Challenge and Response

As I write, Vice President George Bush is preparing for his tour of allied countries in Western Europe, during which, we are told, his mission will be to stiffen the will of government leaders to deploy Pershing II and cruise missiles.

So emotional is the issue of nuclear weapons that it constitutes the perfect field for Soviet or Soviet-backed propaganda. Let me be more precise. The enormous growth of the “freeze” and unilateralist movements in the United States and Western Europe is in one sense more apparent than real. And it is not, I believe, a question of a movement, in this country or any other, making thousands or tens of thousands of converts. It is rather the case that in each of our countries there is a large, amorphous, essentially apolitical, section of the population that doesn’t know much about public affairs but does know it doesn’t like the Bomb. The ardent, hardcore anti-nuclear campaigners have done an impressive job in sensitizing this amorphous mass.

As I write, Vice President George Bush is preparing for his tour of allied countries in Western Europe, during which, we are told, his mission will be to stiffen the will of government leaders to deploy Pershing II and cruise missiles.

So emotional is the issue of nuclear weapons that it constitutes the perfect field for Soviet or Soviet-backed propaganda. Let me be more precise. The enormous growth of the “freeze” and unilateralist movements in the United States and Western Europe is in one sense more apparent than real. And it is not, I believe, a question of a movement, in this country or any other, making thousands or tens of thousands of converts. It is rather the case that in each of our countries there is a large, amorphous, essentially apolitical, section of the population that doesn’t know much about public affairs but does know it doesn’t like the Bomb. The ardent, hardcore anti-nuclear campaigners have done an impressive job in sensitizing this amorphous mass.