Nuclear Weapons and Christian Conscience. Edited by Walter Stein and with a Foreword by Archbishop Roberts, S. J. The Merlin Press. 12s. 6d.

it is surely true that the revulsion from the use of strategic nuclear weapons in any circumstances which is one of the roots of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament is moral and not merely prudential. In the end prudence and morality are not to be divided; but immediately there is an obvious difference between wanting to get rid of nuclear weapons in Britain lest the Russians should be provoked into attacking us and disapproving of the use of such weapons even in circumstances (to make the perhaps absurd supposition that there could be such) where their use could be supposed to bring about some great advantage. Many people have slandered the Campaign, alleging that the agitation was against British and American bombs only. It is true that there have been a few people on the fringes of the Campaign who have wanted to make a distinction between capitalist bombs and socialist bombs; but the swift response of the Campaign to the resumption of nuclear testing by the Russians has shown the slander to be groundless. It is sad that it should have required the resumption of nuclear tests to vindicate the moral integrity of the Campaign.

It may seem very strange that, faced with the proclaimed intentions of Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union to use nuclear weapons against great centres of population in certain specified circumstances, we should be asked to give reasons for our moral revulsion. One who seriously, outside the context of an academic discussion, asks for reasons why we should think genocide or the torture of prisoners or the punishment of the innocent wrong we should think to be mad. We are nevertheless faced with just such questions; for it seems to be the case that a great many British, Americans and Russians who are apparently sane think the burden of moral proof rests upon the opponents of nuclear weapons, not upon the defenders. This is a strange fact about the world, but it is a fact; and we have therefore to come to terms with it, to show by argument the moral evil of nuclear warfare and of the intention to wage it.