Lawrence Freedman
‘Bertie sustained simultaneously a pair of opinions ludicrously incompatible. He held that in fact human affairs were carried on after a most irrational fashion, but that the remedy was quite simply and easy since all we had to do was carry them on rationally. A discussion of practical affairs on these lines was really very boring.’
To Bertrand Russell, already a pacifist and later a leading light in the campaign for nuclear disarmament, war was the ultimate irrationality. Once nuclear weapons entered the picture it was the ultimate insanity. Seventy years ago, in July 1955, he issued a manifesto jointly with Albert Einstein for discussion at a scientific Congress:
‘In view of the fact that in any future world war nuclear weapons will certainly be employed, and that such weapons threaten the continued existence of mankind, we urge the governments of the world to realize, and to acknowledge publicly, that their purpose cannot be furthered by a world war, and we urge them, consequently, to find peaceful means for the settlement of all matters of dispute between them.’
The arrival of thermonuclear weapons had added urgency to demands for the abolition of war. The manifesto warned that however important renunciation of such weapons might be as a ‘first step,’ showing political goodwill, it would not be enough. As soon as a war broke out they could return.
‘Here, then, is the problem which we present to you, stark and dreadful, and inescapable: Shall we put an end to the human race: or shall mankind renounce war?’
The renunciation war was not a new idea. Indeed it had already been proclaimed by the major powers. In Paris in 1928, a ‘General Treaty for Renunciation of War as an Instrument of National Policy’, put together by the US Secretary of State Frank Kellogg and the French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand, was signed by most of the major powers of the time. It was short and sweet:
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