Senator Flanders Discusses War, Peace in Godkin Finale

Recalling the world's two great periods, of peace under the Roman and British Empires an the "Pax Romana" and the "Pax Brittanica," Senator Ralph E. Flanders last night called for a "Pax Americana" in the third and final Godkin Lecture.

Discussing the present "cold war," the Vermont solon declared that a giant advertising campaign behind the Iron Curtain was the best way in which to avert another World War.

"We must remember that are armament race accelerates itself and has never yet brought peace," he said. "It is a costly and destructive defensive operation without positive values for achieving peace. Its justification is that a line of defense may be held until means of achieving peace have been devised.

What we have to do is to recognize the universal desire for peace among people as distinguished from their governments. We have to find some way to make this desire an effective force in maintaining peace. Our billions upon billions of expenditures on defense are wasted and meaningless if they are considered as the ultimate solution."

As a means of reaching the peoples behind the Iron Curtain, Flanders suggested the seemingly ridiculous device of the free balloon, dropping pictures and simple reading matter at intervals as it floats over the enormous areas of European Russia."

"Our State Department does not look with favor on this means of getting in touch with people on the other side of the barrier," he declared. "They have the idea that it will be construed as an invasion of sovereignty by the Russian government. Through some queer quirk of diplomatic reasoning, it is no invasion to shoot our words across on electromagnetic waves in the other, but it is not quite cricket to send printed material across. That's a little too unconventional. In some way it is rather raw. It is not in accordance with the niceties of diplomatic practice.

"Well, let us set a precedent."

Comparing the U. S. Air Force with the British Navy during the century of peace when England held the balance of power, Flanders asserted that the Air Force's "strength lies in its existence."

"It is not too fantastic to think of it as an air cover under whose protection the United Nations proceeds with its difficult processes," he said.