Disarmament Meeting Told Of US Threat

"The United States is more likely to be forced into starting a war than the Soviet Union," A. J. Muste, a noted pacifist, asserted in a keynote address last night to a Harvard Fellowship of Reconciliation.

"Soviet society and government is much more dynamic" than the corresponding institutions in the United States, he stated, adding that "democracy is on the defensive now. On the whole, communism is not; it is something which is advancing."

Muste stressed the need for change from within both East and West. He noted that, while one of the objections Americans make to the communist system is its "fanatical ideology," the United States is moving in this direction also.

A petition was circulated after the meeting calling on the United States, Britain, and Russia to agree to the permanent cessation of nuclear tests, guaranteed by inspection through the United Nations. The conference on coexistence and disarmament continues today.