disputes to a just and peaceful settlement. And history teaches us that enmities between nations, as between individuals, do not last forever. However fixed our likes and dislikes may seem, the tide of time and events will often bring surprising changes in the relations between nations and neighbors.

So let us persevere. Peace need not be impracticable, and war need not be inevitable. By defining our goal more clearly, by making it seem more manageable and less remote, we can help all peoples to see it, to draw hope from it, and to move irresistibly toward it.

Second: Let us reexamine our attitude toward the Soviet Union. It is discouraging to think that their leaders may actually believe what their propagandists write. It is discouraging to read a recent authoritative Soviet text on Military Strategy and find, on page after page, wholly baseless and incredible claims--such as the allegation that "American imperialist circles are preparing to unleash different types of wars . . . that there is a very real threat of a preventive war being unleashed by American imperialists against the Soviet Union . . . [and that] the political aims of the American imperialists are to enslave economically and politically the European and other capitalist countries . . . [and] to achieve world domination . . . by means of aggressive wars."

Truly, as it was written long ago: "The wicked flee when no man pursueth." Yet it is sad to read these Soviet statements--to realize the extent of the gulf between us. But it is also a warning--a warning to the American people not to fall into the same trap as the Soviets, not to see only a distorted and desperate view of the other side, not to see conflict as inevitable, accommodation as impossible, and communication as nothing more than an exchange of threats.

No government or social system is so evil that its people must be considered as lacking in virtue. As Americans, we find communism profoundly repugnant as a negation of personal freedom and dignity. But we can still hail the Russian people for their many achievements--in science and space, in economic and industrial growth, in culture and in acts of courage.

Among the many traits the peoples of our two countries have in common, none is stronger than our mutual abhorrence of war. Almost unique among the major world powers, we have never been at war with each other. And no nation in the history of battle ever suffered more than the Soviet Union suffered in the course of the Second World War. At least 20 million lost their lives. Countless millions of homes and farms were burned or sacked. A third of the nation's territory, including nearly two thirds of its industrial base, was turned into a wasteland--a loss equivalent to the devastation of this country east of Chicago.

Today, should total war ever break out again--no matter how--our two countries would become the primary targets. It is an ironic but accurate fact that the two strongest powers are the two in the most danger of devastation. All we have built, all we have worked for, would be destroyed in the first 24 hours. And even in the cold war, which brings burdens and dangers to so many nations, including this Nation's closest allies--our two countries bear the heaviest burdens. For we are both devoting massive sums of money to weapons that could be better devoted to combating ignorance, poverty, and disease. We are both caught up in a vicious and dangerous cycle in which suspicion on one side breeds suspicion on the other, and new weapons beget counterweapons.

In short, both the United States and its allies, and the Soviet Union and its allies, have a mutually deep interest in a just and genuine peace and in halting the arms race. Agreements to this end are in the interests of the Soviet Union as well as ours--and even the most hostile nations can be relied upon to accept and keep those treaty obligations, and only those treaty obligations, which are in their own interest.

So, let us not be blind to our differences--but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.

Third: Let us reexamine our attitude toward the cold war, remembering that we are not engaged in a debate, seeking to pile up debating points. We are not here distributing blame or pointing the finger of judgment. We must deal with the world as it is, and not as it might have been had the history of the last 18 years been different.

We must, therefore, persevere in the search for peace in the hope that constructive changes within the Communist bloc might bring within reach solutions which now seem beyond us. We must conduct our affairs in such a way that it becomes in the Communists' interest to agree on a genuine peace. Above all, while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy--or of a collective death-wish for the world.

To secure these ends, America's weapons are nonprovocative, carefully controlled, designed to deter, and capable of selective use. Our military forces are committed to peace and disciplined in self- restraint. Our diplomats are instructed to avoid unnecessary irritants and purely rhetorical hostility.

For we can seek a relaxation of tension without relaxing our guard. And, for our part, we do not need to use threats to prove that we are resolute. We do not need to jam foreign broadcasts out of fear our faith will be eroded. We are unwilling to impose our system on any unwilling people--but we are willing and able to engage in peaceful competition with any people on earth.

Meanwhile, we seek to strengthen the United Nations, to help solve its financial problems, to make it a more effective instrument for peace, to develop it into a genuine world security system--a system capable of resolving disputes on the basis of law, of insuring the security of the large and the small, and of creating conditions under which arms can finally be abolished.

At the same time we seek to keep peace inside the non-Communist world, where many nations, all of them our friends, are divided over issues which weaken Western unity, which invite Communist intervention or which threaten to erupt into war. Our efforts in West New Guinea, in the Congo, in the Middle East, and in the Indian subcontinent, have been persistent and patient despite criticism from both sides. We have also tried to set an example for others--by seeking to adjust small but significant differences with our own closest neighbors in Mexico and in Canada.

