Word: schnur
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...reply to Messrs. Schnur and Cowan on the issue of fallout shelters (CRIMSON 10/14/60), Mr. Gilder has made the same gross omissions that he attributed to both these contributors. His argument that less expensive countermeasures will eventually damage the effectiveness of fallout shelters is not without merit. However, considerations of a political and much broader kind legislate against the advisability of a shelter program. These considerations spring from the world consensus that mankind has a bleak future in a permanent "armsathon," and that no effort to call a halt is too great or too soon. The United States...
...Schnur and Mr. Cowan are very naive in their thinking when they assume that an arms reduction would be an excellent beginning to solve world problems. The purpose of armaments and war is to decide an issue by force. The decision of course is rendered in favor of the disputant who has the greater force at his command. War is an emotional and expensive method for solving world problems, expensive not only in financial terms but also in rivers of human blood. War, now as always, has its purpose in human society--the battlefield is the final and supreme court...
Both the letter by Mr. Schnur (CRIMSON 10/11/60) and the reply by Mr. Cowan missed most of the points worth making on the issue of the construction of fallout shelters. Mr. Schnur argued that we should construct shelters because nuclear war is possible and it is suicidal not to be prepared. Mr. Cowan argued irrelevantly that "the atmosphere created by current Civil Defense measures has unquestionably instilled in the American public a certain complacency about nuclear...
...most persuasive case for an adequate shelter program, which Mr. Schnur failed to make, and which I reject for the above reasons, is the possible contribution such a system would make to the deterrent posture of the United States... It is estimated that under current conditions, without an adequate civil defense program, nuclear war would result in sixty million American casualties. It is almost incredible that an American president would invoke such a holocaust in the case of a Soviet invasion limited to Europe. But if the enemy should ever come to believe that we would not carry...
...Schnur agrees that arms reduction, under an adequate controls system, would be an excellent beginning to solve world problems. Of course, negotiations are impossible unless both sides genuinely desire to reach an agreement. I would question an assumption that colors the rest of Mr. Schnur's letter--that America is, at present, prepared to accept arms reduction and will make certain compromises to reach that...