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Meanwhile, across the Pacific, four pacifists headed westward toward the Eniwetok Proving Grounds aboard the ketch Golden Rule, sponsored by the pacifist-led Non-Violent Action Against Nuclear Weapons Committee. The Atomic Energy Commission barred unauthorized U.S. citizens, meaning the pacifists, from the proving grounds. But the pacifists warned everybody via ship-to-shore radio that they meant to sail on after a stopover at Honolulu for supplies, "come what may." And the U.S. Navy quietly made ready to tow them out of the danger zone if necessary.
Tests Are Best. At one point in the uproar, the New York Daily News paid its respects to the Sane Nuclear Policy Committee signatories: "Far be it from us to charge the above-named persons with consciously trying to do a job for the Kremlin. We merely think that as regards nuclear weapons tests they are as nutty as so many fruitcakes."
Even famed Physical Chemist Eugene Rabinowitch, editor of the authoritative Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and longtime believer in controlled disarmament, now thought that in the wake of Russian missile successes "one finds no convincing reason to oppose tests needed to develop defensive atomic weapons with reduced fallout." Harry Truman added characteristically: "Propaganda and unilateral declarations of intent will allay no one's fears . . ."
But the folks who listened to the horror stories without listening to evidence on fallout, to say nothing of survival (TIME, April 7), the religious-minded who doubted that the ends of liberty and peace justified the means of nuclear deterrence, were all stepping up the pressure as the crucial Eniwetok tests drew nigh. It seemed to matter not at all that this was precisely what the sworn enemies of religion, liberty and peace itself were telling them to do.
* "Professor Pauling," reported the House Committee on,Un-American Activities in 1951, "has not deviated a hairsbreadth from this pattern of loyalty to the Communist cause since 1946."