EXPER IMENTAL SLAUGHTER" -- BERTRAND RUSSELL
[The following is the text of a statement made by Bertrand Russell for consideration by the World Conference of Peace which opened at Helsinki July li.
The problem which confronts all those ‘interested in peace today is the present policy of the United States. Those who are in power in the United States of America have committed that country toa systematic programme of exploitation and foreign domination. The essence of the problem may be summed up in the following way: The United States of America maintains over 3,600 military bases in the world, This vast international system of military control exists because American capitalism controls sixty per cent of the worldts resources, although the United States contains only six per cent of the world's population. The peoples of the world are in revolt against these conditions, which mean for them poverty, disease and unrelieved misery. JAt-is obvious that no nation can retain by force of arms the control and benefit of nearly two-thirds of the world's resources without meeting resistance from the people who suffer as a result. It follows that the majority of the peoples of the world must accept their circtmstances or come into open revolt against. American domination and exploitation. These are the essential facts which lie behind the appallingly brutal war of aggression which the United States is now waging in Vietnam. Let no one be in doubt: the conditions which have caused this conflict in Vietnam exist throughout Latin America and the greater part of Africa and Asia,
What is one to think of a war in which the most powerful industrial nation on earth uses all the ingenuity and resources at its disposal to annihilate the people of an agricultural country thousands of miles away? Eight million Vietnamese have been placed in virtual concentration camps. In one year alone, fifty thousand air attacks with napalm were conducted by the United States and its puppet Government. Weapons of mass slaughter are being used experimentally on civilian populations in South Vietnam. The United States, furthermore, seeks to overcome the determined resistance to its policy of domination by pursuing a course of armed conflict with China, It is greatly to be feared that the men who have- power in the Pentagon, in the centres of Western capitalism and in the inner reaches of the Central Intelligence Agency are, at this moment, preparing to destroy by bombing all of the industrial cities of China, © This criminal act, which will bring the world to the verge of allout Auclear war, must be faced by: the peoples of the world: and opposed with all the vigour-and resolution at our disposal. It has been said in the past that all partiés to the Cold War are to blame for the arms race and for the threat of nuclear war. It can no longer be said with any justification, Events of recent years and present policies of the United States make clear beyond doubt that the threat
to world peace is American imperialism. Any honest observer of the world scene, conversant with the facts, must come to that conclusion,
It is the reckless behaviour of the U.S.Government which brings the world to the brink of nuclear war. The probable results are so awful that people will not face them. U.S. policy means that if major war should be averted for the moment, there will be a new crisis soon, American power challenges the aspirations of mankind, Until the U.S.Government -~ its military and the C.I.A. -=- abandon the doctrine of counterrevolution and cease opposing the struggle for political and economic independence, the world will stagger from one crisis to another, Until people are prepared to oppose and overthrow governments which support chemical and napalm warfare, the U.S. will continue its policies of experimental slaughter.
I call upon people throughout the world to demand an end to the U.S. war of aggression in Vietnam,
TO SAVE THE "HONOR" OF THE U.S.
[Extracts from the following August 2 Associated Press dispatch, sent by correspondent John T. Wheeler from Chan Son, Vietnan, have been widely quoted by the European press as evidence of the kind of war Johnson is waging in Asia to save the “