219 



States or any other nation against armed aggression, and that in such 

 action the "three months" waiting period should not apply ; also the 

 use of nuclear explosions for peaceful engineering at home or abroad 

 should be preserved regardless of the treaty. Three of his suggested 

 legislative actions concerned measures to maintain the nuclear research 

 laboratories in a high state of readiness and competence. The last 

 called for immediate reports by the President to the Congress of any 

 seeming violation of the treaty.^^^ 



Harold Stassen, who had served as President Eisenhower's Special 

 Adviser on Disarmament, recommended Senate approval of the treaty 

 as serving "the best interests of mankind," as a factor to inhibit the 

 spreading of nuclear weapons to additional states, and as an encour- 

 agement to successful resolution of a divided Germanv.^-- The Soviet 

 Union, he noted, had abided by both the Austrian Treaty and the 

 Antarctic Treaty. 



Xorman Cousins, editor of the Saturday Eeview, whose role in 

 paving the way for the reopening of the test ban negotiations has 

 already been described, also recommended approval of the treaty. 

 While acknowledging that the Soviet Union had not abandoned its 

 objectives of world communism, he observed that the Soviets had 

 chosen to pursue them on the "nonmilitary battlefield." ^^^ Second, he 

 judged that Khrushchev had chosen between rapprochement with the 

 Chinese Communists and with the United States : the test ban treaty 

 symbolized his decision. National security depended more on control 

 of force than on accumulation of more force.^-* 



A hearing of public witnesses occupied the committee on Friday, 

 August 23. An analysis of the 19 public witnesses in the hearings ^^^ 

 shows that five were opposed to ratification of the treaty and 14 

 favored it. A reasonable expectation might have been that the public 

 witnesses favoring the treaty would have been mainly concerned with 

 the beneficial consequences of a test ban for reducing radioactive fall- 

 out in the environment. Considerable attention had earlier been given 

 to the rising levels of radioactivity caused by nuclear tests, and in 

 particular to the apparently exponential rate of increase in intensity 

 of such dangerous isotopes as strontium 90, or iodine 131. However, 

 six witnesses made only slight reference to this hazard and three made 

 none at all. Three cited it as a major issue and two addressed them- 

 selves to radiation as the foremost advantageous aspect of the treaty. 

 Among the professional witnesses, on the other hand, while there was 

 general agreement that any increase in level of radioactivity was 

 undesirable and potentially harmful, the issue was judged to have been 

 grossly exaggerated. 



After hearing the public witnesses the Foreign Relations Commit- 

 tee on Monday, August 26, called upon Dr. Herbert York, chancellor 

 of the University of California at San Diego and previously Director 

 of Defense Research and Engineering. He concurred in testimony 

 given earlier by Harold Brown: that, in accuracy and reliability, a 

 number of small-yield weapons were preferable to a. single large-yield 

 %yeapon ; that it would be better to improve payload capability of de- 

 liverv^ vehicles than to improve yield-to-weight ratios of warheads; 



^ Ibid., pp. 676-677. 



^ Ibid., pp. 699-700. 



^ Ibid., p. 707. 



^ Ibid., p. 709. 



^ Ibid., pp. 725-758, 879-966. 



