Gov. Williams Keynotes Rally for Peace

Last Saturday night 5000 Bostonians came to a "Sane Rally for Peace" in the Boston Arena, more often the scene of pugilistic combat. On the platform were a governor and a couple of folksingers, a theologian, a chemist, and a psychoanalyst.

In from Hollywood, Steve Allen did the introductions and appealed for funds. The theme was "Nuclear War or Lasting Peace," and the sponsor was the Greater Boston Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy.

Outside the arena young socialists, unassociated with Sane, passed out literature posing the question: "Capitalism and Catastrophe or Socialism and Survival."

Egg-Throwing Disrupts Program

Inside the hall, the mood was saner, except when a well-aimed egg broke in the lap of the theologian on the platform, bringing from Steve Allen a drawn-out denunciation of "this coward who threw the egg and ran," and from the victim an assurance that the missile was not rotten.

Dr. L. Howard DeWolf, B.U. professor of Theology, compared the world situation to a ship at sea carrying two gangs of desperadoes, each armed with deadly explosives. DeWolf called for a Project Mankind as a peaceful analogue to the wartime Manhattan Project, which developed the atom bomb.

In one of the two major addresses, Erich Fromm aired the best phrases of his "Socialist Manifesto." Viewing the "whole structure of modern man," Fromm, well-known psychoanalyst and prolific writer, said that "with all our education, people seem to be getting dumber than ever," drawing the best applause of the evening. We have machines that act like men, he said, and men who worship machines.

Fromm called on man to assert himself and begin to ask not what's likely (curiosity), but what's possible (concern).

Discarding his prepared text, Governor G. Mennen Williams of Michigan said that peace and freedom go together ("like ham and eggs, I almost said"), that we need "to mobilize the moral and spiritual forces of the world" in a Project Mankind. In an interview prior to his speech, Williams said Kennedy would get a National Peace Agency bill through Congress, and that unilateral steps toward disarmament, except for a test moratorium "get onto dangerous ground."

Williams Outlines Peace Plan

William's five points for peace were world law (using the UN as start), aid to underdeveloped areas (chiefly through the UN), relief of world tensions (admitting Red China into the UN, for example), a U.S. program on arms control and transition to a "peace-oriented economy," and finally, disarmament.

Williams strongly supported Kennedy's position that, in Winston Churchill's words, "We arm to parley." Some hissed.

Williams got his biggest hand as he gave the floor to Pete Seeger, who gyratingly attested to his "love of life," and sang, "If I had a hammer, I'd hammer out a warning...all over this land." The audience joined in, and after a losing attempt to maintain his dignity on a platform of folksinging chemists, theologians, television stars and psychoanalysts, so did Governor Williams. At 12:15 it was all over.