‘\, -108— \ planning at present, and which merely take the power of the other country into consideration, might be held within Limits through agreements on the limitation or reduction of armaments, it is to be feared that an unbridled armament race would eventually lead the two countries into a policy of evasion if not of open ‘violation of any commitment which might stand “pte way of their quest for noM ers Nothing shows more clearly how dhuch the \danger represented by dual yt? superiority. possession of the bomb depends on the future Newsdh Soviet-American relations. Even while the American monopoly lasts our statesmen must be planning to meet this danger along every possible line, It would be a grave error if a solu- tion were expected from a single approach with neglect of others. The time may be short during which we can prepare and erect barricades of protection; but there are several "lines of defense" which we can start building simultaneously. The first line is directly comnected with Soviet-American relations, It consists in proper efforts on our part to settle our disputes with the Soviet Union peacefully and to avoid adding new ones, In this way only can we hope to remove the incentives to war as well as those fears of a Soviet-American war which are turning atomic power into a veritable nightmare. The importance of this approach to the problem cannot be exaggerated, though any attempt to discuss it here would transcend the limits of our subject. said. This much, however, should be The peaceful settlement of disputes is not a one-way affair, This country can succeed only if the Soviet Union is equally eager to eradicate the danger of atomic war and is equally convinced that continued conflict with this country would eventually bring down the calamity of war upon ourselves and the world. A policy of one-sided concession, instead of bringing us nearer to our goal, might have the opposite effect. It might lead the Soviet leaders to believe that we would continue to retreat indefinitely and that further demands or even uni-~ lateral acts on their part would, therefore, not endanger the peace, It would be equally wrong to regard every concession to the Soviet Union as an act of appease- ment or to interpret every Russian claim as evidence of an insatiable desire for 1/3