Speaking of other nations, I wish to make one point clear. We are bound to many nations by alliances. Those alliances exist because our concern and theirs substantially overlap. Our commitment to defend Western Europe and West Berlin, for example, stands undiminished because of the identity of our vital interests. The United States will make no deal with the Soviet Union at the expense of other nations and other peoples, not merely because they are our partners, but also because their interests and ours converge.

Our interests converge, however, not only in defending the frontiers of freedom, but in pursuing the paths of peace. It is our hope-- and the purpose of allied policies--to convince the Soviet Union that she, too, should let each nation choose its own future, so long as that choice does not interfere with the choices of others. The Communist drive to impose their political and economic system on others is the primary cause of world tension today. For there can be no doubt that, if all nations could refrain from interfering in the self-determination of others, the peace would be much more assured.

This will require a new effort to achieve world law--a new context for world discussions. It will require increased understanding between the Soviets and ourselves. And increased understanding will require increased contact and communication. One step in this direction is the proposed arrangement for a direct line between Moscow and Washington, to avoid on each side the dangerous delays, misunderstandings, and misreadings of the other's actions which might occur at a time of crisis.

We have also been talking in Geneva about the other first-step measures of arms control designed to limit the intensity of the arms race and to reduce the risks of accidental war. Our primary long range interest in Geneva, however, is general and complete disarmament-- designed to take place by stages, permitting parallel political developments to build the new institutions of peace which would take the place of arms. The pursuit of disarmament has been an effort of this Government since the 1920's. It has been urgently sought by the past three administrations. And however dim the prospects may be today, we intend to continue this effort--to continue it in order that all countries, including our own, can better grasp what the problems and possibilities of disarmament are.

The one major area of these negotiations where the end is in sight, yet where a fresh start is badly needed, is in a treaty to outlaw nuclear tests. The conclusion of such a treaty, so near and yet so far, would check the spiraling arms race in one of its most dangerous areas. It would place the nuclear powers in a position to deal more effectively with one of the greatest hazards which man faces in 1963, the further spread of nuclear arms. It would increase our security--it would decrease the prospects of war. Surely this goal is sufficiently important to require our steady pursuit, yielding neither to the temptation to give up the whole effort nor the temptation to give up our insistence on vital and responsible safeguards.

I am taking this opportunity, therefore, to announce two important decisions in this regard.

First: Chairman Khrushchev, Prime Minister Macmillan, and I have agreed that high-level discussions will shortly begin in Moscow looking toward early agreement on a comprehensive test ban treaty. Our hopes must be tempered with the caution of history--but with our hopes go the hopes of all mankind.

Second: To make clear our good faith and solemn convictions on the matter, I now declare that the United States does not propose to conduct nuclear tests in the atmosphere so long as other states do not do so. We will not be the first to resume. Such a declaration is no substitute for a formal binding treaty, but I hope it will help us achieve one. Nor would such a treaty be a substitute for disarmament, but I hope it will help us achieve it.

Finally, my fellow Americans, let us examine our attitude toward peace and freedom here at home. The quality and spirit of our own society must justify and support our efforts abroad. We must show it in the dedication of our own lives--as many of you who are graduating today will have a unique opportunity to do, by serving without pay in the Peace Corps abroad or in the proposed National Service Corps here at home.

But wherever we are, we must all, in our daily lives, live up to the age-old faith that peace and freedom walk together. In too many of our cities today, the peace is not secure because the freedom is incomplete.

It is the responsibility of the executive branch at all levels of government--local, State, and National--to provide and protect that freedom for all of our citizens by all means within their authority. It is the responsibility of the legislative branch at all levels, wherever that authority is not now adequate, to make it adequate. And it is the responsibility of all citizens in all sections of this country to respect the rights of all others and to respect the law of the land.

All this is not unrelated to world peace. "When a man's ways please the Lord," the Scriptures tell us, "he maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him." And is not peace, in the last analysis, basically a matter of human rights--the right to live out our lives without fear of devastation--the right to breathe air as nature provided it--the right of future generations to a healthy existence?

While we proceed to safeguard our national interests, let us also safeguard human interests. And the elimination of war and arms is clearly in the interest of both. No treaty, however much it may be to the advantage of all, however tightly it may be worded, can provide absolute security against the risks of deception and evasion. But it can--if it is sufficiently effective in its enforcement and if it is sufficiently in the interests of its signers--offer far more security and far fewer risks than an unabated, uncontrolled, unpredictable arms race.

The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war. We do not want a war. We do not now expect a war. This generation of Americans has already had enough--more than enough--of war and hate and oppression. We shall be prepared if others wish it. We shall be alert to try to stop it. But we shall also do our part to build a world of peace where the weak are safe and the strong are just. We are not helpless before that task or hopeless of its success. Confident and unafraid, we labor on--not toward a strategy of annihilation but toward a strategy of peace.