Give Peace a Chance

Last May, 1000 members of the Harvard community held a one-day conference to discuss their concern over the growing nuclear arms race. Out of that meeting came the Waging Peace project, and this week on Veterans Day the group began its campaign to help mount a nation-wide movement demanding multi-national nuclear arms reductions.

Joined by other campus peace organizations and several graduate schools, Waging Peace sponsored Wednesday's Nuclear Convocation at Harvard, one of 150 similar gatherings at colleges in 42 states. Organizers of the national program estimated yesterday that more than 100,000 people attended the conferences and compared the event to the initial teach-ins that sparked campus protest to American involvement in Vietnam.

"There's no one who is not delighted with the entire experience, here or across the nation," Helen Snively '71, a Waging Peace volunteer said, confirming original estimates that about 2000 people participated in Harvard's program.

Plans are already underway for a second round of convocations next November 11, and Harvard organizers are tentatively committed to some sort of event here.

"When we had our meeting last May, we didn't even plan to establish a formal organization at Harvard, and now looking at all of this activity, we're very encouraged that real progress will be made," Snively said.

Speakers at Harvard's conference raised issues ranging from the danger of increased Soviet and American short-range nuclear arsenals in Europe to the infeasibility of any nation's "winning" a nuclear war.

Addressing a Sanders Theater audience of about 750, George B. Kistiakowsky scoffed at recent Reagan administration comments on beating the Soviets in a "limited" nuclear war in Europe. "One hundred million will be killed in any such war," he said. "It's criminal not to think about it."

At an earlier panel discussion, a responsive audience applauded loudly when a Soviet participant added his voice to the demand for multi-lateral nuclear disarmament.

Yuri Kapralov, consul for the Soviet Embassy in Washington, said that "there is no system of weapons that we are not prepared to eliminate, provided it is done on the basis of equity and equal security."

Appearing with Kapralov, former SALT II negotiator and Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Warnke criticized both American and Soviet increases in theater nuclear forces in Europe.

"There is another way to send a message, and that's communication, that's talks," Warnke said.