SIR, — Renate Prince asks, 'Mr. Donnelly, where are You?' I am
sorry to disappoint her but I am still here, as large as ever—even larger than life—always ready to be of kindly service to the Committee of 100.
As to the so-called 'Moscow demonstration'—Mr. Christopher Mayhew and I had one of these 'street gatherings' in Moscow, about the Hungarian revolu- tion, five years ago—I am sure that Renate Prince would not wish anyone to copy it in Trafalgar Square, where it would contrast quaintly with the earnest thousands who sat so solemnly last September, to no purpose whatsoever. Nevertheless, there is an important political point in the Moscow incident and the new Russian tests which must have penetrated even a few of the ivory heads of the Committee of 100. I spell it out: without a Western nuclear deterrent, the Committee of 100 would not be able to demonstrate against Russian tests even in London; let alone in Moscow, Prague, Pankow, Budapest, Warsaw, Sofia, Bucharest, Ulan Bator and Peking. In short, unilateral disarmament is 'a nonsense.' It has to be multilateral disarmament, in quest of which we must never yield.
From this startling thought (to some, alas) it is only a short step to the Committee of 100 finding a new patron instead of Lord Russell, who should now go the way of Mr. Harold Watkinson. Before the war, in his book Which Way to Peace? Lord Russell wrote of the German challenge, 'The end of all the death and destruction will be the substitution of an English Hitler for the German one.' He went on to argue that the British, even if we won, would become as cruel as the Nazis, if we were to fight them. For his alternative, he then stated, 'If under a pacificist Government, Hitler were to attack this country, he and his German troops should be welcomed like tourists . . . it would . . . make militarism seem silly.' Naturally, I do not ques- tion Lord Russell's sincerity—merely his political wisdom. It would not fill a peanut. And, if we had listened to him in 1940, we might be bars of soap today!
DESMOND DONNELLY
House of Commons, SW!
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