NUCLEAR TESTING

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

In your May 15th issue, I read the following statement as part of "A Protest by Junior Members of the Harvard Faculty against the Resumption and Continuation of Atmospheric Nuclear Testing by the U.S.":

We believe...that even given the impossibility of such [underground] detection, the government has not shown cause why we could not sign a treaty banning all tests universally recognized to be detectable by existing ("national") systems--that is, atmospheric tests and underground tests above a certain yield.

In order to set the record straight on what appears to be a crucial misconception, I would live to quote from a diplomatic note reprinted in the New York Times, September 4, 1961 (after the first Soviet atmospheric explosion):

...The president of the United States and the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom propose to Chairman Khrushchev that their governments agree, effective immediately, not to conduct nuclear tests which take place in the atmosphere and produce radio-active fallout...

They point out that with regard to atmospheric testing the United States and the United Kingdom are prepared to rely upon existing means of detection, which they believe to be adequate and are not suggesting additional controls... Pierre C. Hohenberg,   Tutor in Physics.