Opinion: Bomb Shock

Nikita Khrushchev's nuclear fireworks displays over the Soviet skies last week were a devastating shock to the illusions of a small but hardy Western breed: the ban-the-bomb campaigners, who are dedicated to the dubious proposition that any political fate is preferable to the horror of atomic war ("I'd rather be Red than dead"). Covertly but vigorously backed by local Communists, the ban-the-bombers typically make U.S. military bases their target in the hope that with the U.S. gone from their homelands, they will have a better chance of sitting out a nuclear holocaust on the sidelines. Some more fatuously imagine,...

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