Books in Brief

Nuclear Policy for War and Peace, by Thomas E. Murray (World, $4.00). Conservatives will find little to admire in either the rhetoric or the value premises of this book, for the author accepts and likes to repeat at length most of Liberalism’s favored dogmas about the “cold war.” We may nonetheless be grateful for a work that, whatever its root assumptions, offers counsel on the subject of nuclear-weapons testing that is something more than mindless pacifism. Although himself an early advocate of banning atmospheric tests, Murray (for seven years a member of the Atomic Energy Commission) has some slashing criticisms of the Administration’s fourteen-month moratorium on all atomic explosions—a policy he views as an irrational surrender to fear-crazed “world opinion.” The rest of the book may safely be ignored, but the two chapters on “Disarmament and Testing” will reward careful reading.

M. S. EVANS

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Nuclear Policy for War and Peace, by Thomas E. Murray (World, $4.00). Conservatives will find little to admire in either the rhetoric or the value premises of this book, for the author accepts and likes to repeat at length most of Liberalism’s favored dogmas about the “cold war.” We may nonetheless be grateful for a work that, whatever its root assumptions, offers counsel on the subject of nuclear-weapons testing that is something more than mindless pacifism. Although himself an early advocate of banning atmospheric tests, Murray (for seven years a member of the Atomic Energy Commission) has some slashing criticisms of the Administration’s fourteen-month moratorium on all atomic explosions—a policy he views as an irrational surrender to fear-crazed “world opinion.” The rest of the book may safely be ignored, but the two chapters on “Disarmament and Testing” will reward careful reading.

M. S. EVANS