Pacifists Discuss Peace, Warn of Nuclear Disaster

Speakers participating in a discussion on the arms race at Harvard Hall yesterday afternoon agreed that all nations should strive to maintain peace, but the speakers disagreed over the political and economic conditions that must first exist in a country before it can abstain from resorting to violence.

"We are all people with the same ideals, the same objectives and the same dedication to the common good," Chandrajit Yadava, chairman of the All-India Peace Committee and the former minister for steel and mines in Indira Gandhi's cabinet, said during the discussion yesterday.

But Jose Carlos Lobo, United Nations delegate from Mozambique, had a different opinion about the extent of exploitation a people must tolerate before turning to violence. "We waged war to conquer peace. Death was the only way. The other side understood no language other than violence," he said.

The Harvard Anti-Nuclear Alliance and the group Mobilization for Survival jointly sponsored the discussion. One hundred and fifty people attended.

Francisco Da Costea Gomes, former president of Portugal, and E.K. Feodorov, a member of the Supreme Soviet and an alternative member of the Soviet Union's Central Committee, did not come to the discussion, although both were scheduled to appear.

The Soviet Union representative could not appear because the State Department would not issue Feodorov a visa allowing him to travel from Washington, D.C. to Boston, a spokesman for the Anti-Nuclear Alliance and Mobilization for Survival, said.

Helen Madji Petrou, president of the Association of Greek Women Jurists and of the Greek Peace Movement, served as a panelist along with Lobo and Yadava. Each panelist made an introductory talk, then fielded questions from the audience.

All the speakers who attended the discussion are members of the Bureau of the World Peace Council, an organization that will present arguments against nuclear proliferation at a special session on disarmament at the United Nations in May.

"Unfortunately, today there is a lack of faith," Yadava said. "Merely a handful of people who have a vested interest in manufacturing weapons want to make new weapons. The common man does not want war."

Yadava said, "Weapons like neutron bombs that we have now will not destroy school buildings, only the beautiful children living in it--this is insanity, it is the challenge of humanity."

Although Lobo maintained that violence was sometimes necessary to overthrow an exploitative government, he described the horrors of war to an attentive audience.

"I don't know if you have seen death." Lobo said, "but I have seen death by war. Not just the death of 10 or 100, but thousands. I have seen soldiers surround a refugee camp and go through killing indiscriminately. I cannot describe it; you cannot imagine it. All of you here, in one moment, dead."

"You say guerillas love death, but in Mozambique we had to fight. We know what death is like and that is why we hate war."

A member of the Spartacus Youth League said it was absurd to talk about peace until all the people of the world were free from capitalistic exploitation by the ruling bourgeoisie